Easy, Breezy, but Still Meaty

The summer heat wave gives us the chance to trade our jackets and ties for Hawaiian-Caribbean shirts — and, if we’re lucky, briefcases for bongo drums. It’s a time for listening to breezy jazz that, though light and fun, is no less musically rich that the serious stuff.Two programs offered just that recently. Jazz at Lincoln Center and the 92nd Street Y both presented evenings that illustrated the wonderful things that can happen when Pan-American music meets North American jazz. The JLC program at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola, “A Celebration of Ray Barretto & Hilton Ruiz,” was the third and final week of the “Latin In Manhattan” festival. The show celebrated two masters who left us earlier this year: the pioneering conguero Ray Barretto, who passed away in February, only a few weeks after being named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the The Arts; and Hilton Ruiz, the brilliant pianist who died in May (just weeks before his 54th birthday) under circumst ances yet to be explained by the city of New Orleans.The group assembled at Dizzy’s was patterned after Barretto’s sextet and features several of that band’s regulars, including trumpeter Joe Magnarelli, trap drummer Vince Cherico (who both played Dizzy’s with Barretto himself last summer), and other frequent collaborators with both men, such as bassist Boris Kozlov, pianist John DiMartino, Vicente “Little Johnny” Rivero on congas, and the late bandleader’s son, Chris Barretto, on tenor sax. Two additional saxists, Sonny Fortune (alto) and David Sanchez (tenor) were announced as special guests.Although Barretto had a longstanding career in Latin music, he first got the attention of the jazz world as guest percussionist on dozens of hard bop albums. When Barretto eventually organized his own jazz combo, it sounded a lot like the Jazz Messengers or the Horace Silver Quintet in a Latin bag. That was the basic groove in the late show on Wednesday, like Art Blakey playing “A Night In Tunisia,” an artful blend of bop and Afro-Latin elements, which began with Wayne Shorter’s “United,” introduced by the Jazz Messengers in 1961, followed by Margarita Lecuona’s “Taboo,” a Cuban standard from 1934.The third tune was particularly moving: It was Ruiz’s “The New Arrival,” featuring Mr. Sanchez, who said that Ruiz was an important mentor to him when he first came to America as a 19-year-old sax student from Puerto Rico. This positive memory was enough to make you forget that in his last few years, Ruiz was a mess as a bandleader — disorganized and unfocused (and seemingly determined to waste time with long, lame jokes). He compensated for with his brilliant playing. The octet at Dizzy’s played Ruiz’s music with more coherence than his own later bands did.John DiMartino eloquently spoke about the late Barretto’s passion for ballads and the great songs in general. (Barretto once told me his favorite Frank Sinatra song was the very rare “Suddenly It’s Spring,” which Sinatra only sang on the radio and never recorded.) Barretto also felt a great empathy with the music of Duke Ellington, with whom he shared a birthday. Mr. Fortune’s standout solo of the evening was “In A Sentimental Mood,” which he rendered in an expressive tone that was equal parts Johnny Hodges and John Coltrane.The group wound up with an Afro-Cuban treatment of the standard bop blues “Bags Groove” by Milt Jackson, using all four horns. Mr. DiMartino, who appears on most of Barretto’s Blue Note albums and who is also known for his work with singers, was especially impressive, not just in his solos, but in the way he set up the featured solos of the two drummers.These were not pure percussion excursions but rhythm section dialogues that accompanied Mr. Cherico and Mr. Rivero.These were not pure percussion excursions but rhythm section dialogues in which Mr. DiMartino made it possible for Mr. Cherico and Mr. Rivero to shine.The second week of Jazz In July at the 92nd Street Y opened with “Bossa Nova: The Brazilian Soul of Antonio Carlos Jobim,” which is one of four composer-driven concerts in the series this year.The others are inspired by the music of Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, and Harold Arlen. While Jobim is in not in their class as a composer, he wrote just enough classic songs to fill up a single evening; by contrast, it would take weeks to sample just the masterpieces of Ellington, Monk, and Arlen.No less than the music itself, what made Tuesday night’s presentation so memorable was artistic director Bill Charlap’s insistence that this was a hard-core jazz concert, not merely an evening of beach-centric ’60s nostalgia. To that end, he brought in three outstanding soloists: Latin specialist Conrad Herwig on trombone, tenor saxist Harry Allen, who does a mean impression of Stan Getz, and Renee Rosnes, who complimented his own work on piano.Filling the Brazilian quotient were the fine Trio da Paz (Romero Lubambo, guitar, Nilson Matta, bass, and Duduka da Fonseca, drums), percussion mad scientist Cyro Baptista, and vocalist Maucha Adnet, who toured with Jobim for many years (and has just released an album). Ms. Adnet’s singing was problematic; she seemed to have a cold and was not up to the standard she set the other times I’ve heard her, though she improved markedly when singing in Portuguese rather than English. She was excellent, as expected, on Jobim’s most ambitious song, “Águas de Março” (“The Waters Of March”).I still can’t figure out what that lyric means, but in this heat, those waters sounded more inviting than ever.wfriedwald@nysun.com

Easy, Breezy, but Still Meaty

Easy, Breezy, but Still Meaty

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