Noah Preminger Quartet Opens Jazz Shares Season

Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares got off to a fast start as it began its 22-concert race to June, 2024 with a blistering performance by the Noah Preminger Quartet on September 21 at the Parlor Room in Northampton. This band of virtuosos: Max Light, guitar, Kim Cass, bass, Dan Weiss, drums and Preminger, tenor saxophone, shot out of the gate with some serious post-bop momentum on their way to a 70-minute first place finish.

The band was on a New England mini-tour, with stops in Boston (Scullers) and Old Lyme, CT (Side Door Café). It began on Thursday before 70 rapt listeners. We were treated to a set of Preminger originals that were intricate, memorable and evocative. The only pieces not penned by the leader were a composition of Light’s dedicated to his two cats, featuring an impossibly fast, yet hummable unison guitar/tenor line, and an unhurried, “Way Early Subtone”, part of Duke Ellington’s movie score for “Anatomy of a Murder”. The 1959 film was directed by Otto Preminger, who was a cousin of Noah’s grandfather, Jack. (See Preminger Plays Preminger, Newvelle Records, 2019.)

Noah’s other grandfather, Lenny, “a colorful New Jersey mobster”, according to Preminger, was also memorialized with a piece called, “You’ll Never Win”, a phrase he repeated often to his grandson. By the end of the tune, the melody’s five note core, played over and over, was imprinted in my head. Grandpa’s negative messaging seems to have had no lasting effect on the 37 year old saxophonist, who has forged quite a successful career. Preminger has already released 20 critically acclaimed albums as a leader, tours often and teaches at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge. His playing was strong, sure footed, rooted in the blues, and followed the hallowed lineage of tenor greats past. His steel-tipped sound grabbed the attention, and his compositions connected with the ear.

The bassist Kim Cass, who performed with vibraphonist Patricia Brennan at a Jazz Shares concert last February, is Preminger’s most constant collaborator. I can see why he’s a favored colleague. His one unaccompanied solo provided a textbook example of how to build a coherent musical statement. From rapid, delicate pizzicato patter, and bowed whale-like moans, to a seductive bass line that cued the band’s entrance, Cass laid it down. I was impressed that he got to the Valley early to play 18-holes of disc golf at the Northampton State Hospital course. He’s devoted to the sport and plays everywhere he travels.

This was my first encounter with Max Light, who met Cass and Preminger at the New England Conservatory in the early 2000’s. This was a nice introduction. The guitarist was full of fleet, crowd pleasing runs, played at moderate volume. (The sound mix in the room was beautiful all night.) He also added nuance to the music, using a variety of techniques to set moods of different colors. While in Boston, Light, Cass and Preminger furthered their studies with weekly gigs led by trumpeter Jason Palmer at Wally’s, the legendary Mass Ave. club. Preminger and pianist Kevin Harris are carrying on the tradition; they’ve led the house band at Wally’s on Friday and Saturday for years.

Dan Weiss is one of the elite drummers, and he showed out at the Parlor Room on Thursday. Throughout the evening, he would drop the time for a moment or two, before locking back in to propel the band to new heights. He constantly used provocative accents to fill spaces between the phrases of others, while his unaccompanied solo began with the simplest of elements, adding complexity and volume as he went. It was hard to pry my attention from him. His next appearance at Jazz Shares will be in the spring with his trio, featuring Miguel Zenón and Matt Mitchell.

After three months of administrative work to make season 12 of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares a reality, what a blessing to bring people together again to share jazz music in real time. An appreciative audience and appreciative musicians, along with the music itself, are the real payoffs.

"It's truly amazing what you've built." Preminger wrote me after the gig. “Haven't seen this sort of commitment to creative music from such a large, consistent audience anywhere!”

The shareholders, business sponsors and board of directors of Jazz Shares should be proud of what we’ve built.

Teaching By Example: Ran Blake and Dominique Eade Play Springfield

“Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.” So wrote George Bernard Shaw in his 1905 play, Man and Superman. But pianist Ran Blake and vocalist Dominique Eade, who have spent much of their adult lives teaching at the New England Conservatory, can also do. That much was apparent to 60 listeners who braved heavy rain on May 20 to bring down the curtain on Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ 11th season.

