Tanglewood Jazz Festival 2000: Gillespie Allstars, Brubeck, Bennett, Krall
By Seth Rogovoy

(LENOX, Mass., Sept. 3, 2000) – If one of jazz’s key characteristics is being “in the moment,” then the moment as reflected in this past weekend’s jazz festival at Tanglewood happened about a half-century ago. Perhaps the moment was 1957, when Dave Brubeck’s then-revolutionary “Take Five” actually became a pop hit.

Or maybe it was 1962, when Tony Bennett left his heart in San Francisco. Or maybe the moment was 20 years before that, the year that Peggy Lee – the idol of the festival’s token youth, Diana Krall – recorded “I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good” with Benny Goodman, the same year that Nat “King” Cole, Krall’s other great stylistic influence, clinched his place in jazz-pop history with “Straighten Up and Fly Right.”

If Tanglewood is going to continue to treat jazz as “America’s classical music,” the least it could do is program the jazz equivalent of the classical season’s Festival of Contemporary Music.

Be that as it may, and in spite of Tanglewood’s perennial reliance on crowd-pleasing, box-office-busters like the much-beloved Tony Bennett and Dave Brubeck, the festival opened and closed with masterful performances by the Dizzy Gillespie Alumni Allstars and Brubeck, respectively. And if the festival presented a snapshot of jazz and jazz-influenced popular music that did not recognize any forward motion in jazz in nearly half a century, it certainly celebrated some of the music’s greatest heroes and innovations. The weekend kicked off with a bang on Friday night when the Gillespie troupe performed a program of music associated with and in the style of the bebop innovator in Ozawa Hall. You could not have asked for a better ensemble of players to take on the challenge of reconstructing the style, wit and excitement of a Gillespie performance. All the musicians had experience of one kind or another with Gillespie, all were profoundly influenced by him, and all were up to the task of making Gillespie’s 50-year-old innovations seem as fresh, contemporary and relevant as this morning’s newspaper. They also exhibited the good-natured bonhomie, esprit de corps and sense of humor all too often lacking in modern jazz ensembles. Trumpeter and bandleader Jon Faddis had the unenviable task of most directly filling Gillespie’s shoes. But from the moment he introduced the members of the band – to each other, Gillespie-style – Faddis proved he was more than capable. And whether he was consciously mimicking Gillespie, or whether his mentor’s humor, personality and playing style just pervades his very essence, he made it all seem utterly natural.

Faddis’s trumpet playing was simply astonishing. In the style of Gillespie, Faddis favored stratospheric blasts and squeals of sound at his instrument’s upper range – and beyond. On that most difficult of instruments -- particularly for the challenge it presents to bebop players, with their flurries of notes, as many as 10 per second -- Faddis was an eloquent painter, blowing strong blasts of color and tone.

Faddis was surrounded by a band brimming with ideas, experience and talent. To his right was saxophonist/clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, and to his left trombonist Slide Hampton. On piano was the legendary Kenny Barron. John Lee kept the beat on the bass, and Cecil Brooks III danced around it on trap drums. The one-named Duke colored the arrangements on percussion. Truly an all-star team.

The team demonstrated its abilities as a fine-tuned unit on “Vote Dizzy,” a version of the Gillespie favorite “Salt Peanuts” with lyrics by Jon Hendricks. The number featured stop-on-a-dime, all-band rests, as well as an impossible-but-true solo by Faddis built of high-pitched squeals, half-tones and blazing bebop runs. Brooks took a great solo, too, which practically sung the melody, and Faddis handled the vocals. While endorsing Gillespie, who actually ran for the White House in 1964, Faddis took the opportunity to slip in a plug for Al Gore. He also told a mischievous story about George Bush’s utter lack of rhythm. “If you’re gonna lead the country, you gotta have good time,” he said.

Judging by those qualifications, any of the members of the Gillespie Allstars are qualified for the Oval Office. Their version of Thelonious Monk ’s “’Round Midnight” was smoky, with Slide Hampton contributing beautifully curved, sustained notes and Kenny Barron adorning the song in a flurry of tones that always pointed to the melody note.

A version of “Con Alma,” originally inspired by the harmonic changes of Jerome Kern’s “All the Things You Are,” was all about rhythmic pulse, making clear the the origins of today’s so-called groove music. The septet closed the first half of the program with the seminal bop tune “Groovin’ High,” the first of several tunes on which Hampton quoted Prokofiev’s “Peter and the Wolf.”

