Kenny and co masters of jazz
Kenny Barron Trio, NZ International Jazz & Blues Festival, Kenny Barron (piano), Kiyoshi Kitagawa (bass) and Johnathan Blake (drums), The Piano, 26 May
We’re blessed with many firstclass concerts in this city, but once in a while something comes along that outstrips the rest and is simply unforgettable.
I’ve long been a fan of Kenny Barron ever since I heard his recordings with my all-time favourite jazz artist Stan Getz, so wild horses weren’t going to keep me away, but what transpired demanded rapturous applause for the soloing throughout and brought the audience to its feet at the end.
The programme was a smooth mix of standards and Barron originals, with subtle stylistic shifts within each piece, and a well-placed 10-minute medley of Ellington/Strayhorn ballads which Barron played solo.
For the many jazz students (of whatever age!) present, the trio demonstrated supreme musical skill, technical mastery and a textbook treatise on fluid creative thought, each player sensing and anticipating what the other two were up to brilliantly.
Hearing drummer Johnathan Blake take an idea and weave it into something intense and complex that was several levels up (Bud-Like) and watching the physicality of Kiyoshi Kitagawa pushing his playing to the absolute limit (Shuffle Boil), with spread chords and twisting pitch-bends, was breathtaking. But the night and the ensemble revolved around the supreme talent of Barron.
His lucid and wonderfully melodic improvising was a tour de force of the jazz pianist’s art, the elegant arabesques always retaining their integrity and the essence of the song.
Barron’s ideas simply poured out of him, from bossa groove to sensitive ballad, angular rhythmic insistence (Shuffle Boil) through to the catchy Calypso that closed the show and, of course, the Ellington/ Strayhorn medley which took great tunes and framed them so perfectly.
In Blake and Kitagawa, Barron has two worthy counterparts. Blake used an array of sticks and brushes to make his kit sing – yes, the sounds he conjured up echoed the tune, but when he cut loose (How Deep is the Ocean) he brought the house down, lashing at the kit in a flurry of cross-rhythms and dynamic energy, totally at the other end of the spectrum to the subtlety of the likes of Cook’s Bay– simply jaw-dropping!
Kitagawa underpinned the texture with clarity and precision and in his solos we heard every note of the harmonies, a near impossible feat.
– Patrick Shepherd