The concert at the Community Music School of Springfield, in Blake’s hometown, took place almost four years to the day of their last visit in 2019. Due to illness, Blake had hardly performed in the interceding years, but the venerable 88-year old iconoclast was in fine form on Saturday, as was his running mate, Dominique Eade. Blake seemed genuinely grateful to be performing again in Springfield.

Their beautifully paced recital was grouped in small sets of three or four compositions. Each of the six sets (with an intermission) were medley-ed, with songs moving seamlessly from one to another; the music flowed like a dream.

At Ran’s urging, he and Dominique supplied programs, which both helped us identify melodies and get a sense of Ran’s life in Springfield, MA, where he spent his early years. He titled the concert, “Storyboarding Springfield”, and dedicated it to Classical High School (now condos). The program thanked many of his teachers, family friends, neighbors and musical collaborators by name, and included little reminiscences’ like, “Spiral Staircase and Red House at Art and Capital Theatres”, and “Mulberry Cemetery late at night”. Before the concert, Blake and Eade visited his childhood home at the corner of Union and Mulberry, which was sold by Ran’s family to the Parker family, who occupy the home today.

There was a deep simplicity to the music, but the bare essentials were all we needed. Ran was never florid in his playing, and on Saturday he chose his notes carefully, played them emphatically, and, of course, they were all the right notes. There was adventure and risk taking in the music, with Dominique darting around melodies, leaping octaves and displacing beats, while taking liberties with Gershwin, Arlen and Lane.

The highlights were many. “Portrait”, music and lyrics by Charles Mingus, unfurled slowly with blues inflections. “Painting my own pictures in tones/I’ve painted all mother earth”, Eade sang at the lower end of her register. There were country music heart tugs like “Lost Highway” and “The West Virginia Mine Disaster”, and a set dedicated to Thelonious Monk’s benefactor, Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, including “Pannonica” (Monk), “Nica Noir” (Blake) and “Nica’s Dream” (Horace Silver).

Dominique’s solo performance of Wayne Shorter’s “Footprints”, accompanying herself on thumb piano, was stunning. Her rendition of Rogers and Hart’s “To Keep My Love Alive”, a humorous song from A Connecticut Yankee about a wife murdering a succession of husbands, was period-appropriate coquettish.

Not only can Dominique Eade do it, over more than three decades she has taught many others to do it, too. Among her former students at NEC are Roberta Gambarini, Michael Mayo, Rachel Price, Sofia Rei, Sara Serpa, Luciana Souza, Naledi Masilo and Aoife O’Donovan, all great and very different singers. “The key is showing people what is possible, not how to sound,” Eade said in a profile on the NEC website.

Ran Blake has been synonymous with NEC for over 40 years, where, with Gunther Schuller, he started the Third Stream Department, now known as Contemporary Musical Arts. The number of illustrious musicians who have been touched by Blake is too large to list. In an extensive interview with Robin DG Kelly, Blake shares details of his life: his early years in Springfield, MA and Suffield, CT, meeting vocalist Jeanne Lee at Bard College, his time at the legendary School of Jazz in Lenox, MA, working at Atlantic Records, his admiration of Monk, Houston Pearson and Abbey Lincoln, his work for Soul Note Records and his career at NEC.

Most of Blake’s great recordings have been in solo or duo contexts. (The Short Life of Barbara Monk, a 1986 quartet date, being one exception.) His memorable duo records include collaborations with Anthony Braxton, Jaki Byard and Enrico Rava, and especially with great female vocalists like Jeanne Lee, Sara Serpa, Christine Correa and Dominique Eade.

“If you’re lucky, you experience brain wave alignment, which is something that you feel profoundly in a duo,” Eade said in her NEC profile. Stars and brain waves were certainly aligned for Ran Blake and Dominique Eade on Saturday, as they taught us all lessons on creativity and perseverance.

