Matt Wilson Quartet Dazzles at UMass

“Enjoy.” That was Matt Wilson’s advice to Amherst College music students who had gathered to hear the great drummer, composer, bandleader and educator give a workshop before his evening concert. Wilson is a pied piper, on and off the bandstand, using a disarming brilliance to spread his enthusiasm for jazz.

Matt Wilson follows his own advice. Despite the devastating loss of Felicia, his childhood sweetheart, wife and mother of his four teenage children two years ago, Wilson is consistently upbeat, grateful and full of wonder. It’s contagious.

“Give the music more life,” he told Professor Jason Robinson’s students. “Try different things. Play the music slightly backwards to see how it feels. Break out of jazz conventions like head/solo/head, trading fours. Give listeners some mystery, something else to listen to.”

His ensemble, featuring saxophonist Jeff Lederer, cornetist Kirk Knuffke and bassist Martin Wind, gave us plenty to listen to, as they kicked off the 27th year of the UMass Fine Arts Center’s Magic Triangle Jazz Series on Thursday, February 25.

I like to listen to music with my eyes closed. But I had to peek when the band was replaced by what sounded like a Balinese gamelan. All four musicians had picked up brightly colored bells of different pitches and played complex, highly rhythmic, ever changing music. Soon they were using the bells to strike their instruments, producing sounds from other worlds. The piece, “Raga”, a Wilson original found on Humidity (Palmetto, 2002), also featured a driving Indian-based melody and Wilson’s mind-bending solo on the tamberim, a small Brazilian frame drum.

At another point, I had to look again to make sure Wilson’s Quartet had not been replaced by Sun Ra’s Solar-Myth Arkestra. Chris Lightcap had recently given Wilson a stylus synthesizer, a cheap, hand-held gadget, which he rubbed on his floor tom to produce weird, undulating electronic noises. They were not random sounds but, like everything Wilson touches, were filled with logic, wit and surprise. From the amazed smiles and shaking heads of his bandmates, who craned to see what was happening, I’m guessing this marked Wilson’s debut with the little instrument.

Wilson is a genuinely funny guy. After playing “Hug”, with its infectious, easily hummable melody, he mused how well it could serve as a TV theme song, referencing classics like the Mary Tyler Moore show. As the band picked up the melody again, Wilson pantomimed a smiling, waving bus driver using his cymbal as steering wheel.

Just like his imaginary bus driver, Wilson smiles a lot. He also makes other people smile a lot. He is the most important and effective jazz educator this side of Wynton Marsalis. (After Wilson’s Friday UMass workshop, Professor Tom Giampietro wrote, “The kids LOVED it. I have been getting great feedback already, which I knew would happen!”)

Unlike Marsalis, Wilson does not draw lines in the aesthetic sand. He loves it all, and urges students and listeners to embrace all music made with “honesty, clarity and grace.” His Magic Triangle concert reflected that big tent philosophy. While the band approached Charlie Rouse’s “Pumpkin’s Delight” and Gene Ammons’ “The One Before This” with the original swagger and swing, they had no compunction adding daring harmonies and extended techniques. As he introduced the beautiful ballad, “Barack Obama”, written by Butch Warren, he spoke reverentially about Monk’s long time bassist. At other points during the 80-minute concert, the band played abstractly, stretching boundaries that would have made Wynton squirm. That’s why we will follow Matt Wilson wherever he goes.

Queen Esther Duo Celebrates Billie Holiday in Springfield

The vocalist Queen Esther, decked out in a diaphanous, fur-themed dress, made the ornate Robyn Newhouse Hall at the Community Music School of Springfield, seem even more elegant. Accompanied by pianist Jeremy Bacon, resplendent in a deep red, velvet jacket, the Queen Esther Duo performed the rare sides that Billie Holiday sang in the 1930s and 40s. Friday’s concert (February 5) was produced by Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

Queen Esther’s voice is round and supple. She would slowly roll into words or attack them with well-articulated emphasis. Her phrasing was right on and she expressed these songs of love and love lost with perfect period sentiment.

Over the course of two sets of music, Queen Esther established a wonderful rapport with the 80 intrepid souls who braved a morning snowstorm to hear her sing. A self-described “library nerd” who spent considerable time researching Holiday and her work, Queen Esther gave just the right amount of anecdote and context throughout the evening.

We learned that Holiday spent a good part of 1948 in prison (the same facility where Martha Stewart did time), and despite entreaties from the warden, refused to sing a note while incarcerated. Because of her conviction, she couldn’t work in New York nightclubs, so upon her release, and despite having been off the scene and rusty, Holiday sold out Carnegie Hall. Soon afterwards she premiered “Holiday on Broadway” and began each night with “Easy to Love.” Queen Esther delivered her version with sass and easy swing.

