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Current mood:  accomplished Category: Music
KIND OF KIND OF BLUE: MILES BEYOND THAT JAZZ SHIT - 28 Aug 2009, Petersham Town HallAs if mindful of Miles Davis’s warning to one of his ’70’s sidemen on the Big Fun sessions - “If I catch you playin’ any of that jazz shit, you’re fired!” - guitarist John Hardaker began the event with Jimi Hendrix’s Little Wing. The event was Kind of Kind of Blue, an evening wrapped around Miles Davis in general and the iconic Kind of Blue album in particular.The venue was the beautiful and slightly creepy Petersham Town Hall and the Hendrix ballad - a duet with flautist Crystal Moloney - rang strange and exotic among its art deco curlicues. Miles had admired Hendrix and pushed his groups of the 70’s further and further into harder funk-rock, so the inclusion of Little Wing seemed to signal that this evening’s performance was to be more about Miles’ attitude than his notes.Hardaker grew the band with each new tune. The flute/guitar duet of Little Wing was followed by a quartet reading of Wayne Shorter(a critical Miles alumni)’s Footprints and a quintet version of Yuseff Lateef’s Nubian Lady, joined here by Virgil Reality on trumpet. Next up, the stage was filled with a little big band - including two percussionists - which dug into a porn-funk version of Maiysha from the 70’s album Get Up With It, featuring a nimble alto solo from Matt Radzyner. Tutu from the 80’s recast the original synth statement as a horn line - taken out of its context it reminded us that its all blues anyway. Rob Woodward’s soprano solo fed middle-eastern lines into John Hardaker’s chattering blues solo.With Hardaker’s announcement “we will now play the national anthem…”, bass player Oliver Simpson began the ominous riff to Bitches Brew. The riff grew into a dissonant brass sludge which sharpened suddenly into the Its About That Time riff under Greg Levine’s skronkin’ tenor solo. The whole piece died away during Oliver Simpson’s bass segue only to begin its jagged climb again. This time the riff it broke on was Cream’s Sunshine of Your Love as played by 9 brass and fuzz guitar. Somewhere, maybe Miles smiled.A short intermission and it was Kind of Blue as interpreted by the John Hardaker Direction. Hardaker took each piece from the album and reworked it for his band. He left a lot of it alone - not out of reverence so much as out of artistic contrition: how can a perfect expression be perfected? - and yet it sounded nothing like the original.So What was a funky strut. more blue and red neon than the inky indigo of Miles’ 1959 original. A bright chase chorus - flute/trumpet/alto/trombone - was bookended by Hardaker’s Hendrix semi-quotations (a shred of Jimi’s Who Knows in there) and Oliver Simpson’s bass meditations. Freddie Freeloader chilled on a reggae beat with a sly trombone solo from Adam Lean, before thudding into a raw boogie worthy of ZZ Top for the solos. Was Miles, somewhere, still smiling?Blue in Green seemed an impossible task - how could such a translucent wisp of mood as the original, all breath and feints, work in this brassy, tough context? The band took a bluesier, more definite tack; the Miles-Bill Evans melody held it all together like sinew and let it be lush. After a punched out quote from Herbie Hancock’s Maiden Voyage as a bridge, the arrangement ebbed for solos from Sarah Neill on trumpet and Justin Buckingham on alto. All Blues seemed the least altered - the feel was true to the swinging 6/8 original - the band just enlarged on key phrases here and there. It worked because it did the best thing you can do with the blues - leave it alone. The groove formed a great lurching bed for solos from Justin Buckingham, Rob Woodward (on tenor) and John Hardaker.After member introductions, the band dispersed and walked off stage, leaving John Hardaker and Virgil Reality alone together to finish the night with Flamenco Sketches. This was the quietest piece of the night and the room stilled under its mood. The twinned flutes of Crystal Moloney and Rob Woodward countered the trumpet in the “spanish” section of Miles’ aching melody, rising together to play a double solo before the trumpets return. In a sense, this was the most successful piece of the evening, if one takes Kind of Blue’s overriding achievement as mood - as shrinking the universe down for a few minutes to fit a trumpet bell.Jazz, blues, rock, country, funk - they all had a run tonight. They all had a run because they were free to - because the music and attitude of Miles Davis said it was ok. Jazz as a significant form of music has always shrivelled if inbred for too long. Miles Davis invigorated it again and again in his time. And it was that attitude that the John Hardaker Direction - a band peopled with players too young to ever have known jazz as a music devoid of rock and funk - strutted out across the stage tonight. And Miles smiled.© 2009 baba rumraisin
3:57 AM
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