Category Archives: Jazz

Both the Dave Holland Quintet and the Branford Marsalis Quartet could have easily sold out the MainStage space at the Toronto Jazz Festival had they each been the headliner act of their own show, so it’s a little strange that they should be shoved together in a double bill on Friday, July 3rd. Nevertheless, it’s hard to complain when you get to see that much talent and good music on display for the affordable price of $40 at the Toronto Jazz Festival, all in one night, even if the acoustics leave something to be desired.

The Dave Holland Quintet – Robin Eubanks on trombone, Steve Nelson on vibraphone, Chris Potter on alto/soprano sax, Nate Smith on drums, and Dave Holland on bass – opened the evening with a wonderful, energetic 75-minute set of original compositions from Holland’s albums. The set list included: “Step to It”, “Last Minute Man”, “Full Circle”, and “Lucky Seven”. The Dave Holland Quintet has a very eclectic sound, and at times, dissonant. Generally, this means there’s a lot going on at once, with Potter and Eubanks each carrying a bit of the melody – at the same time – and Nelson, Smith, and Holland sharing the rhythm sections. This tends to lead to a lot of complexity, and because of all the different instruments, each with what could be a standalone part, all together, gives you a rich variety of things to listen to. You can tune in and tune out of various different instruments, take your pick, and never be bored. Sometimes all this action leads to really rewarding and interesting dissonance and other times it ends up as just too busy. Sometimes I had trouble differentiating between the parts that Potter and Eubanks were playing, sometimes they blended together, and it felt like a bit too much mushiness. But the band really shone when its three stars took the stage with their solos: drummer Nate Smith, saxophonist Chris Potter, and bassist Dave Holland.

Drummer Nate Smith also played with Chris Potter in his “Underground” group at the Pilot on Monday, but it was in this concert with Holland where he really impressed me. Generally, when drummers take solos, they are so excited to finally be allowed to stray from just beat-keeping that they try to hit and bang as many drums and cymbals as possible in the smallest amount of time: this is their chance to make a lot of noise. But this approach lacks musicality; it’s just an unpleasant racket, the kind I usually can’t wait to stop. But Nate Smith, much like drumming greats Jack DeJohnette and Tony Williams, understands that less is more with drum solos. He hits a beat, he finds a rhythm to play with, and he lets the audience in on what he is doing. We can keep up, we can enjoy, and while it’s not “simple” it’s not overdone either: there’s music and clarity here. He also finds different pitches and tones to play with so that when his drum solo comes to an end, we can’t help but want more, or look forward to his next one. Smith is a great drummer and these are very, very few and far between.
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Although the great jazz saxophonist Sonny Rollins (78), master pianist Dave Brubeck (88), and virtuoso double bassist Charlie Haden (71) may be senior citizens, they play as if they’re still young, and what a show they each put on in the last week during the Toronto Jazz Festival. Their sets may have been short, but every minute counted, and every minute was top notch.

Sonny Rollins, the epitome of cool, who made his name as a “saxophone colossus” on the album of the same name, opened the TO Jazz festival on Friday, June 26th, with his very tight band. He walked onto the stage with his ultra cool white jacket and sunglasses, ready to give the audience a run for its money. He opened his show with a whirlwind solo in “Sonny, Please” with so much energy, a little game of “name that tune” in his solo, and a whole lot of bop, that the concert probably could have ended after just the one song, and the audience still could have gone home happy.

But Sonny and his group entertained for seventy minutes, a short concert, but every minute was fine, finer than his last Toronto performance in 2007, which was longer and still great, but not quite this good. He may have run out of breath now and then, but that’s a minor qualm for a 78-year-old that can keep you smiling throughout the whole concert. And Sonny knows how to put on a show. As he takes his solo, ready to heat up the piece and the room, he comes downstage, centre stage, and starts playing away, dancing as close as he possibly can to the audience. Sure, he’s a showoff, but the totally loveable kind. At his last concert, I remember being annoyed that he let his band play too much – we were there for Sonny not for his band – but not so this time. He played his heart out with various hits like “In a Sentimental Mood”, “They Say It’s Wonderful”, “Nice Lady”, and “Strode Rode”. Continue reading →

What: Chris Potter’s Underground
When: Tuesday, June 30th at 9PM (Today!) (Monday’s show reviewed below)
Where: The Pilot at 22 Cumberland between Bay and Yonge (Map)
Tickets: $28 at the door – arrive early. Seating is limited: first come first served. Doors open at 8PM. Dinner is available at the Pilot.

