Puerto Rico Heineken JazzFest 2011 Day 2

By: Marcos Rios

The Second night of The Puerto Rico Heineken JazzFest kicked off with a quintet of brilliant jazz musicians led by the wonderful saxophone player Ted Nash. The quintet performed music from a suite commissioned from Jazz at Lincoln Center titled “Portrait in Seven Shades.” The concept behind the suite is that each of the movements was inspired by the paintings of artists such as Monet, Picasso, Dali, Van Gogh, Matisse and others. Although this is definitely not unfamiliar ground for composers, in that 20th century composers such as Morton Feldman and John Cage also drew inspiration from artistic influences, Nash’s “Portrait in Seven Shades” truly delves into the actual artist’s painting and the artist themselves in a musical way.

Ted Nash’s Quintet consisted of Marcus Printup (trumpet), Dan Nimmer (piano), Carlos Henriquez (bass), Ali Jackson (drums) and Ted Nash (Director/saxophone/flute). This world-class quintet was cookin’ through their entire set. The contrasting moods of the pieces kept the audience attention from start to finish. Nash’s saxophone playing had a pure and mature sound and his improvisation truly sound like himself, which tells me that Nash has assimilated a great deal of the jazz tradition, and at this point of his development is creating his own music. Nash is currently one of the most intricately passionate composer/arrangers I have ever heard and I can’t wait to hear more from him and his band.

Marcus Printup is a powerful melodic performer that knows when to move on from idea to idea, weaving them together by intuition and experience. Dan Nimmer’s piano playing was refreshing and a nice complement to the ensemble. I felt that Nimmer and Jackson could read each other’s minds throughout the set.

Chicago Legend Ramsey Lewis performed next with a quartet that included Joshua Ramos (bass), Charles Heath (drums), Henry Johnson (guitar) and Ramsey Lewis (piano). This group gave the audience an array of soulful grooves that proved that an 83 year old Ramsey Lewis still has it. Lewis’ solos contained a lot of space in which he just let the groove settle down similar to Ahmad Jamal’s use of space.

Lewis development from simple motives to longer lines was also apparent throughout the set. Henry Johnson’s solos were filled with soulful licks and bursts blues licks similar to George Benson and his guitar technique is flawless and astonishing to watch and listen to. Johnson’s performance reminds us why he’s one of the top guitarists in the scene today.

The Stanley Clarke Band consisted of David Nathan (keyboard), Ruslan Sirota (keyboard/piano), Ronald Bruner (drums) and Stanley Clarke (electric and acoustic bass). Clarke performed a selection of modern fusion music pieces from his Grammy award winning album The Stanley Clarke Band. Clarke is a great live performer especially within the context of virtuosic young musicians. In that Clarke demonstrates to the public his dominance of the instrument and how he gets the entire ensemble to interact with him and keep up with him.

Clarke’s touch and tone on his instrument is extraordinarily personal; one can feel every single aspect especially when he changes tones and different positions of playing the bass creates great dynamic changes within the context. Clarke is a master of motivic development especially of small pentatonic fragments, using motivic development to create tension and release as well as to create rhythms which interact with the ensemble. The pentatonic patterns are at times used the same way John Mclaughlin would, superimposing it over different types of harmony to create tension.

Ronald Bruner’s drummer was in an entire different level of many young drummers; Bruner is a virtuosic drummer with chops to spare. Ruslan Sirota’s keyboard playing to say the least is virtuosic and inspiring. Clarke has successfully assembled an ensemble of talented young musicians who are at a very young age playing at a very high level.

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