Arts & Entertainment
Wednesday, June 26th, 2002
Sax man Konitz reinvents classics at Athenaeum
By Anita Carol Smith Village News
| The crowd hummed one note for five
minutes. Onstage under the lights, a gray- haired man in slacks and sweater bent over his sax, improvising with the hum reverberating through the Neurosciences Auditorium. The fans at the May 1 concert didn’t plan on being part of the show. They did know that sax leg end Lee Konitz was returning after an illness that sidelined him from an Athenaeum series show last fall. What they didn’t know was that Konitz, after five decades in jazz, was still ready to break the rules, love his audience, and get 350 (somewhat) dignified adults to be his improvised band of hummers. And still ready to lead a show that was, in the words of one concertgoer, “as good as it gets.” It would have been hard not to have a great night with the stellar players in Konitz’s band. In the drum chair, Joe La Barbera, whose subtle and attentive style has filled his gig history with names like Bill Evans and Tony Bennett. On standup bass, Europe’s gift to coastland jazz, Darek “Oles” Oleskiewicz. And on piano, Mike Wofford, the player whom Konitz didn’t even have to name because the crowd was already clapping and cheering when they recognized him. On the opener, the classic “Invitation,” Oles soloed on the bass while Konitz scattered light riffs behind the bass player’s inventions. Wofford picked up a lick from the sax and then Oles improvised with him. Konitz’s solo work showed him more dissonant and exploratory than on his early albums such as “Lee Konitz with Warne Marsh” (Atlantic, 1956). After the break, Wofford walked out alone and opened with a somber passage, gradually drawing out a melody over a beat that had a light ly bebop mood. Wofford can be subtly clever (like the time at La Jolla’s Crescent Shores when, as the sun sank behind the Pacific, he opened the set with “East of the Sun”) and this was no exception. The tune was a mystery at first, and he syncopated it in a distinctive way. It turned out to be “It Don’t Mean a Thing if It Ain’t Got That Swing.”
“Body and Soul” got its due after Oles opened it in
a leisurely manner. Although Konitz sometimes seemed short of breath, he
came in with exquisite, subtle lines based on the melody, then turned
saucy — moving to unpredictable stopping points. Wofford built his solo on
the flavor of one note, staying with it intensely, then setting it free to
replicate itself in other octaves. Texture was the star as the deep,
resonating voice of the bass contrasted with La Barbera’s hollow woody
sound of sticks on rims. |