Concert Review

Cameron Steuart



Concert review

I have chosen to review is that of a jazz combo I caught in northeast. The band leader was a sax man called Tony Parker, under him was June-bug Jackson on drums, a surly old bassist I’d never seen, and Robert Parker (Tony’s brother) on the piano. He was using an acoustic piano with a microphone put to it that was connected to a pa system. The pianist did not use a single lead sheet, I have always considered that the mark of a real jazz musician. He was an extremely unorthodox pianist, at points in Tony’s solo he would remove his left hand from the piano, comping only with his right hand, and he would watch Tony (who is known for dancing while soloing). At one point the band had all stopped leaving the bass to an unaccompanied solo, the bassist took twelve bars, and then to every ones surprise he continued on. Robert then began to strike one note softly, while he did so he shot a joking glare toward the bassist and slowly increased his volume. What interested me about this was the total lack of formality that he displayed, it caught me and my group of classical musicians very much of guard. His style was the perfect opposite of Ahmad Jamal, in that everything was smooth, nothing felt crystalline or detached from the rest of the body. Which I felt was a terrific approach toward the hard bop style the band was after. For his Solo’s Robert would begin with more pronounced and sparse pronunciations of the changes. He would slowly move into arpeggiatic melodic motion and then to very quick free usually scalar melodies. I felt like this approach was great because some people who are new to jazz might not even notice that a pianist is taking a solo, and for those of us who knew what was going on we just got warmed up better. His posture would be scolded by any piano teacher, but it allowed him the total use of his body for interpretive faculty. He was all over that bench and he did everything short of standing up and pulling a Jerry Lewis. I thought that he band did a fantastic job, I felt that the years of experience the two brothers must have had together really came out in the music.