It appears we lived the plan last night and tonight’s plan is the same venues in the same order, but more on that later.
I went ahead of Carol to get in line for Gary Versace with Scott Robinson at Hatch. I was all alone at 3:30 and was joined by a couple of others who we had met years ago in Kilbourn Hall after a few minutes. For the most part we were alone until shortly before the doors opened at 5:15! Where was everybody? Had they had enough of Scott two nights before at Max? I have no clue but they missed a remarkable performance by two great performers from different eras finding a way to play Jazz from a common base of knowledge. Ron Netsky has a lot of good things to say about the performance in his post in City. Carol and I were glued to our seats listening to familiar tunes played as we had never heard and tunes we had never heard, actually one they said had never been performed.
As we got our heads together we headed over to Temple Building Theater for Paul McCandless and Charged particle. this was another performance where we were awe struck by the performances. No one chose to review this performance, more’s the shame. McCandless is world class, he played soprano sax and bass clarinet. Charged Particle were wonderful, the piece they opened with just as their own trio left me wanting more. I would gladly attend a performance of the trio!
After two wonderful performances Carol and I headed back to The Street for some food. I had meat balls and rigatoni from Meat Balls truck. They were pretty good and my backpack enjoyed some of the color as well. Having taken 30 minutes for food and relaxation it was off to to Christ Church for Elda Trio. We had heard Emillia Martensson in one number with Ian Shaw and wanted to hear more. She is Swedish and her drummer is Brazilian and the accordionist was Slovenian. All this at the Made in UK venue. I might have thought we were at Lutheran Church where far out sounds are common, but no, this was the “staid” Christ Church UK venue. Ron Netsky, see link above, has an excellent review of this performance. For those looking for straight ahead Jazz it was time to leave. We stayed and enjoyed to the full the wonderful performance that used an accordion synthesizer, unusual percussion instruments that looked to have been fashioned from or to look like gourds. The percussion included vocalizations and mouth percussion. Martensson’s singing was wonderful. At one point the percussionist drew in the audience to sing along without even asking with words, he just set up the words and invited by gesture that we should join in and it sounded like much the audience did just that. Three wonderful performances and an hour to go.
Choices for the 10 PM time slot are limited so we elected to head to Max to hear John Fedchock NY Sextet. The music was very much straight ahead Jazz, most of the tunes familiar in one way or another. The performances were, reaching for superlatives I haven’t used and failing. We were chilled and our bottoms were sore from the seats but we rocked on until the last note we didn’t want to miss. We were able to get good seats as the group was being announced, with guys we had sat with earlier in the evening. The critics stayed away and the normally jammed crowds were nowhere to be seen, it was Thursday.
It won’t be like that tonight, the weather is wonderful with temperature in the 80’s and blue skies. It looks like another great night to be out there. As I said in the intro we will repeat venues with different performers. Bill Charlap at Hatch, Catherine Russell at Temple Building (this may be tough since she is a returning performer who is very popular), Itamar Borochov Quartet at Christ Church and Sullivan Fortner Trio at Max to wrap up the evening. We skipped the Jam last night, we shall see how we feel tonight, we can decide as we walk past on our way home.