From the June 2012 issue of The New York City Jazz Record:
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Jazz musicians often develop uncanny systems of nonverbal communication. But tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath, 85, and drummer Albert “Tootie” Heath, 76, share a closer and longer bond than most, and the playful onstage code they’ve evolved seems to guide every performance by the Heath Brothers Quartet. Kicking off a late set at Birdland with Jimmy’s midtempo “Sound for Sore Ears” (May 3), they greeted improvised ideas with shouts, dances, double takes, or just little shifts of posture that somehow fed into the music itself. During a pause Jimmy referred to his cohorts as “young men,” and indeed, rock-solid bassist David Wong couldn’t help underlining that this was once a three-brother band (Percy, the eldest Heath, died in 2005). In terms of soloing prominence and harmonic game plan, much rested on the shoulders of pianist Jeb Patton, a confident master of the bop-and-beyond milieu handed down by prior Heath pianists such as Wynton Kelly and Stanley Cowell. Even Patton’s more restrained solos delivered a jolt, something to push at the boundaries of the idiom. There was unplanned audience participation during “Bluesville,” a greasy Sonny Red shuffle, and some choice tambourine from Tootie on the closing “Winter Sleeves,” based on “Autumn Leaves.” Jimmy fashioned a warm and complex soprano tone on the first half of “’Round Midnight,” and Tootie’s funky reading of the famous coda was pure individuality. (David R. Adler)
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Watching the Undead Music Festival’s night of improvised duets at 92Y Tribeca (May 12), it was hard to miss the element of ritual. Seventeen players came and went, speaking only through their instruments, observing a well-defined “round robin” protocol. Drummer Amir Ziv played solo until saxophonist John Ellis emerged to stir up the first duet. Then keyboardist Matt Mottel of Talibam! began to engage Ellis as Ziv walked off. And so it went: electric and acoustic sounds mingling; noisy abstractions offset by controlled virtuosic displays; older and younger players from different circles, thrust into unfamiliar situations and moving toward a common goal. There were echoes of the ’70s loft scene, perhaps most clearly in the alto sax/drum dialogue of Loren Stillman and Mike Pride. There was the fascination of Brandon Seabrook’s banjo and Bob Stewart’s tuba, two instruments of early and proto-jazz aligned in a wildly experimental spirit. Linda Oh and Mark Helias brought out timbres far more varied than one would expect from two upright basses. Bill McHenry and John Hollenbeck took flight in a tenor sax/percussion episode of unrelenting energy and tonal brilliance. Cooper-Moore summoned huge sub-bass notes on diddly-bow while playing with Stillman, then switched to homemade quasi-banjo for a bluesy romp with guitarist Miles Okazaki. Solo cornet and strange manipulated feedback from Graham Haynes made for a stark, unresolved, almost defiant ending. (DA)
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