|
DIRECTIONS
IN MUSIC WITH HANCOCK, BRECKER & HARGROVE
One of the most anticipated events of Italy’s entire summer jazz
concert season this year was the only presentation in this country of
Directions in Music, the tribute to Miles Davis and John Coltrane
created by pianist Herbie Hancock, saxophonist Michael Brecker and
trumpeter Roy Hargrove, that helped bring UJ 2002 to a stellar
conclusion Sunday 21 July. The sold-out
performance at the Turreno Theatre included much of the music this
stellar ensemble performs on it’s recently released CD recorded live
at Toronto’s illustrious Massey Hall – the site of a legendary
concert in 1953 by an earlier all-star band that included Charlie
Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and Max
Roach – devoted to music either written by or associated with Davis
and Coltrane, two of the most important figures on the stylistic
development of modern jazz. The CD features bassist John Patitucci and
drummer Brian Blade but since they are members of Wayne Shorter’s
acoustic quartet which performe
d at the Turreno Theatre earlier in the festival, Hancock & Co.
were backed by veteran bassist George Mraz and Hargrove’s drummer
Willie Jones. The Directions in Music program lived up to its name by
taking familiar works either written by or closely association with
Davis and Coltrane into new territory. Coltrane’s “Impressions”
and the ballad “Stella By Starlight,” a mainstay of Davis’s
mainstream repertoire, were heard in harmonically
abstracted versions that revealed aspects of the original compositions
beneath the surface melodies. Brecker’s solo interpretation of
“Naima,” the unforgettable ballad Coltrane dedicated to his first
wife, was a tour de force of invention and virtuosity. Hancock was a
member of Davis’s “second
quintet” from 1963 until 1969 which followed an earlier quintet the
trumpeter led in the 1950s that featured Coltrane. These two bands
were two of the most important ensembles in earlier chapters of
jazz’s history and the quintet heard in Perugia, which includes
three of the most original and creative instrumentalists to follow in
the footsteps of the master musicians they are paying tribute to, is
not only keeping the legacy of Davis and
Coltrane alive but enriching it as well. |
