Thanks to Lois posting the particulars of this festival (which is maybe where this review should be posted
) and Nate having given such an accurately strong rec on
Don't Count on Glory (which precious few of you mooks have heeded
) I made the 90 mile trek to catch this 4 pm set. The concert was held in a park right off part of the city; it was very easy to get there per the website directions and because of its proximity to Lake Erie the temperature was about 5 degrees cooler than the 90 that I left in Cleveland. I'm terrible at crowd estimates; there were quite a few people there (although I think the 10,000 number I heard from the stage was a major stretch) already listening to local favorite Mary Alice Brown, who plays chords on an electric keyboard as a drummer plays high-hat heavy funk patterns and a conga player adds accents. Everybody seemed to be enjoying it and it was probably closer to "jazz" than a lot of acts that play festivals, so it provided a pleasant backdrop as I found a place to sit and get ready for Horner's group. It was a little overcast which kept the sun from being overpowering (later the clouds disappeared and I beat a retreat to some shade); the outdoor setting was very nice for a few reasons: The seemingly mandatory majority of nico-bots that come to these things had their exhalations of Carolina's favorite crop dissipated by the cool breezes off the lake and there was a steady procession of young trim to provide some visual distraction.
Horner's quartet came on exactly on time (yay!) and played a very satisfying 90 minute set that had the crowd very pleased. As I was driving there I was wondering how the scaled down version of the core group (missing Uri Caine's Fender Rhodes, Brian Lynch's trumpet, Marty Ehrlich's alto and Jeff Berman's percussion) was going to adjust their arrangements; or if they would play other songs. Well they played all but one from
Don't Count on Glory and all the participants, particularly Horner, deserve great credit for coming up with outstanding re-arrangements of the songs. Keyboardist Neal Kirkwood played acoustic piano on the disc but Caine's electric keyboard added a certain punch that really distinguished the session. Either an acoustic wasn't available or Kirkwood decided to go electric; either way it did a good job of capturing the slightly fusion-y sound of the disc (that isn't meant as a negative, just a description). With electric guitarist Pete McCann having a slightly Frisell-ish sound the quartet had an early Pat Metheny Group type *sound* to it, albeit with wildly different songs. I've been known to be a little rough on some female drummers
but Allison Miller was outstanding.
The concert began, like the disc, with "Last Look Home" which combined a bouncy tempo with a yearning theme, and it was evident at that point that it was going to be a very nice set, as all the thematic twists and turns were included despite the reduced instrumentation. And full credit for whoever did the sound which was close to perfect. This was followed by the only cut not from the disc, something like "When You Think It Is, It Isn't; When You Think It Isn't, It Is". Whatever the title, it bodes very well for the future as it was very well done. Next was the disc's outstanding version of Monk's "Green Chimneys" which inspired somebody in a Kareem Abdul-Jabbar jersey to go buy a copy at the Information Tent. Then followed the title cut from the disc, one of the major highlights of the set as they covered all the thematic twists and turns despite the reduced instrumentation; playing at a festival isn't the easiest task in the world in terms of holding the attention of the crowd, but the crowd was totally into this song as even the distracted ones were tapping their feet.
Other songs included were "I Stand By Your Window", "Cuong Vu" and it ended with "Too, Too Blue" which featured a crowd pleasing skronk-out by McCann to conclude a satisfying set. I had to beat a fast retreat because it was announced that they were towing cars from the parking lot where I had been directed (a false alarm); I would've liked to have asked Horner if the special guests he had at the previous night's concert at Carnegie-Mellon in Pittsboigh were the Bitches Brew sounding bunch from the Steel City that were on "Gyp the Blood". Or if Allison Miller had any interest in fooling around with married men.
Linear Mode
