Saturday, April 26, 2008
Lee Konitz at Ballard Jazz Festival 4.26.08
Some folks will understand. Sometimes it makes sense to drive 300 miles round trip to have y he opportunity, even for just an hour and a half in ideal conditions to be in the presence of a major artist, someone whose craft, art, and style stands shoulders above most others. My trip to the Ballard Jazz festival to witness Lee Konitz play with the Hal Galper Trio was certainly worth every minute and every mile.
Konitz will turn 81 in October. His voice on alto sax is direct and distinct. He may look like a great uncle or grandfather in his bush jacket. But a concert with Konitz is like watching a boxer in the gym still coming up with new moves. His sparing partners are his present and past relationships (some maybe going on 50 years strong) with standards like All the Things You Are and Body and Soul. He takes them down to their essentials and brought back together again with how he feels about them today with control with an individualistic and interpretive flair that is his alone.
And the setting for time with this master was about as good as it gets. He played to somewhere around 400 folks in what was formerly the school auditorium of the old Daniel Webster Elementary School in Ballard, Washington (now the Nordic Heritage Museum) No clinking glasses, loud drunks, and waitresses collecting tabs in this here museum opportunity. It is a room of Konitz's approximate vintage wrapped with curtains and mixed to sound very sweet. I was also impressed by his ability to create and project in this room. He spent about a third of the concert playing a distance away from the microphone often with a towel in the bell of his horn serving as a mute, especially when he would contribute to a bass or piano solo.
Those piano solos were played by Hal Galperwho is noted for his work with another great alto player, Phil Woods. Galper's solos tend to cascade, but not just for flourish, but in a full rhythmic context determined by the tune and the dynamic energy of what is happening among the four others on stage with him.
Galper's trio was matched well with Konitz. They started off with one of those breakdowns that I think of as jabbop, a jagged current distant relation of flavorful exploration he converged with back in the late forties and early fifties with revolutionary pianist Lennie Tristano. Next was All the Things...complete with the descending triplet figure made famous in so many bop era jazz recordings smoothly sailing into a very complete workout of Body and Soul. There was another standard I could not identify then Invitiation, always in her terrible beauty with its four note theme coming out like repeated jabs in a tempo that was almost a shuffle to end the formal trio section of the concert.
Galper and Konitz came out for a duet. The full set began with musicians taking their places as local jazz deejay told the story Galper had told him about a lenghty run he and Konitz had in New York back in the seventies where every set and every night was a completely different and inventive experience. So there was a built-in anticpation. That mood shifted Konitz comment when they were situating themselves that they were having a "Jew off" I'm reminded that in Andy Hamilton's exceptional biographical book of interviews with Konitz where he says "If someone asks, I tell them my heritage but I don't practice my "Jewishness"--except with the jokes!"
But what came next was a Stella By Starlight suited for closing the evening and enough for me to drive back over half of my home state. Stella is a tune that has moved me for years with its rising tide and resolution and this was a version, like the In A Sentimental Mood I saw Sonny Rollins play back in September or Joe Lovano's interpretation of Chelsea Bridge a few weeks back that I will reflect on when I hear it in the future, no matter how formidable or mundane the interpretation. It contributed to making every mile to and fro worthwhile.
posted by well-executed buffet at 11:59 PM
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