Reimagining ‘Sgt. Pepper’s’
Jazz bassist and composer Jeff Denson grew up on “Revolver,” “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and other imperishable Beatles albums his mother played regularly at home in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.
Denson’s colleagues in the San Francisco String Trio — violinist Mads Tolling and guitarist Mimi Fox, both of whom teach at the California Jazz Conservatory, where Denson is a professor — also have the Beatles in their blood. So it seemed natural to make their first record together a trio version of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the 1967 masterpiece Denson calls “the most experimental and psychedelic of the Beatles’ albums,” a studio creation that could never be performed live.
“It’s really the pinnacle of the psychedelic music of the period, using elements of musique concrète, taped music. The melodies are beautiful. It’s highly creative art music,” says Denson, who has played with alto saxophone giant Lee Konitz for a decade and leads his own Bay Area quartet featuring bassoonist Paul Hanson.
Denson adds he figured it would be fun to take this unperformable, effects-laden music and “play it in a very pure acoustic setting, bring it down to the most pared-down ensemble: violin, guitar and double bass.”
He, Tolling and Fox spent two years crafting the lean yet abundantly varied arrangements on “May I Introduce to You,” the debut recording of the San Francisco String Trio, which plays music from its “Sgt. Pepper’s” homage Sept. 7 at Berkeley’s Freight & Salvage, the day before the release of this pleasing collection.
Denson wrote a third of the arrangements, including “Fixing a Hole,” which moves in a kind of African groove and has a re-harmonized chorus he says uses more chords than the Beatles used on the entire album. Denson sings a few songs, too, like Tolling’s jauntily swinging version of “Getting Better” — the one track flavored with a bit of vocal overdubbing — and Denson’s arrangement of the plaintive, hallucinatory “A Day in the Life.”
“I really went to town on that one,” says the 40-year-old musician. “Almost the entire piece is notated. I tried to make it as orchestral as possible, while deploying three instruments and a voice.”
The album, he adds, casts a wide stylistic net, with elements of jazz, bluegrass, folk and classical music.
“The three of us grew up with this music and have a connection to it,” Denson says. “It’s like playing jazz standards. We know the melodies, and that gives us the room and comfort to interpret them.”
For more information, go to www.freightandsalvage.org.
Tompkins tribute at Brower Center
Doug Tompkins, the noted conservationist, philanthropist and co-founder of North Face and Esprit who died in 2015 of hypothermia after his kayak capsized on General Carrera Lake in southern Chile, is being honored with the David Brower Center’s ninth annual Art/Act Award and Exhibition.
The exhibition, opening Sept. 24 at the Berkeley environmental center, features immersive color photographs by longtime Tompkins associate Antonio Vizcaíno of wildlife habitats and parkland in Chile and Argentina preserved by the Tompkins Conservation — including a beautiful aerial shot of Chile’s Yenegaia National Park that reads like a flowing abstraction in reds, blues and greens — as well as images by other photographers and family pictures.
For more information, go to https://browercenter.org.
Payne bids symphony adieu
Steven Payne, credited with expanding the Oakland Symphony’s financial support and profile during his fouryear stint as executive director, is leaving. The symphony’s development and marketing consultant, Cristine Kelly, will run the show while the board searches for a permanent successor.
Under Payne’s leadership, the 55-year-old Oakland Symphony Chorus made its first international tour, concertizing in Budapest, Vienna and Prague. The Oakland Symphony Youth Orchestra also became one of the first such American ensembles to visit Cuba after President Barack Obama opened the door.
Payne is chilling here at home, mulling his next move.
For more information, go to www.OaklandSymphony.org.
Four hand stride
Mike Lipskin, the veteran Bay Area stride jazz pianist who was mentored by Harlem stride master Willie “The Lion” Smith, teams up with ragtime specialist Terry Waldo at Piedmont Piano on Aug. 26.
Lipskin and Waldo, a protege of the celebrated ragtime and early-jazz pianist Eubie Blake, are slated to play solos and duets. Expect them to cover a swath of music by Fats Waller, James P. Johnson and Scott Joplin, a taste of Duke Ellington and Jelly Roll Morton.
For more information, go to www.piedmontpiano.com.