Pat Metheny - Unity Band

[charles t]

As in...this great clip with Pat & The Metropole Orch, playing - U gUESsEd IT -


Are You Going With Me?

[grippie]

Travels is one piece of vinyl that stays out by my turntable,marvelous.

[charles t]

grippie - your commentary fits right in with similar impassioned outpourings re: Travels, via Amazon feedbacks:

http://www.amazon.com/Travels-Pat-Me...#RJ1SOJYPM3U9S

[Serial_Apologist]

Travels is one piece of vinyl that stays out by my turntable,marvelous.

I always think the long Wichita Falls track sounds like more upmarket Pink Floyd.

[grippie]

grippie - your commentary fits right in with similar impassioned outpourings re: Travels, via Amazon feedbacks:

UK as well: http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...pf_rd_i=468294

[grippie]

I always think the long Wichita Falls track sounds like more upmarket Pink Floyd.

Yes, in the 80's the JRR favorite was the mesmeric Are You Going With Me?

[Ian Thumwood]

I caught Pat Metheny's Unity group in concert last week and they were pretty much excellent although not the stand-out concert of an exceptional jazz festival at Vienne. Chris Potter was as good as expected and the band were well worth the couple of encores including the aforementioned "Are you goiung with me." Metheny is pretty much a touchstone of where jazz is these days although some younger acquaintances were enthralled by Robert Glasper's "Black Radio" which I missed. Esperanza Spalding , backed by a big banc, was also enjoyable in her approach to pop-savvy jazz.The festival has been radically changed this year with double the number of gigs open free to the public and a far less commercial policy with engaging artists. The whole of Metheny's band was brilliant and easily eclipsed the other band on the double bill. Tellingly, the festival organisers are know concentrating on more contemporary names with a view to maintaining a market in the future. Accordingly, some of the "bigger" names from the past seemed less present - a very fail McCoy Tyner (albeit with the vastly underrated Ravi Coltrane) seemed to mirror last year's experience with Sonny Rollins although not quite as disappointing. As much as I love McCoy, he was outshone by the excellent 4-piano session of the lengendary Kenny Barron, Mulgrew Miller, the sparky Eric Reed and Benny Green - as good an example as any of a younger generation of player who can still work wonders within the Be-bop idiom although this year's showing seemed to demonstrate that Be-bop is now considered a relic from the past as the development of the music marches on. Curious to listen to just how many players were not playing bebop.

Interestingly, whilst there were a few trends that suggested a poorer alternative to where jazz could be headed (stand up the rather useless and under-whelming Melody Gardot who was humiliated by some of the talent in the free gigs such as Gaby Moreno) , there were plenty of reasons to be cheerful. Gregory Porter packed the crowds in and appears to have emerged on the scene fully formed as an artists within a matter of a few years. A fantastic new talent. Some of the older generation of players were terrific - none more so than Aldo Romano's quartet that featured trumpeter Enrico Rava and the exceptional Baptiste Trotignon on piano. This was an fabulous band and much sparkier than the kind of music Rava puts in for ECM. By anyone's reckoning, Rava is amongst the greatest trumpeters Europe has produced. Lionel Belmondo's identical line up with the fabulous Kirk Lightsey and brilliant Billy Hart was almost as good. Trotignon is proof that some of today's talent is as good as any that arrived on the scene in the 50's and 60's whereas the Bad Plus / Joshua Redman grouping saw the tenor man at last produce the kind of exciting , outside playing his father was associated with. I've been critical of the Bad Plus in the past but they were terrific with Iverson stirring the music into some heady, 60's inspired free music. This was an exceptional set and better than Terri Lynne Carrington's group with the all-girl sax front line which was still pretty polished.

Other acts included Brielli Lagrene's organ / sax quintet which harked back to the kind of Blue Note sound and saw off competition from Al Di Meola's fancy, Spanish inspired music and Larry Carlton's FM - friendly Jazz-lite. Why does no one rave about Lagrene in this country ? His band wasted the other two groups of the evening and I loved the why his band felt the music. The funk night including Fred Wesley and EWF was enjoyable until George Clinton's one chord vamp throughout the final set spoiled an enjoyable evening. I also dug the African night, especially the set with the banjo-player Bela Fleck - a musician of towering ability. Richard Galliano's accordeon couple with Eddie Louiss' organ and a string section was bizarre but extremely musical. Curious to hear the banjo and the accordeon produce great jazz. The israeli trio led by bassist Avishai Cohen was the big hit of the festival and the trio was brough back to play about 4 encores. Don't recall anyone ever praising his work before but he is an outstanging bassist and employed an excpetional pianist who merited the leader's praise. It was difficult to get in to to begin with as it felt like a typical piano trio yet the music mutated to include Latin and Jewish folk music in an boisterous and rousing style. Cohen's name should be up there when the greats of the double bass are discussed.

PRobably the most impressive band was Ambrose Akinmusire which bristled with talent including the brilliant Walter Smith III and a superb young pianist. A large proportion of the material played in front of a packed and attentive crowd seemed new. For my money Akinmusire is re-inventing jazz trumpet and producing something entirely new on his horn. There seems to be nothing he can't to and whilst his approach was gone well beyond bebop, the music is entirely in keeping with the traditions. It is always tempting to resort to hyperbole but I think he is probably going to be the next big step on trumpet and is already amongst the 10-15 innovators in this instrument. I believe he will be more musically important than players like Marsalis , Shaw, Hubbard, Morgan and Brown. He certainly has the potential and the will be create and innovate that mark him apart from many other players of the last 40-odd years.

All in all, much to enjoy and plenty for some of the more conservative voices on this board like Bluesnik to restore confidence in the belief that the 21st Century is producing talent of all ages that can more than hold it's own against the greats of the past and, in the case of Akinmesure, a musician likely to have a bearing on the music in the next 20 or so years. The likes of Rava, Trotignon, Metheny, Potter, Redman, Fleck, Barron, Miller, Reed, Green, Walter Smith, etc can all easily hold a candle to anything originated from 45-70.

[charles t]

Thank you for that multi-comprehensive review of your festival experiences, Ian.

I would like to be Brit-For-A-Week for the relative accessibility to the Continent. Compared to the vastness of the United States wherein you can place entire Euro countries within most of our (lower 48) States (excluding Delaware, of course, that gave us our lame-duck VP).

Also your fair write-up of the contributions made by Chris Potter to The Unity Band.

When a soloist is as melodic, stylistically, as this performer, the ease exhibited when improvising, can make it appear to be too easy, perceptibly.

Also your write-up for a really fine jazz pianist - Benny Green - whom, it seems, flies under the radar these days. (He was 30 yrs old back in 1993 according to the liner notes of this CD I recently purchased in an Alaskan store that still had long-box CD's!)

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