Miguel Zenon let the music do the talking at Kilbourn Hall Monday night as his excellent
quartet burned through selections from his latest album, “Tipico.” Zenon was front and center with his saxophone,
but the band also boasts one of today’s greatest pianists, Luis Perdomo, and a
superb rhythm section with Hans Glawischnig on bass
and Henry Cole on drums.
For much of the set, Zenon played furiously, like a man who
had an emotionally charged story to tell but can only speak saxophone. When
Perdomo soloed he was equally strong, at one point doubling his melodies with both
hands playing impossibly complicated riffs together perfectly.
In his music, Zenon
explores his Puerto Rican roots, but the band is international, with
Perdomo bringing his Venezuelan background to the table. (Glawischnig
is Austrian and Cole is also Puerto Rican.)
The most overtly Latin song they played was the album’s title
tune, “Tipico.” Zenon and Perdomo both let loose with
gorgeously evocative solos. Toward the end, Cole took off on a fantastic drum
solo in which he somehow transformed his standard drum set into timbales by
accenting the beat in just the right way.
At the very end, Zenon finally came to the mic and spoke, but
only to thank us for coming.
Kari Ikonen,
the force behind Ikonostasis, began his
set at the Lutheran Church by performing a solo piece
at the piano. It was a dazzling composition, somewhere between Bach and Brubeck,
and it served him well because it demonstrated how deeply ingrained his
background in music was before he turned to his right and made exotic noises
with his synthesizer.
Ikonostasis is a trio with a sax
player and drummer (I didn’t catch their names), both of whom followed their
leader into avant-garde territory. On one piece, Ikonen
began by strumming the strings inside the piano. These strums became the chord
pattern of the tune. The saxophonist was skilled enough to invent melodies over
this highly unusual model theme and the drummer, who used his hands and some
rattling beads as much as sticks and brushes, was quick to pick up the rhythm.
The last time saxophonist Michael Blake visited the Jazz Festival
was in 2008 with his Copenhagen-based group, Blake Tartare. In that
context, Blake (originally from Canada) combined strains of American and
European jazz, leaning to the avant-garde side. But musicians have many
interests and for Blake that was just one of them.
He started the band Red Hook Soul to explore
the kind of music he played over the years in the dive bars of New York City.
At Xerox Auditorium the six-piece band played Blake’s funky and catchy
creations (and a cover of Lana
Del Rey’s “Video Games”). Because of Blake’s somewhat ironic point of view,
the tunes are kind of a meta-pop-soul, caricatures of the real thing.
For instance, he said when the group toured Europe he kept
seeing signs on the road for Sexy Shop. He never visited the store, but he did
write a tune with that name that he hoped would evoke a 1970’s porn film. Not
being a connoisseur of 1970’s porn films, I can’t tell you if it was successful,
but let’s just say it was close enough.
Tuesday night, I’m looking forward to two pianists:
Steve Kuhn at Kilbourn Hall and Eri
Yamamoto at Hatch Hall. Then I’ll head over to Christ Church to catch
saxophonist Dave O’Higgins and his band.
This article appears in Jun 21-27, 2017.