The group came out swinging the second half with a funked-up version of “Manteca,” before settling into a softened version of the typically feverish “Hot House.” “Fiesta Mojo” showcased Gillespie’s Latin-fusion tendencies. Respecting his stature as one of the surviving legends of the hard-bop era, the band turned the stage over to Barron who proffered a lush, orchestral, solo rendition of “Body and Soul.”

Saturday night’s concert was almost a washout, with thunder, lightning and a torrential downpour timed just perfectly for the arrival of thousands of concertgoers who occupied the shed. Management took pity on those who came planning to camp out on the lawn, and opened the shelter of the shed to all. Tony Bennett and Diana Krall, who preceded the former, delivered precisely what the audience came to hear: renditions of tunes from “the Great American Songbook” (an annoying term, as it implies that those songs outside the classic-pop canon are not “great” or not “great American” songs). Both were accompanied by quartets of piano, guitar, standup bass and drums; in Krall’s case, the vocalist doubled as piano player.

Once one makes the considerable effort it takes to get past Krall’s blonde bombshell image, one that she is seemingly happy to flaunt (and more power to her), one can appreciate her dusky, trombone-like vocal instrument. In combination with that image, it’s almost distractingly sultry, but her whispery version of Cole Porter’s “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” was utterly captivating, with its slight hint of steamy bossa nova bubbling underneath. Otherwise, her versions of “I Don’t Know Enough About You,” “Devil May Care,” “East of the Sun (and West of the Moon),” “Frim Fram Sauce” and the overplayed “As Time Goes By,” given a very lounge-y, icy, George Shearing-like arrangement, were stylish rehashes of a bygone era. Tony Bennett, of course, is a survivor from that bygone era. And if it took him a while to warm up, and if he was somewhat beset by a cold that apparently made him easily winded and had him favoring short, clipped notes, he served up plenty of his trademark big crescendoes and dramatic endings. Bennett’s program was patterned after his recent albums, each a tribute to a particular singer, songwriter or group of singers. Thus, he performed a Duke Ellington set, a Frank Sinatra set, and a catch-all “Here’s to the Ladies” tribute to female vocalists including Judy Garland and Ethel Merman. His Fred Astaire set was the jazziest of all, and included an uncharacteristically snappish response by Bennett when a boisterous heckler shouted “Go Tony!” in the middle of “Steppin’ Out with My Baby.” “What the hell do you think I’m doing?” replied Bennett.

While it was a nice touch when Krall came out during Bennett’s set to duet on a couple of Sinatra numbers, including “I Fall in Love Too Easily” and “I ’ve Got the World on a String,” there was little chemistry between the two singers, their voices failed to blend, and lightning, so common earlier in the evening, failed to strike.

The Brubeck quartet closed the weekend’s festivities, following vocalist Rebecca Parris’s concert on Sunday afternoon, with an eclectic set of new and favorite tunes. More dynamic than in past years, Brubeck’s group was lively, with drummer Randy Jones practically untamed and new bassist Alec Dankworth an imaginative soloist and steady timekeeper.

But the evening in large part belonged to saxophonist Bobby Militello, who performed the lion’s share of the melodic and improvisational duties. A few numbers, including a new calypso-style composition called “Why Not,” suggested Militello’s been listening to Sonny Rollins; at the end of the evening, on the classic “Take Five,” he went deep into the low range of his instrument for some very Rollins-like honks. He also took an extended solo on “Koto Song,” in which Brubeck combined a Japanese mode with the blues form, and Militello ran with it into the ether and beyond.

Several other tunes were based on explicit ideas or problem-solving, such as “Chasing Yourself,” a canon in which Dankworth had to repeat each phrase played by Militello while overlapping the next. The opening number, “St. Louis Blues,” was played as originally intended, as a tango, and another new tune borrowed its rhythm from a New Orleans second-line parade beat. The quartet also played some straight-ahead bebop, including a fast and furious “I Got Rhythm,” which featured some of Brubeck’s strongest playing, beginning with his trademark block chord approach, which made its way into a stride pattern. The audience, which greeted Brubeck at the outset with a standing ovation, brought the group back for an encore of “Take the ‘A’ Train,” and so ended the summer music season at Tanglewood.

[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Sept. 5, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]

Seth Rogovoy author of "The Essential Klezmer: A Music Lover's Guide to Jewish Roots and Soul" newly arrived from Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill www.algonquin.com/catalog/pagemaker.cgi?1-56512-244-5
"invaluable" -- New York Times, 8/28/00

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