Morning Roundup: Goodbye, Abe Edition
Vegetate to Close at the End of the Month
D.C. Police Seek Suspect in Series of Bank Robberies
Suspect in 9-Year-Old's Murder Found Dead in D.C. Jail
Wizards Owner Abe Pollin Dies at 85
This review is long past due. DCist began its jazz coverage over six months ago and only now are we covering a performance at the venerable Twins Jazz. A mainstay of the D.C. jazz scene, first with its Colorado Ave. location and now with new digs on U Street, the club, especially on weekends, hosts respected musicians who draw national attention, but who are also a bit too experimental for venues such as Blues Alley or the Kennedy Center. The featured performer this past weekend was none other than Reggie Workman, a consummate artist who is not only a gifted musician, but who has also been working with Twins for the past several months in assembling his Sculptured Sound concert series, which has brought some of the most adventurous acoustic jazz musicians in the country to the nation's capital.
Workman, a bassist and composer, has been at the cutting edge of jazz since the 1960s, when he recorded seminal albums with artists such as John Coltrane, Art Blakey and Wayne Shorter. Workman is known not only for his full bodied tone and masterful technique, but also for his ability to straddle the line between traditional song forms and more avant-garde jazz stylings. Workman is also a dedicated educator, passing along his vast knowledge to the next generation of jazz musicians.
Workman's partners were drummer Rashied Ali and pianist Hal Galper. Ali, a pioneering drummer in the free jazz movement, is one of the first drummers who developed an interactive style of playing that abandoned a traditional metered and timekeeping approach to the instrument. Galper is a musician who has not achieved the level of notoriety he deserves, but is recognized in jazz circles as one of the most versatile and skilled pianists in the country.
Friday night's early set got off to a late start, because even jazz legends are unfortunately subject to the vagaries of traffic and parking on U Street. It was worth the wait: the group played a bold and audacious 90-minute set that was a masterclass on the importance of listening while playing. The concert involved a lot of nebulous interaction, but the three musicians were so skilled that it was difficult to tell whether they were abandoning the song form entirely, or whether they were so comfortable with the meter that they could displace beats and patterns at will. Though the music was very experimental, it never became overly self-indulgent. Even without a set meter, the trio would insinuate a harmonic form and structure that would slowly reveal itself to the attentive listener.
The night's first tune, a re-interpretation of the original "Milestones" (not the Miles Davis composition), began with an exploratory intro that developed into a frenetic interaction of Galper's cascading piano patterns over stabbing rhythmic accompaniment. The group also played what sounded like a recasting of the classic "Footprints", opening with a beautiful bass solo and then playing the tune over a loose 5/4 meter. The highlight of the set was a re-harmonized arrangement of "On Green Dolphin Street" that featured lengthy solos by each musician. Workman began with a sinuous bowed bass solo and Ali followed with a performance that showcased his experience and maturity. Thinking faster is better, many of today's drummers forget that less is often more and that technique can lie at odds with emotion. Ali, on the other hand, was not afraid to use silence and space to draw us in.
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