Leading his Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble, Davis gave Saturday evening's installment of the 33d annual Chicago Jazz Festival its most gripping moments.
Power, indeed, was at issue when most of the stage lights went out toward the beginning of Davis' "Amadeus Had a Dream," a quasi-classical piece bristling with complex, fugal passages. For what seemed like an eternity, the musicians kept playing in the near-dark, surely straining to read the score and remember whatever passages they couldn't see.
Somehow, they didn't miss a phrase. Better still, trumpeter Davis, his ensemble and soloists argued quite persuasively for a work that opened with 18th century counterpoint, switched to 21st century jazz-swing and closed with a dramatic, orchestral restatement of the opening theme.
In the hands of a less capable composer-conductor, this would have sounded like a lurching change in idioms. But it didn't. The inarguable melodic grace of the opening and the tonal majesty of the finale exquisitely framed the jazz-based centerpiece, with guest violinist Zach Brock offering the connective tissue between the two. In effect, Brock merged jazz rhythm with classical gestures, making his pivotal portion of "Amadeus Had a Dream" into something of a jazz violin concerto.
Davis' greater achievement came in the world premiere of his "Family Portraits," a tone poem commissioned for the occasion. Here, too, Davis and friends encountered the Petrillo Music Shell blues, in the form of acoustics that turned muddy as soon as the dynamic level rose to forte or louder.
If you factored out that periodic problem, however, "Family Portraits" emerged as one of Davis' strongest orchestral pieces to date, its sustained rhythmic and harmonic tension driving the work from first note to last. Unlike Davis' "Amadeus Had a Dream," this piece avoided shifts between classical and jazz and back. Instead, symphonic and jazz players spoke the same language, a relentless, pulsing music deeply indebted to Lalo Schifrin but no less exciting because of it.
Cassandra Wilson, one of the most distinctive singers in jazz, offered up that honeyed contralto of hers, but to diminished effect because of the environment. The sound engineers badly distorted the balance between her voice and her band at the start of her set and frequently thereafter. This rendered her opening performance of Bob Dylan's "Lay, Lady, Lay" surprisingly ineffective.
The Petrillo's acoustical blur made Wilson's ensemble – the best band accompanying any major jazz singer today – sound sadly ordinary (quite a feat, considering the presence of drummer Herlin Riley and bassist Reginald Veal).That the festival ended Wilson's set a mere 42 minutes after she walked on stage further reduced its effect.
Trio 3 + Geri Allen fared better on the Petrillo stage, its radical re-imaginings of music of Mary Lou Williams steeped in blue and unfettered in its use of dissonance and free-ranging solos.
Earlier in the day at the Jazz on Jackson Stage, Chicago pianist Jeremy Kahn got swindled by the elements, a threatened storm cutting short his transformation of music by Pepper Adams. What little Kahn and his ensemble were able to perform proved tantalizing, thanks to the originality of the arrangements and the exoticism of Kahn's harmonic choices.
On Friday evening at the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park, alto saxophonist Bobby Watson shared soulful exchanges with guitarist Bobby Broom and the Deep Blue Organ Trio. Then saxophonists Joe Lovano, David Liebman and Ravi Coltrane dove fearlessly into late-period John Coltrane (Ravi's father), the rigor of their playing inspiring to behold, though a few moments of calm amid the storms would have helped.
hreich@tribune.com
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