Mr. McBride Again

I had the joy of hearing Christian McBride and Inside Straight, his quintet with whom he recorded, "Kind of Brown." Since that 2009 recording, there have been several personel changes. This evening, he had Warrent Wolf on vibes, Ulysses Owens on drums, Jaleel Shaw on sax, and Christian Sands on piano. Quite simply, the group was crisp, bright, and hip.

Having vibes in a modern jazz group is rather rare, I don't personally listen to many other groups with vibes. In this group, they are simply wonderful, adding a new tone to their essentially post bop sound. Warren wolf's dexterity and speed on the instrument is truly amazing. His ability to zip up and down the instrument and roll around chromatic figures is unique. I'm really glad that he has found a group that can really showcase his talents.

Indeed, in contrast to the last time I heard Mr. McBride, the performance was all around energetic, tasteful, and inspiring. The entire group was solid. It is somewhat disheartening to hear that his talented pianist is only 21. He can do way more with two fingers than I Used'ta Could with both hands; their rendition of the original tune, "Used'ta Could" was exceptional.

I also though that Mr. Mcbride's prelude on "Theme for Kareem" was rich enough in harmony and textures to stand my hair on end. Simply awesome. "Theme for Kareem," is, however, one of my favorite tunes from the album, as it has such a distinct and lively character, which is very much appreciated when I listen to it while I work.

Overall, it was a pleasure to hear these guys back at Stanford.

Some More Jazz

Three performances: Dave Douglas "Quintet +", but there were 6 people (I guess someone forgot to count?). This group, really a sextet not a quintet was really an amalgamation of musicians who were around for the jazz camp. All of them well known in their own right including Josh Redman (saxophone) and Larry Grenadier (bass). So while they had never performed together before, they still put on one of the best jazz performances I've heard in quite some time. (I wish that were more of an accolade than it actually is.)

One of the amazing parts of listening to this group of musicians was to hear how each of these players could bring something new to the composition. While each of the compositions - all originals of Dave Douglas - were interesting in their own right, the solos that each musician took were quite incredible. Dave Douglas has a way of placing trumpet lines above the rest of the band that sing through with amazing clarity and focus. Every note carefully chosen and played as such. Josh Redman brought a fury of energy with several of his solos. Starting off slow, calm, and clearly stated, he often was able to weave a complex set of lines whipping the rest of the group into quite a boil by the end. Skillfully and well done, he told his stories well.


Nicholas Payton and the Taylor Eigsti Trio: To be honest, I had never heard of these folks before, but I was quite impressed. Taylor Eigsti, the pianist can lay down some pretty hip solos. I certainly enjoyed their rendition of "Things Ain't what they used to be," demonstrating a certain New Orleans flair and vibe that made the piece glow.

Joshua Redman Trio: These three guys really lit it up. I was impressed by the way that the three musicians seemed to genuinely care about what the other musicians are playing during their solos. In other performances this week, one of the lead horn players would help get a song started, play a solo, then walk off the stage. While it might work for them and give the rest of the band some space so to speak, it seems to say something about how they value the work of their fellow musicians. Josh Redman, seems to be way into it. While he steps out of the way when the bass or drums are taking a solo, he just stands off to the side and is clearly into the music. It makes it more of a group performance and production, three musicians up on the stage having a good time, and it shows.

Their playing was lively and energetic no doubt. His solo lines have a wild and almost dizzying aspect to them. At times, he can cram in more notes that they aren't all distinguishable, alternating to different modes and keys to keep things harmonically lively. Its quite impressive.

One last comment about the three performances: I have to say that I was much more aware of the clarity of the bass playing both during solos and the rest of the tunes. Maybe its just that I never truly paid attention, but I though that all of the bassists this week truly had a great voice during their solos. They were able to make their ideas clear and heard, while all too often a bass solo gets too muddy and confused. Well done.

A Pair of Performances

It seems like Wednesday night performances are the new thing to do. Maybe I'll find another one next week.

In any case, last evening I attended a concert in Stanford's Memorial Church. The head organist, if you will, at Stanford has undertaken a project to perform all of the organ works of Bach on the Fisk organ in the church in commemoration of the completion of this organ. For reference, Charles Fisk also built the organ in the Meyerson Symphony Hall.

I'll be honest, I've never been to an organ concert before, and never really gave it much thought. But sitting in the ornate Memorial Church and listening to the rolling counterpoint of Fugues was simply delightful. If ever you see a program of someone performing Bach organworks, go. Likely you won't regret it. The organ in a church like that has a way of completely enveloping you, a sound that has almost visceral qualities. And if it is the 4 (or more) intertwined voices of a fugue, all the better.

Robert Huw Morgan performed both the Prelude and Fugue BWV 550 and BWV 541, both in G minor, the Trio Sonata No. V in C major, and a host of apparently Easter-related settings of hymns. While I don't recognize the melodies, they certainly were a joy to hear.

In contrast, the performance I heard a week before was not as wonderful. Christian McBride set out to do a tribute concert to Herbie Hancock, a concert that has the potential to be quite exciting. Herbie has been through many phases in his career, and I was glad to hear that Mr. McBride wanted to focus on the 1970's era jazz/funk part of his career, because honestly, I find that period much more exciting and hip than some of his later work. I just wish that Mr. McBride hadn't told the audience that 45 minutes after the show was supposed to start.

