Web MasterHOT
By Cody Elam
Gene Dobbs Branford, longtime emcee for Jazz at the Bistro, came before the audience with an ear-to-ear grin on his face late Saturday night. It was time to introduce a future legend for his second set on the last night of four at the Bistro. “We’ve just bought extra insurance on the building,” said Dobbs, “because Josh Redman said he’s going to tear down the place tonight.” Sitting on the stairs beside the stage with sax in hand, Redman couldn’t help but crack a smile.
The sold-out crowd at the intimate Bistro sat quietly in amazement as Redman, the 33-year old phenomenon, exalted his soul in a 70-minute set of jazz, bop, funk, fusion, experimental, and electric grooves. Opening with “Still Pushin’ That Rock,” Redman and his Elastic band managed to build a song that started as a simple funk tune with an unconventional time signature into an enormous wall of noise. Redman, at the climax of the song, had to release his mouth from the grip of the saxophone a few times to scream with passion, as if releasing his soul into the air. He continued to push the limit of musical boundaries into the night, as he combined traditional jazz with modern technology and rhythm. In a long voyage filled with ambient organ chords and Eastern flavored drums played with mallets, Redman explored the next song using a rack of saxophone effects. Echoes swirled through the air and harmonized lines looped in the background as Redman played with his foot pedals.
Organist Sam Yahel was enough rhythm to make the trio sound like a full rock band, footing complex bass lines on the Hammond B-3 while chording with the left hand and improvising on the right. Drummer Jeff Ballard knocked out a steady beat, maintaining a strict groove throughout the set. Even though Redman was the featured performer, each member played off of each other, mirroring licks and rhythms.
Although the night was mostly variations on fusion, a few standard swing tunes rounded out the performance. Redman navigated through modal jams just as well as he constructed arpeggios across rhythm changes. He astounded with lightning fast runs, stretching the saxophone to the limits of its tonal capabilities in a freakishly terrific fashion. His improvisational melody-making then soothed the ear. It wasn’t only Redman’s technical and creative abilities that gave him his presence-he was truly moved by the music. Often he would sit and smile, nodding his head to show his approval of Yahel’s organ solos. Redman filled the room with an enormous energy that left the audience vibrating for hours afterward.
Redman’s sax and Yahel’s organ sounded wonderful through the Bistro’s speakers, but the drum set left something to be offered from the sound technician. A cross-microphone set up was not enough to hear the drums over the PA, instead they could only be heard off of the echoes of the walls of the Bistro. Redman also seemed to be playing with, rather than using, his effects at a few points, but he has the liberty to do so-he’s a brilliant musician. By the night’s end, the crowd left wanting more from Redman, eagerly awaiting his return next season to the Bistro.
NOT
By Brendan R. Watson
I’ve seen a number of great electric shows, the two best being the pre-game, starting line-up spectacular at the Chicago Bull’s games during Michael Jordan’s reign, and a dazzling laser show at the Parthenon in Athens, Greece. Jazz Saxophonist Dewey Redman’s second set this last Saturday at Jazz and the Bistro, failed to live up to either of these standards, despite the multitude of gizmo’s at Redman’s fingertips, the least of which was the saxophone the audience came to hear.
Redman’s electronics were at their best on the second tune, “Unknowing,” which was nothing more than the same two notes, played in several octaves, repeated over and over. How could a serious musician mistake this for music, let alone intelligent music? Redman apparently thought the audience would be impressed if he used one of his toys to record the two base notes, then play them an octave higher, while playing back the first notes, repeating the process until he had created racket, which sounded like nothing more than a electronic recording industry trade-show gimic.
The overall problem with the set was that Redman built his tunes around catchy, oversimplified rifts-the kind that provides the track for the multitude of late-night talk shows-instead of a more complex motif. In the first tune, “Still Pushin’ that Rock,” as the band worked up to a good jam, the listener was poised, waiting for the band to take a turn in the road, a mood shift, a chord shift-anything. But the band employed the broken record technique, trying to decieve the audience into thinking that their music was more complex and dynamic than it really was, by putting up a smoke screen of electronic distortion. Redman further tried to deceive the audience with a series of ill-placed yelps, and excited movements with his upper body, which rarely corresponded to what he was playing, and seemed haphazardly thrown into the mix to make up for the lack of anything real in the music to be excited about.
Redman did, however, give the audience a couple of brief allusions as to the introspective and dynamic virtocity that makes him a jazz-super-star (to the extent that such a thing exists). Redman played a tune by the organist, Sam Yahel, which because it was built on a modal piece built on a series of scales, not on a simplified rift, left the musicians more to experiment with and build upon. Redman linked together a couple of exciting runs, which showed off his impressive stamina (though he was strained in the upper register), and drummer Jeff Ballard, who’d been banging away incessantly the whole night, finally slowed up to show he had some restraint and that he could swing. Yahel also linked together a couple of groovey R&B inspired phrases on the organ. Overall, however, though the song was solid, the solos lacked the imaganative creativity that’s at the heart of compelling jazz.
The problem is that part of Redman’s experiment with electronic fusion, also includes what he calls “extended compsoition”-an attempt to script when the climax will should come in a song instead of letting the direction of the solos dictate when that moment comes, which is an apt description of Redman’s experimentation as a whole. He’s trying to force something that is unnatural, and his attempts are clumsy at best. Maybe it’s time for his fourth tune, “Can a Good Thing Last Forever.”