Performance Review

Abate brings out the best in NJO players

By Tom Ineck

Some jazz instrumentalists have a way of eliciting the best from their colleagues, even while showcasing their own virtuosity. Even fewer can work that magic on a one-night stand. Saxophonist Greg Abate proved that ability March 15 at the Embassy Suites, when he put the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra through the paces in a program descriptively entitled “Hard Bop.”

The appearance was sponsored by the Berman Music Foundation. A longtime friend of the BMF, Abate played his first Lincoln engagement in February 1996, supported by trumpeter Claudio Roditi, pianist Phil DeGreg, bassist Bob Bowman and drummer Todd Strait at the now-defunct 7th Street Loft. He returned in April 1997 to play Ebenezer's (another short-lived club) and to conduct a workshop at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Most recently, the Greg Abate Quartet appeared at the outdoor Jazz in June series in 2003. All were sponsored by the BMF.

Given Abate’s hard-edged bop sound on alto sax, the March program was aptly titled. Among other tunes, it featured Abate’s hard-charging compositions “On the Road” and “Bop Lives.” To warm up for Abate’s challenging set, the NJO performed Matt Catingub’s “The Umpire Strikes Back,” a clever take on “Take Me Out to the Ball Game.” Especially impressive was the saxophone section soli with Ed Love on soprano, Rich Burrows and Darren Pettit on tenor saxes, Jim Hartig on alto sax and Scott Vicroy on baritone. It was the musical equivalent of batting practice.

But it was Abate who was swinging for the fences when he leaped into “On the Road” with a swirling, propulsive attack on alto sax, quoting “My Favorite Things” and playing rings around the tune’s melodic variations. Jerome Kern’s classic “Yesterdays,” arranged by Mike Crotty, began as a ballad pitting Abate’s alto with Peter Bouffard’s guitar before moving uptempo to a shuffle beat. Abate turned in an extended solo, building on chorus after chorus, drawing astonished looks from the NJO reed players and finishing with an awe-inspiring cadenza.

Abate playfully counted off Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints” at an outrageously fast tempo before protests from the NJO persuaded him to slow it down a bit. Drummer Greg Ahl got things off on the right foot with a short intro. Abate stated the melody on soprano before turning it over to consecutive solos by Bouffard on guitar, Burrows on tenor, Vicroy on baritone, pianist Tom Harvill and Hartig on alto. All delivered first-rate performances.

Living up to its title, “Bop Lives” was an alto sax tour de force, but in an arrangement by Allen Wittig Abate generously shared the spotlight with Bouffard, who took the first solo and then traded licks with Abate. Completing the concert was Lew Tabackin’s “Let the Tape Roll (Lew’s Theme),” an uptempo blues arranged for big band by Tabackin’s wife, Toshiko Akiyoshi. Bob Krueger soared on trumpet, and the reed section collaborated on another excellent soli with two altos, two tenors and baritone. Abate joined the fray with one final, fiery alto solo that put the cap on a fine evening of big band jazz at its finest.

In a short opening set, Abate also fronted the Lincoln High School Varsity Jazz Band in a new NJO venture called Jazz 101. Led by veteran music director Terry Rush, the band recently took top honors for the second consecutive year at the Bellevue East Jazz Festival in Omaha.

Showing promise as an ensemble and in several solo spots, the Lincoln High band warmed up with “Li’l Liza Jane,” before bringing Abate to the stage for Charles Mingus’ difficult composition “Fables of Faubus.” Bob Mintzer’s modern “Mosaic” contained some lovely voicing in the brass and a typically lyrical and vibrant Abate solo. The percussive nature of Tito Puente’s “Ran Kan Kan” brought out the Latin tinge in Abate’s extended, blazing solo statement.

For Abate fans who want to know more about his recent recordings, his latest release, a tribute to Horace Silver called “Horace Is Here” on Koko Jazz, is reviewed in this issue of Jazz, and his 2002 release called “Evolution” is reviewed here.

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By Tom Ineck

TOPEKA, Kan.—George Cables combines in his pianistic talents the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic roles usually shared among piano, bass and drums in the classic jazz piano trio.

