3 Nights in LA with George Garzone, Peter Erskine, Alan Pasqua, and Darek Oles

George Garzone, Peter Erskine, Alan Pasqua, and Darek Oles
3 Nights in LA
Fuzzy Music

"3 Nights in LA" documents a January 2019 performance at a new Los Angeles club, Sam First. Peter Erskine took to the bandstand with pianist Alan Pasqua and bassist Darek Oles, his fellow faculty members at University of Southern California's Thornton School of Music joined by tenor saxophone player George Garzone, in town to teach a master class, for three nights, two sets a night. The result is this three-disc release, with each disc representing a different night with a total of 20 tracks and over three hours of music.

Erskine is likely the best known of these players from his time with Weather Report as well as playing with the likes of Steps Ahead, John Abercrombie, Kenny Wheeler, and Marc Johnson. Pianist Pasqua, a veteran of the New Tony Williams Lifetime and Allan Holdsworth, and bassist Oles, one of the most sought after bassists on the West Coast, have been playing with Erskine for over a decade. Tenor saxophonist Garzone, besides being a formidable master of the saxophone is a revered educator, with noted students including Joshua Redman, Branford Marsalis, and Donny McCaslin. Garzone first played with Erskine in 1998, an experience that left a deep impression and they have crossed paths several times since.

Those three nights in January produced some superb music. Erskine and his trio would be delightful to hear by themselves, but add Garzone's tenor saxophone, and the music is excellent in the vein of the classic John Coltrane Quartet as well as the '70s and '80s music of Dexter Gordon and Art Pepper. One may hear elements of Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Dexter Gordon, Johnny Griffin, Hank Crawford and others in Garzone's full-toned, robust playing. The Coltrane tone may be most evident on the excellent rendition of the blues, "Equinox," the lovely ballad "I Want To Talk About You," but also on Garzone's "Tutti Italiani," where he builds his solo with fire followed by Pasqua's lyrical solo. There are three superb, different interpretations of "Have You Met Miss Jones?" and a rousing rendition of Bronisław Kaper's "Invitation."

There is also Garzone's original "Dedicated to Michael Brecker," which sounds like a contrafact of Lerner and Loewe's "If I Ever Would Leave You" from "Camelot." Garzone is fabulously complemented by Pasqua's rhapsodic solo and the support by Oles and Erskine (who takes a thoughtfully constructed solo here). The remaining music of these discs is also superb making "3 Nights in LA" a terrific release.

I received a download to review from a publicist. There is more on this recording at Peter Erksine's website, https://petererskine.com/featured-album/3-nights-in-la/. Here is a promo video for this recording.

Here is a video from the Sam First engagement.

Charlie Haden & Gonzalo Rubalcaba Tokyo Adagio

When Charlie Haden had become confined to home when too ill to travel from the effects of post-polio syndrome, he started listening to tapes of his previous concerts and discovered the performances he had made with the Cuban pianist, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, at the Blue Note in Tokyo in 2005. The music was such that he wanted it released, and along with Jean-Phillippe Allard his producer from Impulse! and Universal Music France, they made the selections that appear on “Tokyo Adagio” (Impulse!) ready for release.

Haden and Rubalcaba had met in Havana in 1986 where his group played on a Havana Jazz Plaza Festival on the same night as Haden’s Liberation Music Orchestra, and Haden quickly became a major supporter of the pianist, urging Bruce Lundvall of Blue Note Records to sign him. He joined Haden, along with drummer Paul Motian at the 1989 Montreal Jazz Festival, and the music was issued as part of Haden’s “The Montreal Tapes” series. They would collaborate in concert and on recordings a number of more times, including the six songs (sequenced by Haden) the pair performed over four nights in Toyko that are presented here.

Rubalcaba is a marvelously gifted pianist with stunning technique and touch that goes with the keen musical intelligence he manifests throughout these duets, which display the empathy he and Haden had in these intimate and lyrical performances, opening with Martin Rojas’ lovely ballad “En La Orilla Del Mundo (The Edge of the World).” Haden’s love of movie music is displayed in the romanticism that permeates their rendition of the Johnny Mercer-David Raskin composed “My Love and I,” with Haden more prominent in the performance with the first solo (accented by the pianist’s chords) followed by more remarkable, and beautiful playing from Rubalcaba.

Ornette Coleman’s “When Will the Blues Leave” (first recorded in 1958), is taken at a bit more spirited tempo, and after Haden’s strong solo, Rubalcaba’s wonderful playing brings out the melodic delight of Coleman’s composition as he does on Haden’s own “Sandino,” whose title commemorates the Nicaraguan revolutionary leader where he is able to mix lines played at high velocity with several bars played in a more stately manner while providing a feeling of calmness, even through the most rhythmically stirring passages. After a lovely rendition of “Solamente Una Vez (You Belong To My Heart),” Agustîn Lara’s bolero, “Tokyo Adagio” concludes with Rubalcaba’s lovely ballad, “Transparence,” on which Haden provides the last musical utterance with a musical figure after the pianist’s ending.

