John Medeski flies solo (Sept. 15, 2000)
By Seth Rogovoy

(GREAT BARRINGTON, Mass., Sept. 17, 2000) – Pianist/composer John Medeski offered listeners a glimpse into his private, creative process on Friday night at the Kellogg Art Center on the campus of Simon’s Rock College. In two, hour-long improvisations, Medeski explored the wide range of his instrument and his musical intelligence, alternating what appeared to be in-the-moment improvisations with snatches of riffs and melodies, both original and borrowed.

His aggressive, freewheeling approach to the solo piano format, with its forearm and flat-handed smashes and hyperspeed blasts of chords, had its vague antecedents in similar efforts by piano legends Thelonious Monk and Cecil Taylor. There couldn’t be two better role models for a young, pop-jazz pianist like Medeski – who is best known for his work with the groove-jazz trio, Medeski, Martin and Wood – and if that’s the direction he wants to head in, more power to him.

For his first number, Medeski took the stage and grabbed the audience’s attention with the smash of his forearm against the keys. He answered an explosive, violent bass figure with a delicate high-end melody, thus establishing a basic unit of the improviser’s grammar that he would repeatedly return to throughout the evening.

He then found a single bass note which particularly pleased him, and he turned the single note into a kind of ostinato atop which he sprinkled linear melody and blurry blasts of block chords.

Over the course of his improvisation, Medeski varied all the musical elements, including rhythm, dynamics, mood and tone, but he occasionally returned to the original bass figure and the soprano response.

His improvisation was also a stylistic journey, which visited the roadhouse with a bluesy bit of Gershwin’s “Summertime,” went to Chicago for some boogie-woogie, traveled to New York for some jazzy Broadway music, and back to Chicago for some Ramsey Lewis-like, ‘60s soul-jazz, the precursor to his trio’s music.

Sometimes he would make these stylistic leaps from bar to bar, in the prevailing fashion of the contemporary avant-garde, where such frenzied genre-hopping and –blending is as much the point as anything. But all the music was also slightly off, filtered through a scrim of atonality or decay, lending it a personal stamp of authenticity.

In an earlier interview, Medeski told the Eagle that he views the piano as an orchestra, and he highlighted the instrument’s versatile qualities with a passage in which he established waves of sound from the high keys. He stood up and played fast, repetitive passages, milking their resonant, painterly quality to create a wash of circular, chime-like sounds. A few blue notes and a quick passage in an Asian mode and he brought the piece to a close. Not more than half a minute later he broke into a quick, furious boogie-woogie tune in which his right and left hand did battle with each other, fighting over the rights to claim the song’s key. His feet got into the act, too, and his bandmate Billy Martin might want to have a talk with his piano-playing partner, who evidently aspires to the drum seat, too. After a brief intermission, Medeski – who said hardly a word during the two-hour recital – came back out, this time playing a sirenlike tune on the melodica or similar breath-powered, hand-held keyboard. He put the instrument inside the piano to take advantage of the grand piano’s resonant qualities, and then duetted with himself on the two separate instruments simultaneously.

He then established the mode of his second extended improvisation, which like much of his work with his trio was based to large extent on a simple gospel figure, which he would take apart, explore and recombine in various ways over the next hour.

Splashes of chords punctuated blurry runs of melody that were as much about physics as about music. Then he got rid of the melody and just played the block chords, punctuating the silence which contained the suggestion of his melody.

Bits of Monk and standards like “That Ol’ Devil Moon,” an interlude of tango, and a bluesy figure that sounded like Chopin by way of Ray Charles, found their way into his second improvisation, which wasn’t as evocative as the first one.

Maybe it was that his first piece by definition came across as a fresh surprise, and after an hour of viewing the composer/improviser at work, the charm or novelty had already worn off. In any case, by the end of his second piece, the recital hall was noticeably emptier than it was at the evening’s outset, and the energy level had flagged.

[This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on Sept. 18, 2000. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 2000. All rights reserved.]

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