Kenny Garrett Quintet / Jazzlines Trio, Town Hall, Birmingham, 10/02/2015.

KENNY GARRETT QUINTET

The American saxophonist Kenny Garrett (born Detroit, 1960) worked for five years as a sideman with Miles Davis in the early 1990s, a stint that did much to enhance his reputation. However Garrett had been recording as a leader since 1984 and his output as both band leader and sideman has been relatively prolific.

Following his period with Davis the saxophonist was signed by Warner Bros and his 1997 Grammy nominated album “Songbook” was one of the best selling jazz releases of its era. When the Jazzlines association announced that it would be presenting Garrett’s latest quintet at the Town Hall I dug out my copy of “Songbook” and very much enjoyed listening to it again after a long period of neglect. It’s a readily accessible and highly melodic record but the playing by an all star band (Nat Reeves on bass, Jeff ‘Tain’ Watts on drums and the late Kenny Kirkland at the piano) has a grit and rigour that ensures that there is never any hint of artistic compromise. I was surprised by just how good this album still sounded. I also revisited the earlier “Garrett 5”, an inferior record, but still one exhibiting great promise, that first appeared on Paddle Wheel Records in 1989.

Garrett had rather dropped off my radar in recent years and I believe that his current visit to the UK (he’s also booked in for a three night residency at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London) is probably his first for some considerable time. However following my excursions into his back catalogue I was really looking forward to this show but for various reasons it turned out to be the proverbial “curate’s egg”. The main problem was the sound in the cavernous Town Hall, something that even the presence of two sound engineers, one on stage, the other at the back of the hall failed to address.
Peter Bacon, writing on his blog The Jazz Breakfast, was particularly annoyed and the bulk of his review of this show consists of a tirade about the poor sound quality. You can read it at http://www.thejazzbreakfast.com

Perhaps I’m too tolerant and accepting of these things but in a way I wasn’t too surprised. I used to visit the Town Hall as a rock fan in the70s and 80s and the sound was always crap even then. Since the re-opening in 2007 I’ve been to a few jazz events and remember a gig by Courtney Pine’s Afropeans band being marred by poor sound quality. Purely acoustic performers such as Brad Mehldau and Wayne Shorter have fared rather better, it’s when rock style amplification is used that the trouble starts and this was the problem with both the Pine and the Garrett performances. At the heart of the problem is the cavernous nature of the building itself but with the advent of modern acoustics technology you’d have thought the situation would have been substantially improved following the refurb.  As Jazzlines is part of the Town Hall / Symphony Hall organisation perhaps it should be considering staging its most prestigious jazz events in the superior acoustic environment of Symphony Hall, which was not being used for any other purpose on this particular evening as far as I’m aware. 

And so to the music with Garrett bringing his regular working band over from the states. Vernell Brown (piano), Corcoran Holt (double bass), McClenty Hunter (drums) and Rudy Bird (percussion, vocals) all appear on Garrett’s latest album release “Pushing The World Away” (Mack Avenue Records, 2013), his seventeenth recording as a leader. All of these are superb musicians with remarkable technical abilities but it’s fair to say that tonight their undoubted skills weren’t always heard to their best advantage.

Garrett’s roots are in bebop and hard bop but he has also embraced many of the other elements of Afro-American music including funk and r’n'b. With “Pushing The World Away” he’s been quoted as saying that he was looking for a more obviously African sound, hence the inclusion of percussionist Bird, a long time associate who appeared as a guest on that early “Garrett 5” album. Bird’s array of percussion also included instruments more often associated with Latin music and this was a strand that the band were to explore later in the set.

In a show lasting over an hour and a half the quintet played seven lengthy “set pieces” exploring a variety of jazz styles. Wearing his trademark hat Garrett led from the front and from the opening moments one noted just how big the sound was, and not necessarily in a good way. The leader’s alto was hooked up with a bug mic, Holt was miked up and playing through an amp while Bird’s djembe boomed unpleasantly. Hunter’s kit had the kind of “stadium” drum sound that I don’t really like and as a result Brown’s opening solo, a marathon effort centred around the middle of the keyboard was largely drowned out. The pianist gestured frantically at the on stage sound man but any improvement was only minimal. Garrett’s own solo, as he wailed above a forest of percussion, was much more audible and the African elements of the music were emphasised by the vocal chants of Bird, Holt and Garrett. A high energy start but not a totally successful one.

Bird left the stage and the remaining quartet tore into an excoriating piece of bebop/hard bop with Garrett’s taut, incisive alto at its core. With Bird absent Brown’s second lengthy solo sounded marginally better, an intense, tumultuous excursion that deserved to be better heard. Garrett’s monster solo on acerbic, buzz saw toned alto was played above scalding rhythms and culminated in a duo stand off with Hunter’s volcanic drumming. The power of Garrett’s playing belied his thin, almost frail appearance, wiry would perhaps be a better physical description. Meanwhile Holt’s bass feature, including a substantial solo passage, demonstrated his remarkable drive and dexterity and incorporated strums, slaps and vocal interjections. Hunter returned with a series of furious drum breaks and a further set of impassioned exchanges with Garrett before the drummer embarked on a lengthy solo with the emphasis on super-fast rhythms and patterns played on the toms. Taken as a whole the piece was undeniably impressive but seemed a little vacuous, despite, or maybe even because of, all the virtuosity.

The third piece saw Garrett switching to soprano for a modal, John Coltrane inspired piece with added African elements courtesy of Bird’s percussion and the vocal chants of Holt and Garrett. As Garrett began his solo plumes of dry ice floated over the stage rendering the experience more like a rock gig than ever. A marginal improvement in the acoustics meant we could better appreciate Brown’s contribution and the sound of Bird’s shimmering gongs added to the devotional sound of post Coltrane spiritual jazz with Garrett working in a few quotes from “A Love Supreme” and Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints”.
Incidentally did anyone else catch the Radio 4 documentary about “A Love Supreme” that was aired on the morning of this very gig? It was surprisingly good and found Courtney Pine discussing the album “fifty years on” in the company of fellow saxophonists Nat Birchall, Finn Peters and Jason Yarde.

