Robin Eubanks EB3

[hermann]

Robin Eubanks EB3 at Detmold, Germany
A small festival "the Detmolder Jazz Nights" made it possible for me to hear Robins EB3 the second time. They played one set of six themes from the new CD-DVD EB3 LIVE VOL.1. I mean a lot of development happened meantime. No wonder that he is a relaxed master of his electronic equipment. And the richness of his loops and layers and effects has grown up a lot and naturally the diversity of his variations too. In first piece Robin showed us the possibilities of this electronic equipment by putting layers over layers over layers, he was always possible to create a new layer on top, that impressed me a lot because of the nearly mathematical strenghts of this layervariations. A strong drumsolo split the theme of artistic variables on trombone and showed that every musician gets the time to bring his own voice into the foreground. It was a fine choice to have Orrin Evans at the keyboards. This is an equivalent player to create that special universe of electronic sounds that lets me think "Never let it end". For me the highlight was that Hendrix blues. Hey, that was damned too short. So I wish: never let it end Robin ! A wonderfull concert at this small town Detmold.
Hermann Blaesing

[Gary Sisco]

Good one, Hermann. I'm envious.

[hornplayer]

Here's the review from the London performance... wish I could'a been there, but his best friend emailed me the link!

Robin Eubanks, Pizza-on-the-Park, London
By Mike Hobart

Published: April 27 2007 19:21 | Last updated: May 1 2007 11:32

Robin Eubanks gives the jazz trombone a complete makeover with his multi-tasked, technology-laden trio. Because there is no bassist, the drummer and keyboardist take it in turns to deliver the rhythmically skewed bass lines of modern funk while one-handedly bashing out equally quirky beats and harmonies. And, when a judicious sprinkling of looped samples is added in, the rhythmic momentum is irresistible, though Eubanks never lets the machinery take centre stage.

Eubanks’s lustrous tone and agile technique have made him modern jazz’s most in-demand trombonist. Both skills were on full show in last week’s gig. Both sets opened with him unaccompanied and unadorned by technology, though the first involved some deft knob-twiddling to get the right internal balance. Starting with cleanly articulated modern jazz scat, he morphed into a repeated, soon-to-be-sampled, riff, building up a sonorous choir of overlapping phrases backed by disco beats, and then the band joined in.

Eubanks was a founder-member of the edgily funky mid-1980s M-Base collective and it is their emotional ambiguity, oblique harmonies and off-centre rhythms that are the trio’s staple. Sparsely repeated keyboard riffs or two bars of swing materialising out of ethereal funk hold the tightly arranged grooves together. But the trio incorporate both the beats of modern dance and the riffs of rhythm and blues, with drummer Kenwood Dennard adeptly dropping the quick-fire beats of drum and bass into the mix.

A steamy slow blues tribute to Jimi Hendrix, a solo trombone Latin extravaganza, and the wickedly anarchic funk of the encore all referenced the past but were given a controlled contemporary gloss. And though the material had tightly arranged tempo changes and triggered samples, improvisation flowed, even when soloists were simultaneously doubling-up as a bass player. Keyboardist Orrin Evans conjured exactly the right sounds, swirling menacingly on Fender Rhodes and dazzling on synthesiser, while drummer Dennard switched showboating drum smashes to the sparest of cymbal beats. Best of all, the technical wizardry and multi-skilling was firmly under Eubanks’s exceptionally musical thumb.

Tel: +44 (0)20-774 3220

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007