a review by Alex Brooks
Hubbard Hall welcomed the Lande/Williamson Jazz Quartet to the Hall last Friday, which was attended by a very enthusiastic audience.
Art Lande and Bruce Williamson started their collaboration as young musicians in San Francisco in the 1970s, and they have played together regularly for 40 years. All four members of the current quartet have played with each other a lot, but never until this tour has this particular quartet played together. They are doing four dates. The first was at Bucknell in central Pennsylvania, the second in New Paltz, NY, then Hubbard Hall and a final date in New York City.
with drummer Tony Moreno behind him.
These four clearly love to listen to each other, and each strives both to respond to the other players, and to throw in new twists of their own. Dean Johnson’s bass provides a reliable foundation for much of the evening, but is also remarkably tuneful and creative when he occasionally steps to the forefront. Tony Moreno’s drumming is subtle and sophisticated, and occasionally explosive. He’s an interesting and exciting player ot listen to.
They start with a shared love of the tuneful jazz of the 1960s and 70s. They like to take simple or familiar tunes and put them through transformations, as when they launched into a twelve tone version of the show tune “Surrey With a Fringe on Top.” Their wide-ranging musical interests ranged from funky tunes that make you want to dance, to cerebral modern riffs, to Afro-Cuban styles. Several of the pieces written by Art Lande are being played for the first time on this tour. They closed with a jazzed-up version of “Blue Moon” that was quite a crowd-pleaser.
The music is very accessible and engaging. The quartet has a whimsical streak – they discovered that the floorboards in the performance space at Hubbard Hall creak, and they then incorporated the creaking into their performances. They even had a contest, in the middle of the concert, in which each member of the quartet improvised a piece played on the creaky floorboards by jumping about. Lande threw in some readings from Cormac McCarthy, and found many ways to get non-standard sounds from his piano, such as putting books on the strings.
It’s a treat to find this level of jazz in a rural upstate location. It’s like dropping in to a New York City jazz club – without the long drive.