As Peter Bacon noted Garrett was subtly winding down the intensity as the set progressed. Bird concentrated on the congas for the next piece which placed the emphasis on Afro-Cuban rhythms and saw the percussionist exchanging ideas with fellow soloist Garrett before concentrating on his own feature.

The Latin flavour continued on the next piece, a ballad introduced by Garrett’s solo alto and with Bird on the humble triangle.

More balladry followed as Garrett switched to soprano to blow softly above brushed drums and subtly detailed percussion. Brown’s lyrical piano solo and Holt’s sensitive arco solo were things of beauty and even the ensuing drum and conga features maintained the fragile mood, Hunter’s solo with soft headed mallets an exemplary exercise in delicate restraint. The group sounded so much better when performing more quietly, the nuances of the playing could be clearly heard and appreciated and the lack of bombast came as a considerable relief. The sound itself became clearer as the musicians toned it down so perhaps the blame for the earlier problems should not be laid entirely at the door of the sound men.

However it was now time for Garrett to begin upping the energy levels again. He played a snaking melodic motif on soprano above modal rhythms, using this as the jumping off point for a biting solo and then returning to it and underpinning Hunter’s drum feature. Then a change to more obviously Latin rhythms for a second Garrett solo that squeezed in quotes from material as diverse as “Softly As In A Morning Sunrise” and “Smoke On The Water” as Garrett encouraged the audience to clap along. Picking up his alto Garrett went into full on party mode as he blew some rasping and rousing r’n'b and morphed into Garrett the showman. Hitherto he’d been rather aloof, no tune announcements, a perfunctory introduction of the band, even turning his back on the audience during the sax and drum barrage in the second piece. All in all a curious contradiction of on stage personas. But now here he was, exhorting the lighting engineer to put on the house lights so he could see all the “happy people”, co-incidentally also the title of this r’n'b/funk work out.  The guy on the lights proved to be as dim witted as his sound colleagues and it seemed to take him an age to respond to an increasingly impatient Garrett’s requests. Sure enough little knots of people were on their feet, some were clapping alonga Kenny, others, including Jazzlines’ own Mary Wakelam Sloane were in full on dancing mode. Others looked merely bemused, even a little bored.

So a real mixed bag of a gig. Undeniably excellent playing, undeniably poor sound except during the three quieter pieces in the middle of the set and musically rather too much bombast and empty virtuosity. I like to feel that jazz compositions are telling a story, and on “Songbook” Garrett does that very well, but I didn’t get so much of that impression here. I’ve not heard the “Pushing The World Away” record but suspect that it may sound very different, and more satisfying, than tonight’s performance. 

I enjoyed elements of this evening but couldn’t help feeling that the whole experience would have been more enjoyable in another space. I wouldn’t blame the sound guys entirely, Garrett is obviously used to playing big halls in the US and this bombastic approach with its elements of showmanship is obviously how he chooses to present himself in this environment. It will be interesting to see if he adopts a different approach in the more intimate atmosphere of Ronnie Scott’s. No doubt I’ll get to read that they were terrific there.

Leaving the hall it was obvious that some people had really enjoyed tonight and thought the band were brilliant. Others were obviously bitterly disappointed, after taking a while to get into it I was probably somewhere in the middle, and I’d still consider myself a Garrett fan -  but this was definitely a gig that was nowhere near as good as it could have been.

JAZZLINES TRIO

None of this was the fault of the young Jazzlines Trio who opened the show. The three musicians are either students or graduates of the Jazz Course at Birmingham Conservatoire and they also opened the Wayne Shorter show at this venue back in 2012.

Bassist James Banner and drummer Ric Yarborough remain in situ (they’ve been playing together since they were fourteen) but David Ferris has taken over the piano stool from rising star Reuben James who is currently touring (probably very lucratively) with chart topping pop crooner Sam Smith.

Their half hour support slot saw them playing three original compositions, one from each group member, plus two well known pieces by the saxophonist Joe Henderson.

They began with Henderson’s “Isotope” which offered soloing opportunities for each member of the trio before moving on to “Birth And Gunshots” written by David Ferris. Ferris appears to be a more obviously “European” pianist than the versatile James who is equally adept in the worlds of soul and r’nb and who has also played piano for Ruby Turner. Ferris’ highly lyrical composition was introduced by solo piano, later joined by bowed bass and brushed drums and made an almost ECM like use of space. Banner’s subsequent plucked solo was spacious and resonant and I also enjoyed Yarborough’s light, splashy touch on the cymbals. He’s matured greatly as a drummer and has recently been performing in trumpeter Nick Malcolm’s quartet.

Banner’s tune, a piece about a telescope whose full title I didn’t quite catch, took the trio into a more abstract area with Ferris picking out snatches of melody above the odd meter rhythms of his colleagues. The pianist’s dialogue with drummer Yarborough was particularly absorbing as the piece gradually unfolded.

Henderson’s “Black Narcissus” featured solos for bass and piano above brushed drums and the introspective mood continued into Yarborough’s lovely ballad “Irene” with its solo piano introduction, bass feature and further subtly detailed drumming.

The young trio were well received by an audience that contained many of their colleagues. Their essentially acoustic performance was done fewer disservices by the sound than that of the Garrett quintet although Banner’s bass appeared to be a little low in the mix. Without the exuberant James the character of the group is very different but Ferris is also a young musician of great promise who seems to be bringing something of his own character to the trio.