That's right, all of the musicians arrived at the venue more than 45 minutes after the scheduled start of the performance. If I had not been able to get a student discount ticket, I would have been much more upset. Even after the hokey student-led introduction to the performance, the music itself wasn't all that hip. One of the features of Herbie Hancock's music of that era, like Chameleon, is that it is driving funk, pushing forward with incisive percussion and precision. There was none of that in the performance. I felt as though the tempo always was dragging, the bass should have been a little more ahead of the beat, and the percussion funkier. Sure, the musicians admitted to having not played together before, but the sound they achieved reminded me of some of the "jam" sessions I used to have with my old bands in some poorly lit garage or the back room of the music department. They had trouble reaching new ground in some of the pieces as demonstrated by the fact that they also had trouble ending many of the pieces. That's never a good sign.

All and all, I did not find the concert to be a great tribute to Herbie. Their performance showed a lack of rehearsal, time, and care for the project they were undertaking.

Pen of Iron

I had a chance to read Robert Alter's new book, Pen of Iron: American Prose and the King James Bible. In terms of bookshelf organization, I might place this book at the end of my collection of Alter books on biblical style (yes, this book also includes a chapter titled 'The World Through Parataxis') and right before David Gelernter's Americanism. The review of it in the Wall Street Journal was a good one - http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703862704575100020148950134.html

and my own thoughts and a general sum-up are as follows:

In the first section of the book, Alter mentions that the earliest settlers in America usually had a King James Bible with them and knew it intimately. Alter argues that since style encompasses a worldview, and that the influence probably runs in both directions at times – ““…one must remember that style is not merely a constellation of aesthetic properties but is the vehicle of a particular vision of reality” – then the rhythms and the vocabulary of the King James version went hand in hand with the American colonists’ Protestant dedication to Bible-reading. The colonists relied on the King James in their commitment to biblical literacy and their commitment to religious ideals in building their new nation. The effects of those commitments are obvious in American literature, and that it is something that makes American literature particularly American.

Alter notes the problem of the decline of reading today – that “Americans read less, and read with less comprehension…they[ committed readers ] are an embattled minority in a society where tone-deafness to style is increasingly prevalent.” Perhaps this is why his discussion about the King James style may seem initially startling to contemporary readers who associate it with convoluted stuffiness (I have the feeling that most just can’t get past the thee’s/thou’s). In fact, Alter reminds us, the King James Version has a very studied simplicity of diction, relying mainly on active verbs. The King James style should also be seen in contrast to “a trend in English prose from the Renaissance onward that cultivated lexical profusion, figurative ornamentation, and syntactic complication.” Rather, “the King James Version offered a model of spare diction and of a syntactic simplicity that amounted to a kind of studied reticence which generated its own distinctive eloquence.”

Alter looks at several quintessentially American novelists – Melville, Faulkner, and Bellow – as well as some of the speeches of Lincoln, to demonstrate his points. In each author’s work he points out a different facet of the King James style. With Melville, it is the King James’ revolutionary juxtaposition of two different traditions – that of Latin and of the Anglo-Saxon. If Latin is ostensibly “higher” and more melodious than the “lower” and more blunt-sounding Anglo Saxon, then Alter sees the same sort of mixing in Melville’s juxtapositions of American street witticisms with more eloquent homilies. In Faulkner, Alter does not show an overt stylistic similarity but instead Faulkner’s assumption that all his readers would readily see the thematic connections in Faulkner’s novels and biblical narratives. Alter uses both Faulkner and Lincoln to show that even the use of one particular word or phrase can be enough to show the influence. “The borrowing of the biblical phrase is not really an allusion to a particular scriptural intertext,” he writes, “but rather the use, in the perorational final gesture of the [Gettysburg] Address, of a familiar biblical idiom that gives the speaker’s own language the breadth and moral gravity of the Bible.” Lincoln’s original audience would not have had to research the amount of “a score.” The King James Version uses the phrase “three score and ten” 111 times. Bellow himself wrote an essay about how certain words and phrases from the Bible touch something profound within us:

“A small clue will suffice to remind us that when we hear certain words – ‘all is but toys,’ ‘absent thee from felicity,’ a wilderness of monkeys,’ ‘green pastures,’ ‘still waters,’ or even the single word ‘relume’ – they revive for us moments of emotional completeness and overflowing comprehension, they unearth buried essences.”

Bellow’s simple, declarative, descriptive sentences evoke the simple declaratives of the Bible (and as they are reproduced, Alter argues, in the KJV). Bellow’s style is similar to the Bible is that he presents “the narrative data in ways that allow them to speak for themselves, without a sense of elaborate literary mediation, without an obtrusive feeling of language calling attention to itself. I do not mean to claim that he was consciously imitating the Bible in this project but simply that he had internalized something of its dignified, even stark, simplicity of diction.”

Alter’s book does a double service by inspiring readers not only to start using the KJV but also to read at least some Melville and Bellow. Alter acknowledges that the same stylistic “peculiarities” which draw some people to Faulkner also chase them away. I am chased away, not only by his ridiculously long, convoluted sentences but also by his ridiculously pessimistic storylines. I was also strangely gratified to see that Alter is not a big fan of Hemingway, because I’ve never been able to get into him, either. “After the passage of eight decades, much of the novel [The Sun Also Rises] looks rather flat – its characters sketchy, lacking psychological or moral complexity, and its plot a slender vehicle for development or discovery” – well, no worries, I’ve got plenty to read otherwise in the meantime!

I'm hoping to have some conversations with profs about the KJV and biblical literacy, and how Alter's points (or his book - it's very short) could be used or encouraged in HUC and the rabbinic world at large.