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Sat. March 9, 1996
by Seth Rogovoy
The Laszlo Gardony Trio from Boston brought the Berkshire Museum's fall-winter jazz series to a close on Saturday night with a program that ranged from the highly accessible to the very challenging. Sometimes, paradoxically, it was both at the same time. Gardony began his concert with a brief introduction in which he spoke of wanting to tell a story through his songs. While the plot of the story may have been lost on some, the mood, tone, theme and personality were clearly communicated by Gardony and his henchmen, guitarist Mick Goodrick and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi.
Gardony's nine-song set, played straight through without intermission, consisted of seven original compositions and two standards, although a listener could be forgiven for not recognizing the standards, which were rendered through Gardony's highly stylized approach. In any case, they were ``Someday My Prince Will Come'' and ``All the Things You Are.'' Gardony was the star of his own show, and rightly so. If he were paid by the note, he would quickly amass a million bucks, so generous was he with the keyboard. No sooner did a song begin than he was off and running with high-speed phrases and tumbling arpeggios, the engine that drove the trio both rhythmically and melodically.
The first number, ``Continuum,'' was a dreamy, almost new-age-ish type piece, with washes of sound circling around a simply repeated theme stated by Gardony's right hand. It was like an invitation into Gardony's musical world, which was immediately defined on the second number, ``Seven Against Four,'' a polyrhythmic romp which crossed Vince Guaraldi with Dave Brubeck. Goodrick sprinkled counterpoint atop Gardony's percussive playing, a fury of colliding patterns and time signatures in the right and left hands, and Takeishi's taiko drums, cymbals and other percussion instruments provided tones, textures and even melody. The strength and weakness of this piece were representative of the entire performance, the strength being in the personal, emotional impact - Gardony spoke clearly and passionately through his compositions and improvisations - and the rhythmic and textural layering of his trio. The weakness, however, was a void somewhere. It could have been the lack of a bass to support the bottom of the trio, but it was more likely the fault of the museum's infamously unresonant and unforgiving piano. For all Gardony's prodigious effort, it just refused to sing.
Gardony made the best of it, however. His ``Someday My Prince Will Come'' was warped and abstracted, as if being remembered through a filter of gauze. ``Elf Dance'' was a Chick Corea-like, Latinesque dance tune which featured a particularly crowd-pleasing solo by Takeishi. ``Lotus'' was a moody, meditative ballad, and ``Mockingbird'' was a piece of upbeat pop-funk suggestive of Sting or even Stan Getz. Indeed, Goodrick's unique finger-picking style lent great warmth to his tone, more akin to a horn than the typical, sharp sound of the electric guitar.
Dressed in black with a head of curls that made him look like a bohemian Randy Newman, Gardony delivered ``All the Things You Are'' as a bebop romp featuring some suave, broad-shouldered swing by Takeishi on cymbals, egging on Gardony's left hand, which swung equally hard. The highlight of the show came toward the end: ``Breakout,'' the title track to Gardony's most recent CD, was a post-bop experiment that juxtaposed a minimalist, modern-classical piano figure against volatile, aggressive, Coltrane-like modal improvisations.
(This review originally appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on March 12, 1996. Copyright Seth Rogovoy 1996. All rights reserved.)
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