(More Chris Potter listings at end of review – Tuesday and Friday)

Starting at 9PM and finishing up at around midnight, Chris Potter’s Underground wowed the audience from start to finish at the intimate Pilot setting this evening, with two great sets of serious head-bopping, jiving music, that held your attention throughout, accessible to the jazz neophyte and a real delight for the jazz fan. The band played both original music off Potter’s albums and interpretations of other musicians’ work.

Chris Potter is a musician’s musician – about half the audience was music students from York, Humber, and UofT – he takes any piece and turns it on its head in so many different ways that make you listen and watch in anticipation, constantly engaged. His albums are good, but his performance here was stellar. I spent the whole concert bopping my head, swinging my shoulders, tapping my foot, tapping my hands, and at the apex moments, finding myself doing all of the above at once without thinking about it. It was a heck of a lot of fun and a heck of a good show.

Chris Potter’s Underground – with Adam Rogers on guitar, Craig Taborn on Fender Rhodes, Nate Smith on drums, and Potter on alto sax, soprano sax, and bass clarinet -played original tunes like the title song from “Underground” and Potter’s new album “Ultrahang”, new never-before played compositions like “Flight to Oslo”, old standards like Duke Ellington’s “Single Petal of a Rose”, and unexpected oldies with seriously imaginative turns like their melodic, swingy ballad of Bob Dylan’s “It Ain’t Me, Babe”.

What made the show great was not just the quality of the playing or the selection of the music, but the tightness of the band, the seamless transitions, and the incredible variations on the melody. While most jazz concerts follow the same old pattern of melody, sax solo, guitar solo, drum solo, keyboard solo, back to melody, and then new song and repeat, Underground has a new and exciting way of approaching performance, which is strong and engaging. However, it does get a little repetitive in nature by the nth song. Continue reading →

Trumpeter Roy Hargrove and his quintet, The Roy Hargrove Quintet, along with a series of special guests, took the stage at Nathan Phillips Square, the Toronto Star Mainstage, last Thursday, June 26th. The concert, part of the Toronto Jazz Festival, paid tribute to the “Jazz at the Philharmonic” series of concerts produced by Norman Granz, first held in Los Angeles in 1944, and featuring some of the era’s top swing and bop musicians like Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, and Oscar Peterson.

Although it was oppressively hot outside on Thursday, the plastic seats terribly uncomfortable, and the concert started twenty minutes late, the concert was well worth the wait.

The Quintet opened the evening with Hargrove’s “Depth”, which featured some nice solos from Hargrove’s saxophonist and Hargrove himself. They played a few bop jazz pieces together that jived, and shined whenever Hargrove took centre stage with a solo. His quintet featured musicians that worked great as support but, with the exception of his saxophonist, had trouble finding that clarity, characteristic of all of Hargrove’s excellent solos. Continue reading →

The Dave Brubeck Quartet closed the Toronto Jazz Festival in fine form at the Four Seasons Opera House on Wednesday, July 2nd, with Brubeck on piano, Bobby Militello on saxophone, Michael Moore on bass, and Randy Jones on drums. Although Mr. Brubeck had a bit of difficulty getting out the words to introduce the songs in his first set, and he played with a backrest, you would never know he was at the ripe age of 87 by his playing, except perhaps, as a tribute to his mastery of playing those keys like the jazzmaster we know him to be.

Dave Brubeck made a name for himself in the jazz world in the late 50s/early 60s for his fantastic playing and his tendency to impressively play around with time signatures, on great albums like Time Out, Time Further Out, and Countdown Time in Outerspace. He liked deviating from the usual 4/4, and instead playing in everything from 9/8 to 7/4, and most notably, for playing in 5/4 in his most famous piece, “Take Five”, which appears in numerous films including Annie Hall and Say Anything…

Although the Dave Brubeck Quartet with Paul Desmond on sax, and Joe Morello on drums, which made those classic albums, has long since disbanded, Brubeck’s latest quartet showcased some fine talent, in particular bassist Michael Moore, who wowed the audience with several complex, musical, and mesmerizing solos throughout the evening. In the grand finale piece, Randy Jones gave one of the more musical drum solos I’ve heard, “Take Five”, in which you could almost hear the melody singing through his percussive improvisations.

In the first half of the evening, the Quartet took the stage, starting out with the standard “Gone with the Wind”, possibly the most-played piece at the festival this year (Renee Rosnes/Bill Charlap and Sophia Perlman also performed the piece during the festival), and certainly the best rendition I heard at the festival, played so masterfully by these ‘grandmasters’, as the concert series rightly dubbed them. One of the highlights of the first half involved a three-way improv solo between Brubeck, Moore, and Militello, pulling off a spontaneous ‘call and response’ that worked almost all the way through, and which followed Moore’s best – and great it was – solo of the evening. Continue reading →