On the afternoon of March 13, in the intimate lower level Hussey Playhouse at the Topeka Performing Arts Center, Cables held spellbound an audience of about 60 lucky patrons. The program, the last in the five-concert Berman Jazz Series,  included a handful of memorable Cables originals, but relied most heavily on some of his favorite standards, exhibiting his considerable skill for creating unique arrangements of familiar tunes.

But even more impressive is Cables' ability to reimagine and reconfigure all the melodic, harmonic and rhythmic possibilities in a given piece of music. Like all jazz masters, he makes every performance unique by stretching the boundaries of convention and remaining open to improvisational whims.

On top of it all, Cables, 60, has a warm, endearing personality. Before playing a note, he invited the audience to imagine itself in his living room, an informal gathering of shared love for the music. By doing so, he established the relaxed tone for the nearly 2½-hour performance.

With his rendition of “My Foolish Heart,” Cables revealed his modus operandi in miniature. Implying a tempo in the bass register, he played against that tempo with incredible right-hand improvisational flourishes. In effect, he erected a formidable chordal framework from which to hang his exquisite sound tapestries.

A short set of Cables originals began with the beautiful title track of his latest release, “Looking for the Light,” which is reviewed here. Returning to a favorite theme of personal sound “portraits,” he segued from “Helen’s Song” to “Helen’s Mother’s Song.” Written for his best friend, the former is probably Cables’ best known composition and remains a tribute to his writing skills. The two tunes had a similar, related motif and featured some dynamic percussive breaks and shimmering block chords.

Cables penned “Spookarella” more recently, this time for Helen’s sister. A loping, left-hand figure set up a “spooky” right-hand exploration. Jobim’s “A Felicidade” revealed Cables’ affinity for Latin rhythms as he turned it into a percussive tour de force. Carole King’s pop love song “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?” received a rare jazz ballad interpretation with gospel undertones. Adhering to Dexter Gordon’s rule that you must know the words in order to give a song a faithful interpretation, Cables voiced the lyrics as he played.

He ended the first half of the program with a Thelonious Monk medley, neatly combining “’Round Midnight,” “I Mean You” and “Blue Monk.”

With its obvious calypso flavor, the second-set opener, “You Stepped Out of A Dream,” metamorphosed into, as Cables himself put it, “You Stepped Out of A Drum.” Turning to his two favorite American composers, Cables first caressed Duke Ellington’s “Prelude to a Kiss” with lush chords and arpeggios, then played some astounding variations on George Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” At times, his hands seemed to operate independently in a brain-splitting display of virtuosity.

Before returning to his own songbook, Cables gave his unique interpretation to two more standards, “You Don’t Know What Love Is” and Benny Golson’s “I Remember Clifford,” which featured a stride piano interlude of amazing dexterity and imagination as he simultaneously explored new harmonies and worked the pedal for percussive effect.

My personal favorite Cables composition is “Lullaby,” a haunting melody I first heard in two brief statements on Frank Morgan’s 1989 release “Mood Indigo.” In live performance, the composer expanded the tune with some dark chords and a brooding funk motif before returning to the gentle theme. His “Senorita de Aranjuez,” from a 2001 release of the same name, offered Cables another opportunity to explore his Latin tendencies.

Returning to Gershwin, he used powerful chord progressions to express the full emotional impact of “My Man’s Gone Now,” from “Porgy and Bess.” “Someday My Prince Will Come” completed the regular concert with style.

But that wasn’t all. Responding with enthusiasm to a conversation after he had already left the stage, Cables returned to the Yamaha grand to demonstrate another calypso favorite, followed by impromptu versions of “Misty,” “Polka Dots and Moonbeams” and “Over the Rainbow.” For the half-dozen or so listeners still in the room, it was a very special bonus.

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By Tom Ineck

Jerry Hahn’s first full-fledged performance in Lincoln was on Feb. 24 at P.O. Pears, just two nights after his revelatory guitar clinic before an awed group of fans and musicians (see story below).

For this Berman Music Foundation concert, Hahn was joined by bassist Gerald Spaits and drummer Tommy Ruskin, who have established their own reputations on the competitive Kansas City jazz scene. Having fronted this trio a couple of times before, Hahn was well aware that he would play on an equal footing with his two colleagues.

