What happens when New Orleans’ best jazz band meets Chicago’s most chameleonic musician?
The room goes up for grabs, as it did over the weekend when the Crescent City’s Astral Project shared the stage with Howard Levy, Chicago’s extravagantly versatile multi-instrumentalist.
Though Astral Project has thrived as a New Orleans phenomenon for more than two decades, the quintet’s visits to Chicago in recent years have made the band enormously popular here. Yet the throng that turned out at the Green Mill on Saturday night got more than they bargained for, since Levy was subbing for Astral Project pianist David Torkanowsky.
Because Levy is at least as virtuosic on harmonica as he is on piano, the audience in effect heard an expanded version of Astral Project, with Levy sometimes playing both instruments at once. The hand-in-glove merger of Levy’s expressive harmonica with the band’s extraordinarily tight rhythm section enriched the Astral Project experience.
Consider “Sidewalk Strut,” an Astral Project signature tune that combines the spirit of New Orleans second-line parade rhythm with sinuously chromatic phrases and unabashedly modern harmonies. This catchy piece, by guitarist Steve Masakowski, rarely fails to win over an audience, but this time it was more than an attractive exploration of New Orleans street rhythms.
Levy’s harmonica solo–with its audaciously bent blue notes and urgently lyrical phrasings–made “Sidewalk Strut” a more profound piece. Moreover, Levy’s harmonica, which shared front-line duties with Tony Dagradi’s hard-charging tenor saxophone and Masakowski’s ultra-linear guitar, added significantly to the depth of sound and intricacy of texture.
Levy outdid himself in a samba by Masakowski, playing blues-drenched lines on harmonica while accompanying himself in unison on piano. Yet this was not a stunt. By juxtaposing the same lines on two instruments, Levy created subtle colors and ethereal sonic effects that would have been impossible to achieve on either instrument alone.
The man is a force on any instrument he plays. Yet he couldn’t have been nearly so effective without Astral Project, probably the longest-running band in New Orleans (the Preservation Hall Jazz Band doesn’t come close, since its personnel has changed continuously over the years).
No doubt Astral Project has flourished because the players continually find new ideas and inspiration in each other’s work. Drummer Johnny Vidacovich, bassist James Singleton, Dagradi and Masakowski know each other well enough to anticipate changes in meter, tempo, key, texture and you-name-it.
So when Levy abruptly cut the tempo in half in a fast-flying piece or offered up Bach-like counterpoint on Dagradi’s “The Whole Truth,” Astral Project responded without missing half a beat.
The next time the New Orleans musicians go into the studio, they ought to bring along Levy, who was born to play in this band.
