CONCERT REVIEW
An evening of tributes downtown
by Seth Rogovoy(PITTSFIELD, Mass., Jan. 26, 1997) -- The city's downtown was hopping on Saturday night with concerts at the Berkshire Museum and the Studio. And although the two shows featured very different styles of music, they shared some elements in common, both good and bad.
It was standing-room-only at the Berkshire Museum, where Havana Carbo and the Havana Midnight Jazz Quintet performed "Double Rainbow," a program of Latin jazz and pop standards.
The concert got off to a tentative start when pianist Alain Mallet came out and explained that the band had been waiting backstage to be introduced. With no introduction forthcoming, Mallet took the bull by the horns, asking for the house lights to be dimmed, bringing out the band himself, and terming the evening's proceedings "informal" -- a nice way of saying "Isn't there a stage manager in the house?"
Despite this unprofessional lapse on the part of the presenters, the band kicked right in with some hot Latin jazz. Drummer Mark Walker, bassist Oscar Stagnaro, saxophonist Oscar Feldman and Mallet all play with Paquito D'Rivera, and they were a world-class outfit, if a somewhat relaxed one seeming to coast along on their weighty, considerable talent.
The tentative nature of the concert's first half continued when Carbo -- billed by the museum as Gladys Carbo, the name by which this former Berkshirite is most familiar to her former neighbors -- appeared. Seemingly nervous and plagued throughout by a terrible, echoey mix that made her sound like she was singing underwater, Carbo was a halting presence overwhelmed by her band. Where they were rhythmically agile and colorful, she was unsteady and monochromatic.
The complex time shifts of Kurt Weill's "Speak Low," given an upbeat, bebop treatment, stymied Carbo, who couldn't find the right phrasing behind the beat, but either rushed it or landed squarely on top of it. Her band, however, performed the number with nimble athleticism, with Mallet running some jagged, single-note lines in his right and Feldman peeling apart the melody to uncover a ripe, fruity essence composed of blue notes and sharp edges.
It was an uphill battle for Carbo for the rest of the show leading up to intermission, at which point this reviewer took his leave to catch the bands up the street at the Studio. Carbo's chosen material, the Cuban boleros and the deceptively sophisticated bossa novas by Antonio Carlos Jobim, were both melodically and rhythmically challenging, and it didn't help that her band made it all seem so effortless as she struggled to find her way through the pieces. The lousy amplification system, which clipped out whenever she attempted a note of any force, was an invulnerable foe. And while within her range she has a rich, dusky tone, that range is severely limited, and any attempts to go beyond it resulted in problems of pitch control.
Meanwhile, while Carbo was paying tribute to Jobim and other composers from south of the border, over at the Studio, a couple of clone bands were paying tribute to two monsters of '70s rock. The Machine kicked off the evening with its simulacrum of Pink Floyd's hypnotic, "tripadelic," head music. A few hundred fans swayed to the keyboard-generated textures, which were amazingly faithful to the originals as long as the band's vocalist kept his mouth shut. Fortunately, most of Pink Floyd's music consists of interminable instrumental passages, so the illusion wasn't hard to foster.
Physical Graffiti had a harder time convincingly capturing the essence of Led Zeppelin, a losing proposition given the utterly unique qualities that vocalist Robert Plant and drummer John Bonham brought to that landmark group's material. While the copycat group certainly sounded more like Led Zeppelin than, say, your average bar band, it lacked the original's thundering, visceral, sledgehammer impact.
This band, too, had its technical difficulties to manage. Midway through the obligatory, drawn-out version of "Stairway to Heaven," a fire alarm -- triggered by smokin' in the girls room, tut-tut -- went off, shutting off power to the stage and prompting the by-now ritualistic visit to the Studio by the fire department. To the band's credit, a good 20 minutes later -- with power restored to the stage - - the musicians picked up exactly where they left off in "Stairway." THAT'S show business.
[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Jan. 28, 1997. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1997. All rights reserved.]
Seth Rogovoy
rogovoy@berkshire.net
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