The trio burst out of the gate with the Hahn original “12 Bars with Entertainment,” a cleverly titled 12-bar blues that swung to the rafters. Hewing to the blues, they followed with Oliver Nelson’s “Stolen Moments,” reharmonizing and reinventing the standard blues changes.

“Powder Canyon” was inspired by Hahn’s visit to the Poudre River Canyon near Fort Collins, Colo., a favorite camping destination of this writer. The tune’s complex changes and subtle bent-string embellishments reminded the listener of the barely-restrained meanderings of that lively mountain waterway.

Leonard Bernstein’s beautiful “Somewhere,” from “West Side Story,” bore a light Latin tinge. Spaits responded to Hahn’s creativity with a stunning bass solo. Ruskin, on brushes, deftly ratcheted up the brisk tempo of “All the Things You Are.” A true improviser, Hahn worked his guitar magic on the tune, showed he’s not afraid to stick his neck out musically, and recovered just before the “axe” fell.

From the world of contemporary pop music, Hahn chose Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why.” In their solo spots, both Hahn and Spaits brought new perspective to the familiar tune and its lovely changes. Returning to the standard repertoire, Hahn launched into “My Romance,” varying his attack and phrasing and revealing what a huge musical vocabulary he draws from. The trio ended the set with Hahn’s “The Method,” a full-bore break song from his 1995 CD “Time Changes.”

Hahn strapped on his solid-body D’Angelico guitar to open the second half of the show, utilizing the more cutting tone to create a virtuosic rendition of “Polka Dots and Moonbeams.” A breezy take on Dave Brubeck’s standard “Your Own Sweet Way” was followed by Hahn’s sensitive ballad “Each and Every Day.”

Two spirituals followed, but the way in which Hahn and the others reharmonized them left some doubt as to the titles. As the guitarist later told us, they were “In the Garden” and “The Old Rugged Cross.” Hahn switched back to the Gibson L-7 for the latter of these two pieces, and he waxed eloquent in a series of chord substitutions.

Another Hahn original from the CD “Time Changes,” a tune simply called “Oregon,” finished the second set with a mind-boggling guitar solo that seemed to build mathematically in its complexity.

Hahn’s return to Lincoln can’t be too soon. And, now that he once again resides (and regularly plays) in Wichita, Kan., a road trip from here is increasingly enticing.

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By Tom Ineck

TOPEKA, Kan.—When Luqman Hamza and Lucky Wesley met on stage Feb. 13 for the fourth in the Berman Jazz Series of concerts at the Topeka Performing Arts Center, it was more than a meeting of like musical minds. It was two boyhood friends in playful musical repartee.

“We’ve known each other since we were kids on 16^th Street,” Hamza informed the audience at the beginning of the show. “I’m proud to be a friend of his.”

Throughout their two-hour performance, pianist Hamza and bassist Wesley exuded that warmth of friendship and a mutual love of jazz evergreens. Most of the vocal chores were handled with sophisticated aplomb by Hamza, with Wesley occasionally chiming in with his charming vocal wit.

Hamza seems to channel Nat “King” Cole in his sure sense of time and phrasing and a soothing croon that is perfect for the standard repertoire. His respect for Cole was evident from the first tune, the Cole classic “Sweet Lorraine,” which he delivered with suitable elegance. He applied his honey-toned voice to “My First and Last Love Is You,” based on Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Scheherazade.”

Wesley and Hamza joined their voices for the old Inkspots favorite “Java Jive,” a clever novelty tune that has never lost its hip status in over 60 years. Another Inkspots tune, the dramatic romantic ballad of the 1940s, “If I Didn’t Care,” got a comic treatment with a Wesley rap. Up next was Bobby Troup’s “Route 66,” another tune closely associated with Cole and equally impressive when rendered by Hamza on piano and vocal.

The “hits” just kept coming, from “Blues in the Night” to “Frim-Fram Sauce” to “As Time Goes By” to “Just for a Thrill,” with vocal by Wesley, to finish the first set.