Describing “Some Other Spring” as Holiday’s favorite, Queen Esther gave us a thumbnail sketch of the song’s composer, Irene Kitchings, a brilliant, classically trained pianist and arranger who was leading bands of adult male professionals in Chicago at age 16! She put her own career on hold after marrying pianist Teddy Wilson, expanding his musical horizons and raising their family. Queen Esther’s raised eyebrows and comments about gender inequality were seconded by the assembled.

The duo closed the first set with “Big Stuff,” penned by a young Leonard Bernstein from the musical “Fancy Free.” It was a critical time in Bernstein’s budding career and he created controversy by using “Negro slang” in his lyrics. Bernstein wrote the song with Billie in mind, but lacking clout and cash could not afford to have her sing it in the original production. Queen Esther counted off the rhythm then had a brain freeze; she forgot the words. It was a moment of high, unscripted drama. Her witty repartee, spot on all night, was tested, until a smartphone-wielding member of the audience handed her the three opening words: “So you cry”. With the lyrics unlocked, Queen Esther sailed through the song. In that moment she won over audience members, many of who undoubtedly have had their own experiences with the vagaries of memory.

The role of accompanist requires special skills: blending the sound, leaving space, lack of ego. Pianist Jeremy Bacon acquitted himself beautifully. It was a nice touch to have Bacon begin each set with a solo piece, giving us a chance to see his spread wings.

Queen Esther came highly recommended by acclaimed dramaturg and good friend, Talvin Wilks, who helped develop her Billie Holiday project at Minton’s in New York last year. Thanks Talvin, good call.

ROVA Saxophone Quartet in Easthampton

When I asked Larry Ochs, one of the founders of the ROVA Saxophone Quartet, how they decided what repertoire to play during the Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert on January 26, he told me they chose pieces they played during the previous week that didn’t require much rehearsal.

Founded in 1977 in the Bay Area, where they still reside, ROVA had just completed a weeklong residency at The Stone (John Zorn’s small, but influential Lower East side music room.) While in New York, ROVA, plus eight all stars, also gave a monumental performance of John Coltrane’s “Ascension” at Le Poisson Rouge.

The capacity crowd at 121 Club in Eastworks, Easthampton, Massachusetts was treated to two transcendent sets of knotty virtuosity, played with wit and panache. The written parts were intricate and executed without so much as a bead of sweat, although on the car ride home the musicians immediately launched into a self-critique of missed cues and opportunities. The improvised sections were equally evocative, distinguished from the written material by a series of various homemade hand signals that dictated the flow.

Shareholder John Sinton (father of the wonderful baritone saxophonist/bass clarinetist Josh Sinton) described ROVA’s music as “thick”. Indeed the harmonies and textures were layered in surprising, and at times unsettling ways. Shareholder Frank Ward, who was sitting in the front row, talked about the “cleansing” experience of being so close to that much sound. Shareholder Tony Stavely’s reaction: “Quacking conversations among demented ducks and harmonious honking of glad geese. Not the whole story.”

Writer and poet Byron Coley was in the house, as was Hal March, who has run the valuable Toonerville Trolley Records in Williamstown, for many years. There were a number of saxophonists present, including Dave Barrett, now a Great Barrington resident, but a friend of the band since his San Francisco days with the Splatter Trio, and Valley stalwarts Jason Robinson and Carl Clements, who had brought a handful of unsuspecting Amherst College students. John Voci, now Program Director of NEPR, who was part of the technical crew when ROVA made an historic trip to the Soviet Union in the 1980s, showed up. As did Bex Taylor of the Jazz a la Mode family. Cliff Peterson made the trip from Albany; Ronald Lyles, Richard Williams and Chris Carville came from various Connecticut points. Alex Lemski was representing Boston.

The opportunity to hear ROVA in western Massachusetts was special; their only other appearance was a 2011 UMass Magic Triangle Series performance of the Celestial Septet: ROVA + the Nels Cline Singers. The scarce chance to hear today’s premiere working saxophone quartet brought over 100 people to Will Bundy’s bustling venue.

In Space is the Place, John Szwed’s wonderful biography of Sun Ra, the author reminds us that musicians in the 1960s, “moved pitch away from the convention of playing in or out of ‘tune’, and made tonality a conscious choice, just as time keeping or swing were turned into resources to be drawn on, rather than laws to be obeyed.” But even as the sound swirled, at least one of the saxophonists provided a rhythmic backbone, playing a vamp or repeated figure that gave shape to the music. And sometimes not.