The defining moment in bassist Ray Brown’s first set Tuesday night at the Jazz Showcase came in one of the most familiar of all jazz compositions: Thelonious Monk’s ” ‘Round Midnight.”
Playing the piece entirely with the bow and accompanied only by pianist Geoff Keezer’s softly stated chords, Brown produced a warmly radiant, lustrous tone one sooner expects to encounter in a solo string suite by Bach. Indeed, because Brown consistently focused on the middle and upper registers of his instrument, he suggested the sound of a cello in its most lyric voice.
Brown’s performance of ” ‘Round Midnight” epitomized the virtues of this set, pointing to the sensuousness of the man’s sound and to his ability to redefine a well-worn tune on his own terms.
To varying degrees, every piece that Brown and his first-rate trio played presented a similar combination of exceptional tone color and profound reinvention of familiar themes.
Consider the trio’s radical account of “Lil’ Darlin’,” the Count Basie standard that is surely in the working repertoire of every high school big band from here to Red Bank, N.J.
Brown and friends took the piece at an outrageously slow tempo yet sacrificed none of the rhythmic cheekiness and melodic elegance of the tune.
Why bother to turn “Lil’ Darlin’ ” into a tour de force of leisurely rhythm and tempo? Because the casual pacing allowed the trio to produce a lushness of sound that the standard tempo simply would not accommodate.
To hear Brown, Keezer and drummer Greg Hutchinson transform the work into an atmospheric jazz nocturne was to admire the imaginative power of the musicians and the malleability of the composition itself.
The reinventions of familiar repertory did not end there. The trio rewrote Monk’s “In Walked Bud,” giving it a looser and more rambunctious reading than it typically receives. And the musicians played Miles Davis’ “Freddie Freeloader” at a brisker clip and with breezier, less deliberate phrasing than one usually hears in this music.
Brown has been a regular headliner at the Showcase for years, but the alertness and savvy of this trio stood out from previous performances.
Performing arrangements that clearly had been designed to
take full advantage of the musical and technical strengths of each artist, Brown and friends offered the best of both worlds: witty writing and unmistakable spontaneity.
Pianist Keezer carried his own weight, and then some, producing no two passages that sounded alike. By perpetually shifting from chordal work to fleet arpeggios to dialogues between the hands, the man offered a litany of intelligent ways to address a keyboard.
Regardless of which pianistic technique Keezer used, however, the intent was to emphasize the appeal of the ensemble. By filling out textures one moment, and providing lyric counterpoint to Brown the next, Keezer gave this trio much of its sonic allure.
Drummer Hutchinson stayed close to his two collaborators, proving particularly adept with brushes. Here was a drummer who regarded himself not simply as timekeeper but as an integral contributor to the subtle and constantly shifting colors of this trio.
The anchor for all this glorious sound, of course, remained Brown, whose plush timbres and nimble rhythms still stand among the glories of the instrument.
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The Ray Brown Trio plays through Sunday at the Jazz Showcase, 59 W. Grand Ave. Phone 312-670-BIRD.