Launching the second half of the show, Hamza exhibited his exquisite piano style on the standard “Poinciana,” usually associated with pianist Ahmad Jamal. He embellished the exotic piece with lovely arpeggios and baroque flourishes.

Special guest vocalist Arrika Brazil, with raspy tone and eccentric phrasing uncannily like those of Billie Holiday, sat in on “Moonlight in Vermont” and “Crazy He Calls Me,” two tunes inextricably linked with Lady Day. Brazil shows great promise and has already been tapped to perform at Holiday tributes in Kansas City, although she just moved back to the city quite recently. Her name will likely appear again here in the near future.

Hamza and Wesley continued with “Money’s Gettin’ Cheaper,” also recorded by Jimmy Witherspoon and Charles Brown, with whom Hamza shares a classy, sophisticated approach to the blues. They returned to the Inkspots songbook for “This Is Worth Fighting For,” a 1940s tune included in a recent anthology called “Till Then: Music That Helped the Allies Win the War.”

After Rodgers and Hart’s “Blue Moon” and Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “Younger Than Spring,” from the musical “South Pacific,” the duo performed an instrumental rendition of Ella Fitzgerald’s “Rough Ridin’,” with Wesley employing an infectious walking bass line and Hamza adding some imaginative piano passages.

Hamza delivered a wonderful rendition of Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father” before the dynamic duo closed the show with two more classics, “I’m Getting’ Sentimental Over You” and “I’ve Never Been in Love Before.”

There’s no denying that Hamza and Wesley played to the audience, a group of 60 or so people largely made up of senior citizens with fond memories of the standards. As a result, the musicians created an intimacy and warmth that is seldom achieved.

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By Tom Ineck

Composer, arranger and versatile reedman Roger Neumann was this year’s jazz master, performing as guest soloist Jan. 21 with the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra at the Embassy Suites and working with the 2005 Young Lions All-Star Band in the NJO’s annual program “Learning from the Master.”

Neumann has proven himself worthy of the title in the fields of big band swing, popular tunes, movie soundtracks and television theme music. Most notable on his resume is a stint with soul legend Ray Charles.

This year’s pride of Young Lions, an auditioned honor ensemble,  hailed from schools in the Lincoln, Omaha and Kearney areas. They were immediately put to the test with Bob Mintzer’s “Art of the Big Band” and Juan Tizol’s “Perdido,” exhibiting polished section work in a series of difficult passages.

Neumann took the stage to lead them through his bossa nova arrangement of “Body and Soul,” also featuring Joey Gulizia on percussion. “A Quick One” allowed nearly everyone to solo in a swinging blues finale. As with most Young Lions aggregations, this year’s group was strongest in its ensemble passages.

Mark Benson’s swinging “Space Czar,” written for his father and featuring the composer on alto sax, opened the second half and set the stage for Neumann.

Neumann’s brawny tenor sax playing was expressive and romantic on his arrangement of “I Thought About You,” with excellent contributions by the NJO rhythm section. He switched to soprano sax for “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” which also featured a spirited exchange between percussionists Greg Ahl and Gulizia.

Pianist Tom Harvill gently established the chord changes to “You Stepped Out of a Dream,” contrasting nicely with the brass section, before Neumann took off on a beautiful flute flight.

Switching back to tenor and inviting trumpeter Bob Krueger to the front of the stage, Neumann introduced his instrumental version of “Then I’ll Be Home,” a happy, lilting shuffle that he first arranged as a vocal for Charles.

Irving Berlin’s “How Deep is the Ocean” got the royal ballad treatment, placing Neumann’s tenor sax squarely in the spotlight, with subtle, tasteful accompaniment from the brass and reeds. Finally, Neumann turned the NJO loose on his carefree arrangement of the Charlie Shavers tune “Undecided,” with Ed Love and Rich Burrows joining Neumann in a boisterous three-way tenor sax battle before trumpeter Krueger, trombonist Todd Thatcher, alto saxophonist Dave Sharp, guitarist Peter Bouffard, bassist Andy Hall, pianist Harvill and the rest of the rhythm section took brief turns in the solo spotlight.

For the second concert in its first season at the Embassy Suites, the Nebraska Jazz Orchestra drew an impressive audience of nearly 400.

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