Ned Sublette, in his appreciation in the liner booklet, observes the sense of calm about the music heard here and the enchanting performances here certainly are in accord with this. The booklet also provides Rubalcaba’s memories of Haden and these performances, and has  recollections of Haden’s widow, Ruth Cameron-Haden who notes Haden’s love of the slow movements in classical pieces (leading to the album title), his going to Tokyo to perform despite starting to experience the effects of post-polio syndrome, and the production of this recording. Listeners should be grateful that Haden was insistent about having the music on “Tokyo Adagio” released after he had passed on. It is a recording full of beauty, spirit and heart characteristic of Charlie Haden’s remarkable career.



I received my review copy from a publicist. This review originally appeared in the November-December 2015 Jazz & Blues Report (Issue 363).  Here is a performance of Charlie Haden & Gonzalo Rubalcaba from an earlier album.

Lowell Fulson Live in 1983

We have Billy Vera to thank for the release of Lowell Fulson Live 1983 At My Place (Rock Beat). Fulson is caught in performance backed by Billy Vera and the Beaters at the Santa Monica club, At My Place and its a marvelous near hour of music as Fulson revisits a number of classic she had recorded such as (Honey Hush) You Talk Too Much; Blue Shadows: Reconsider Baby; Black Nights; (Blues Pain) Do The Things You Do; Every Day I Have the Blues; Sinner’s Prayer and Tramp; along with interpretations of blues standards Going To Chicago; Stoop Down Baby; Too Many Drivers at the Wheel; and Love Her With a Feeling. I added parenthesis to a couple song titles to indicate what the song is also known as.

Fulson is in solid form here. His parched, graining Oklahoma panhandle blues voice carried the same soulfulness here as on his numerous recordings. And The Beaters provide strong backing. Saxophonists Jerry Peterson and Lon Price adding their own solos to Fulson’s own prickly T-Bone Walker-style. There was an excellent Fulson live recording from a Japanese tour with a band that included Lee Allen that has never been issued in the US. The performances on Live 1983 At My Place stand up nicely to that earlier one and this should be of interest to anyone interested in one of the giants of the last sixty-five years of blues.

I purchased this and you might try www.bluebeatmusic.com for copies. Here is Lowell Fulson with Lloyd Glenn doing Reconsider Baby from 1984.

 

Snooks Eaglin Live

Has it been Ten Years since Black Top issued Snnoks Eaglin's Live in Japan. A poorly distributed studio album of Snooks had been issued after this, but its amazing that such a striking talent as Mr. Eaglin has not been in the studio in about a decade to present his highly idiosyncratic music.

Here is a review of this album that appeared in Jazz & Blues Report when it was issued.

A new Snooks Eaglin album is cause for celebration enough, but Eaglin’s new Black Top album also marks the return of the Black Top label that had been in hiatus since severing ties with its previous distributor. Live in Japan was recorded during Eaglin’s first Japanese tour, and he is backed by bassist George Porter’s trio (John Autin on keyboards and Jeffrey ‘Jellybean’ Alexander on drums). He gets to reprise songs he has recorded over the years with a few new surprises in terms of material. Eaglin is an exceptional guitarist, often referred to as the Professor Longhair of the guitar with a very individualistic, highly rhythmic instrumental chicken scratching attack, as well as being a fountainhead of material that lead some to call him a human jukebox. Whatever. The man is a dazzling and very effective guitarist. After opening with a Bill Doggett instrumental, Eaglin gets the second line groove going with I Went to the Mardi Gras, that he co-authored with Tommy Ridgely, followed by Earl King’s Soul Train, a superb soul dance number with a solo that is deceptively simple. Then there’s Don’t Take It So Hard, a swamp pop flavored blues ballad. Classic New Orleans is reprised in renditions of Fats Domino’s Josephine and Smiley Lewis’ Down Yonder (We Go Ballin’) and Lillie Mae. It’s interesting to hear Eaglin introduce Down Yonder, telling the Japanese audience he played on Smiley’s original recording. Eaglin is most effective as a singer on laments like Nine Pound Steel, while his guitar’s vocalizations during the solos serves to remind us of why the blues guitar is often referred to as the singer’s other voice. Covers of the Isley Brother’s It’s Your Thing, and Stevie Wonder’s (Boogie On) Reggae Woman get a nice funky groove going. A strong vocal is also given Jessie Mae Robinson’s Black Night.

This serves as a splendid sampler of Eaglin’s music, illustrating his depth as a performer and guitarist, although his skills as a bop guitarist is only hinted at. Snooks Eaglin is an American original, but one probably has a better chance of seeing Snooks in Japan than in the US outside of New Orleans. Well, at least you don’t have to go to Japan to get this album.