Adrian Belew Power Trio--The Starlite Room, Edmonton Oct.9, 2009

"I never liked playing in stadiums because it's not much of a musical event. The sound is usually horrible, the audience can't really see you or feel what you're doing or respond to you. I love playing smaller places because of those very reasons."
----Adrian Belew


Friday night's concert here in Edmonton had all three ingredients for a satisfying concert--skilled musicians, a small venue, and an appreciative audience--in spades. First, if you don't know who Adrian Belew is, good. That means that guys like me can get a table right in front of the stage for $30 and see some really wonderful instrumental music. If you have heard his name before, that is because he was discovered by Frank Zappa, then recruited by David Bowie, David Byrne of the Talking Heads and Robert Fripp of King Crimson. Now there is a serious movement afoot to get this guy inducted into the Rock n' Roll Hall of Fame.

But there was another element --that of pleasant surprise. It turns out that the other two thirds of the Power Trio are a brother sister team of Julie and Eric Slick, both still in their early 20s, whom Belew found at the Paul Green School Of Rock. They thrive from having to match the virtuosity of Belw on guitar, as Belew does from having these talented kids to play with. Just looking at the three of them I couldn't help but share the fun they were having. I even got to buy their live CD ("Four") from their mom, Robin Slick, in the lobby.

TO be sure this isn't exactly the more blues-based R&B and jazz that I am most fond of. On the trio's current tour you'll see him play over loops, plug his graphite Parker Fly guitar into keyboards and do all kinds of things to get fresh sounds out of the instrument, but only a couple of tunes--"Ampersand" and "Big Electric Cat" --really stick in my mind as having been all that catchy. He verges on gimmickry and virtuosity for its own sake (which are themselves tired criticisms, I know, that used to be levelled at Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton in the 60s), but he is saved by his own, and his band's, artistry. Belew's punchy and precise playing is abetted by his beautiful space-age Parker guitars, while Julie plays a huge-sounding Lakland bass ("I use a Lakland Bob Glaub into a Keeley C-4 Compressor, with the occasional effect: either a West Siberian distortion pedal (i bought with Tony Levin in Moscow) or a Korg AX3000B. This all goes into an Ampeg SVT (8×10 fridge of a cab)...In my opinion you can’t get a “growlier” chain.")

Situated somewhere between prog rock, experimental post-metal and jazz, what sets this music apart from so much of the new stuff is that it is about the playing. I would go to see them again in a heartbeat.

2009 Edmonton Jazz Festival Highlights: John Abercrombie, Branford Marsalis, Jimmy Cobb

I took in two concerts at the Edmonton Jazz Festival this year, and both were EXCELLENT. On June 28, there was a double bill featuring the John Abercrombie organ trio and the Brandford Marsalis quartet. Missing from Abercrombie's usual lineup was organist/composer Dan Wall; his absence explains why Abercrombie stuck to a more mainstream playlist for this concert. Nevertheless, the organist's spot was capably filled by Gary Versace. (Adam Nussbaum was his usual stalwart self on drums; so much so that he was invited to sit in on drums with the Marsalis group at the end of the evening.)

If circumstances caused Abercrombie to be slightly less adventurous than usual, the opposite was true for the headliner. Marsalis even remarked that the acoustics at the Winspear Centre (quite similar to Vancouver's Chan Centre) were so good that they could perform music that they either had flubbed in Calgary, or wouldn't normally attempt in most venues. Pianist Joey Calderazzo's beautiful "The Blossom of Parting" was a case in point. Prediction: 5 years from now Calderazzo will be recognized as one of the leading artists in jazz.

This August also marks the 50th anniversary of the recording of Miles Davis's Kind of Blue. On Saturday July 4, 2009 the festival was closed out by Jimmy Cobb's So What Band in the intimate confines of the 600-seat Maclab Theatre in Edmonton's Citadel complex. I was in the second row, about 10 feet from the stage. On drums was the sole surviving member of the Kind of Blue sessions; on trumpet was Miles's protege Wallace Roney. Watching that music being performed it was easier to visualize how Miles wrote music for his musicians and led that band: the trading of solos on "Freddie the Freeloader" and "So What", and the careful adaptation of Spanish themes on "Flamenco Sketches" are the epitome of what good improvisational jazz is all about.

James Hunter's Commitment to Soul and R&B

Van Morrison calls him "the best-kept secret in British R&B": James Hunter is working-class London's answer to the Commitments. He unapologetically embraces music from what is often assumed to be a simpler time, the 1950s and early 1960s; but (here is the point, perhaps?) it was actually a much more difficult time for most people in race-divided America and class-divided Britain. Which is probably why they naturally assumed that one of the main purposes of music was to make them feel better.

Sam Cooke, Al Green, James Brown, Wilson Pickett, Otis Redding, Booker T., Ray Charles, Smokey Robinson, Lowman Pauling, the Memphis Horns. They played their hearts out, marrying the blues to gospel and making it swing. Hunter's singing voice is uncannily worthy of this tradition--and it's a bit shocking when you hear him speak in a cockney accent. He and his band not only faithfully reproduces the sound of this era, but if anything distills it into an even purer form: the sax and organ solos are choice, and Hunter's guitar playing and showmanship contain a few surprises of their own. His performance is no joke or parody, but it verges on tongue in cheek at times--this is about having fun.

It was a pleasure to see this band in the intimate confines of the Polish Hall in Edmonton on Friday March 13, 2009. It was relatively easy for everyone who wanted to dance or get close to the stage to do so. If Hunter's star keeps rising, that may become a rare privilege indeed.