Time is on Our Side: Erik Friedlander's The Throw Comes to Greenfield

There’s a tendency in the jazz world, and elsewhere, to focus on the newcomer, the next discovery, the fresh voice. That allure has appeal. But it’s equally thrilling to hear musicians who have spent decades refining their craft and honing their skills. Unlike the aging ballplayer who still understands pitch sequences but can no longer catch up to a fastball, old pro musicians can still get it done physically and have developed a refined aesthetic touch.

It’s always exciting to be in the presence of veteran musicians. Their accumulated knowledge is impressive, they are unperturbed by unexpected circumstances, and they have lots of stories to tell. When four seasoned artists are in the same band, well that can be a transcendent experience.

Such was the case on May 6, when Erik Friedlander’s quartet, The Throw, performed at Hawks & Reed in Greenfield, MA. The cellist was joined by Uri Caine, piano, Mark Helias, bass, and Ches Smith, drums. All but Smith are over 60.

Their 80-minute set (including an encore) featured a generous amount of material from A Queen’s Firefly, released last year on Friedlander’s Skiptone Records. Each of the pieces, all penned by Friedlander, had strong melodies, distinct rhythmic contours and specific points of view. Most featured multiple changes of tempo, including generous helpings of swing. The concert, attended by over 70 happy listeners, flew by.

Cellist Erik Friedlander, now 62, has been leading ensembles for almost 30 years, and has released 25 recordings under his name. He has been a close collaborator of John Zorn since the 1990s, and has extensive experience composing for film and TV (“Oh Lucy!”, “Thoroughbreds”, “The Romanoffs”). His father is the acclaimed photographer Lee Friedlander, and Block Ice & Propane, the first of his 15 recordings on Skiptone, captures cross-country family vacations built around his father’s work. Friedlander is an expressive soloist on cello, an instrument as present as it’s ever been in jazz. He is a consummate composer and a bandleader with a knack for constructing ensembles able to convey his musical thoughts.

I first met Uri Caine in 2002, when he presented his brilliant, expansive version of Bach’s Goldberg Variations as part of the UMass Magic Triangle Jazz Series. His sly take on this piece of the canon was both reverent and subversive, and I became an instant fan. This work, and Caine’s other classical music reimagining’s, can be found on Winter & Winter. In 2001, Caine and fellow Philadelphian’s Christian McBride and Questlove produced The Philadelphia Experiment, which was funky in the extreme. And when you consider his fusion trio, Bedrock, and his “straightahead” jazz chops, you realize you’re dealing with an artist who can play whatever music the moment demands. On Saturday, there were flashes of his prodigious technique, but he spent much of the evening providing just the right riffs and voicings to show off the contour of each composition.

The Magic Triangle Series presented the Mark Helias Quartet in 1997, by which time I was already familiar with the five outstanding Enja recordings he produced between 1985-95. Helias has been a regular visitor to western Massachusetts over the years, appearing as the Marks Brothers with fellow bassist Mark Dresser, with Joe Lovano and Tom Giampietro in a tribute to Ed Blackwell, BassDrumBone (with Ray Anderson and Gerry Hemingway), the Michael Gregory Jackson Trio and the Jane Ira Bloom Quartet. It was great to have the hip, loquacious, (and important) bassist back in the Valley. The 72 year old veteran provided a deep, soulful bottom that sounded wonderfully resonant in Hawks & Reed’s fourth floor space, called The Perch.

Although forty-something drummer Ches Smith is of another generation, he has already logged a ton of credits as a sideman and a leader. His two most recent releases, both on Pyroclastic, were blockbusters: We All Break – Path of Seven Colors, captures a groundbreaking amalgam of jazz and traditional Haitian drumming and singing, and Interpret It Well features Smith’s trio of Mat Maneri and Craig Taborn, with special guest Bill Frisell. Everything Smith played was full of life and seemed essential to the music. At a couple of points, his drumming became purposefully loud, bringing welcome attention to his prodigious skills.

Discovering new talent is always a joy, and this season Jazz Shares was thrilled to have introduced to our region younger musicians like Mali Obomsawin, Allison Burik, Patricia Brennan and Beth McDonald. But wine needs to age before it peaks, and there is nothing better than watching veterans like Erik Friedlander and his bandmates share the fruits of their years spent sharpening their craft.