To the Wigmore Hall for an evening of Jazz. We hadn’t yet seen jazz pianist/arranger/composer Emmet Cohen, although I think he has been curating the jazz at Wigmore Hall for a while now. Emmet’s previous dates/gigs hadn’t worked for us.
This was a good chance to see him with a couple of his regular buddies as a trio: Joey Ranieri on bass and Joe Farnsworth on percussion.
We heard:
- Frederick Loewe – I’ve grown accustomed to her face
- Bud Powell – Budo
- Ernesto Lecuona – La Comparsa
- Ralph Blane & Hugh Martin – The Trolley Song
- Tadd Dameron – If You Could See Me Now
- Ray Brown – Lined With a Groove
- Emmet Cohen – Universal Truth Suite: I. Compassion, II. Eternal Glimpse, III. Universal truth
- Scott Joplin – Original Rags (arranged by Emmet Cohen)
- Harold Mabern – Rakin’ and Scrapin’ (arranged by Emmet Cohen)
You don’t have to take my word for it – here’s a link to the Wigmore Hall archive resource on this concert.
They were very good.
Here’s a YouTube of the three of them playing together in Switzerland a couple of years ago – but not playing one of the pieces we heard:
They look a bit less joyous in Switzerland – possibly they were on “stronger meds” when at The Wig. The audience for sure were well “medicated” – the bar was heaving with people before the concert…as were the loos. Very few familiar faces – not many of us Wigmore Hall Mafia dig early music and jazz.
Here is a link to the entire gig that those three did in Amsterdam a few days before they arrived at The Wig – there will be many similarities and overlaps:
I’m guessing that the Dutch do better meds than Swiss.
Of course, this is incredibly accomplished stuff and Janie and I enjoyed ourselves very much.
Some of the music choices are not quite to our taste – tunes from musicals of the 40s and 50s tend to sound corny to our ears and, to some extent, even more so when syncopated into cool jazz. The Trolley Song, in particular, could, for me, only conjure up a vision of Judy Garland dressed in Edwardian finery.
The only other issue we have with this style of jazz concert is the “mutual admiration society” style chat, about each other and about jazz masters past and present with whom they have worked. I realise that there is a type of jazz maven who likes to hear all that stuff, but we prefer to let the music speak for itself. There’s also something “not quite our style” about self-aggrandisement.
But this nit-picking does not detract from a thoroughly enjoyable evening of top quality jazz musicianship, for which we are grateful. We think the acoustics of the Wigmore Hall work brilliantly for small jazz combos such as this trio, although Emmet suggested at one point that he finds the acoustics of the hall “a bit weird”.
Anyway, as Janie and I have said repeatedly to the powers that be at The Wigmore Hall over the years with regard to jazz – more of this please.