| |
Full
Blown Trio (Burrell / Parker / Cyrille)
Buffalo NY, 24 November 2003
by John Chacona
February 2004
Dave Burrell is a difficult figure to pin down. It's not that his
music is impossible to grasp. On the contrary, he can be tenderly
melodic and deeply rhythmic. But those very qualities, I think, dilute
his avant-garde street cred. It doesn't help that he lives not in
New York, but in Philadelphia; you don't see Burrell's name come up
all that often. But musicians know how valuable he can be: Burrell
is a pianist with the entire history of the music under his fingers.
In late November, he brought an all-star trio with William Parker
and Andrew Cyrille to Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center on the evening
of the season's first big snowstorm. A tall man with a gentle,
lilting voice redolent of his childhood home of Hawaii, Burrell was
apparently the leader (he made the brief opening remarks), but yielded
the stage for the extended unaccompanied solos that opened each of
the evening's two sets.
William Parker was first, and with two bows, one above and one below
the bridge of his bass, launched a rocking melody that had the dignified
cadences of a spiritual. Using double stops, he sounded like an entire,
thrumming string orchestra, as colorful and textural as his trademark,
pajama-like clothing. Then he added high wordless moans and danced
in place, his footsteps resonating on the low concert platform (and
still playing with two bows!), creating a teeming forest at night
coming alive after a storm. Detuning a string on a single plucked
note, the trio entered in a loose, splashy rhythm for the pianist's
"Double Heartbeat". Burrell grimaced as he pulled notes
out of the baby grand, Parker was impassioned and Cyrille sat calmly
behind his kit, playing, as he did for most of the evening, with his
eyes closed.
The composition was a history lesson in miniature, a rhythmic whirlwind
that coalesced around a little descending unison phrase answered by
a raggy, off-center stride piano episode. Parker slapped like Milt
Hinton, and Cyrille played ancient vaudevillian licks. Some rumbling
from Burrell, arco Parker and grand, annunciatory, almost Tchaikovskian
chords introduced the whirlwind of the head, and the breathless journey
came to a head-shaking close.
The second set began with Cyrille unaccompanied, long and clean, before
shifting to brushes for a ballad reading of "They Say It's
Wonderful", with Burrell's almost stride left hand freeing
Parker to compose a tender countermelody. After a little vamp on the
concluding cadence, Burrell launched a straight stride chorus. The
vamp returned and Burrell stretched the melody, and then spanked chords
to fracture it into shining fragments. Cyrille played for maybe three
minutes on snare and kick drum alone before emerging in tempo for
the final eight bars of melody, and it was done, a tour de force that
brought the audience of fifty or so to its feet.
Parker and Burrell then launched an original blues. After a minute
or two, the blues veered toward the traditional, Burrell striding
in the left hand and Parker walking four and varying the volume of
his notes to build drama. When Cyrille entered (deliciously behind
the beat and right in the pocket), it could have been Sam Jones and
Louis Hayes up there. But Burrell's imagination is as restless
as it is wide-ranging and he quickly worried a lick of the turnaround
like he worried the closing cadence of the Rodgers and Hart standard.
It was a signal to go outside for a short episode, gathering shards
of melody that Burrell reassembled into "I'm In The Mood
for Love". He spun a little figure in the high register that
Parker echoed, and Cyrille's drums closed the set as they began
it, unaccompanied.
So much for what I heard. What did it mean? If you ask me, the references
to melody and traditional forms and the solid straight-ahead technique
flashed by all three players put the freer playing in context. I got
a powerful message that at the beginning of the new century, the music
played that night—rigorous yet free, technically impeccable
yet adventurous, humorous and as serious as your life—this music
is the mainstream. If so, it couldn't be in better hands.
|
|
|
|
|
