Review of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, "European Soundscapes," January 22, 2004
By Josef Woodard
While Wynton Marsalis' celebrated big band, Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, completes its current season at Alice Tully Hall in Manhattan, the operation's new home is in its final stages of construction a few blocks away. An aura of exciting and momentum hovers around the LCJO these days, an organization bringing newfound integrity to the presence of jazz in American culture. Programs at Lincoln Center are neat, intelligent affairs appealing to audiences with similar qualities, approached with the care more common in classical circles.
In January, the LCJO brought a highly selective curator's ear to the business of European influence on jazz, a subject which could easily fill several concerts, or a season. The concert, called "European Soundscapes," was at least a good introduction to the notion of European influence and input to the Great American art form, filled with good intentions and fine charts.
Not surprisingly, considering Marsalis' historicist conservatism, the material leaned into the jazz archives and virtually ignored more contemporary work, apart from the business of modern arrangements. Kenny Wheeler's lovely "A Gentle Piece," a characteristically pensive, probing compositions, was a rare example of more contemporary European musical thought.
Otherwise, the fare included such morsels as Toots Thielmanns' ever-sweet maze of a melody, "Bluesette," and George Shearing's "Lullaby of Birdland," about which Marsalis wryly commented, "Birdland was a center of jazz, and of course, an Englishman wrote the theme song." Kurt Weill's "Mack the Knife," made safe for jazz by Louis Armstrong, here became a ripe vehicle for soloists Victor Goines, alto sax, and Ronald Westray, trombone.
From the classical end of the spectrum, the band gave a lyrical, poetic reading of French composer Delibes' "Maids of Cadiz," made safe for jazz by Miles Davis' and Gil Evans on Miles Ahead. Even better, to hear Stravinsky's too-rarely performed "Ebony Concerto" live, and played with the right balance of swing and dead-on precision, was probably the highlight of the evening.
American music with a European bent also was considered valid for this special program, from Bill Evans' "Blues for Pablo" (Picasso), to Ellington's "The Apache Dance," from his only vaguely French-oriented 1962 album Midnight in Paris.
European musical guests were in the house, as well. Stefano Di Battista's pining alto sax provided an oddly dark introduction to the festive colors of "La Paloma" and also played an over-heated solo on Wheeler's otherwise introspective "Gentle Piece." Further saxophonic gymnastics came from a special visitor to New York at the time, 14-year-old prodigy Francesco Cafiso, who Marsalis had met in Italy last summer and invited to New York. While there, Cafiso sat in at the LCJO concert and performed in various sets at the IAJE (International Association of Jazz Educators) conference in town that week. He packs a lot of chops and wisdom into young frame.
The Django Reinhardt connection was established both through a version of John Lewis' classic "Django," opening the concert in a solo piano version by Eric Lewis, and, later in the program, Reinhardt's own tune "Impromptu," based on the chords to "Bebop." The guitar great's response to the liberating texture and feel of bebop translated into a brisk combo workout on the program. "Volcano," Kenny Clarke's tune heard in an arrangement by Francis Boland, proved to be a fine showcase for drummer Herlin Riley's eloquent intensity. Riley is one of the many sturdy supportive elements in LCJO, a band in the upper ranks of existing big band culture in America.
It would be interesting to hear them expound upon the European musical connection deeper, and with more up-to-the-modern-moment relevance, but this program was a fine and resonant introduction.
Peter CINCOTTI
By Josef Woodard
At last summer's Jazz a Vienne festival, the jazz vocalist night in the amphitheater turned out to be a telling - and slightly strange - study in contrasts. In one corner, we heard the veteran headliner Shirley Horn. Despite ailments slowing her down and prohibiting her from playing the piano these days, she maintained her cool, flexibility and even a sense of hopeful, youthful adventure.
Opening the evening was a new old-school pianist-singer on the scene, Peter Cincotti, barely out of adolescence and playing his cards straight down the middle. His set wouldn't have been out of place 40 years ago.
"That was unbelievable, opening for Shirley Horn," Cincotti said later, recalling the Vienne evening. "She's one of my favorite musicians and one of my biggest influences. She did an album with Johnny Mandel that's one of my favorites, Here's to Life." It was just another eye-opening experience for the eager jazz newcomer.
The New York-born and raised Cincotti, who was inspired by and also championed by the similarly Sinatra-esque crooner Harry Connick, Jr., takes on songs mostly written before he was born, from "Ain't Misbehavin,'" to the songbooks of Lennon/McCartney and Blood, Sweat and Tears' "Spinnin' Wheel," but not much more modern than that.
Basically, Cincotti is a clean cut songman with a deep sense of history. He has a clean-burning piano style and a certain panache when he dips into stride piano tradition. Releasing his well-received debut album on Concord Records last year, and touring the world to appreciative audiences, Cincotti seems to have emerged at the right time, tapping into an appetite for pre-rock and roll standards supported by the likes of Diana Krall, Connick, Jr., John Pizzarelli and Jane Monheit, among others.
The man-out-of-time persona fits Cincotti like a tailored vintage suit. At the time of an interview in the fall, he was preparing for a role in a movie, Beyond the Sea, about singer Bobby Darin, starring Kevin Spacey. In the film, Cincotti will play Dick Behrke, Darin's piano-playing musical director and sidekick.
Onstage, you sense that Cincotti is still finding himself, and is trying on different musical roles for himself. Whatever he evolves into, Cincotti has an easy, flowing talent to warm up a room, or an amphitheater.
Jazz Hot : Do you generally feel that you're a student of musical history, for instance, in researching this role in the Bobby Darin film?
Peter Cincotti : As far as researching the role, part of the reason I was cast is that there are a lot of similarities I'm playing and me. He's on tour, he's touring all over the world playing music playing with his friends. A lot of the lifestyle is exactly what I'm going through right now in my career. So it's not like I was asked to play a Pakistani cab driver. It wasn't that much of a stretch. That's what's great about it. I relate very much to this guy.
Bobby Darrin went through many different musical phases, from '50s rock and roll to more standards with big band arrangements, into a folk period... he had a lot of musical stages in his career, and Dick Behrke went right along with him.
In that era, there wasn't nearly the divide between pop and jazz that there is now. In your career, you're coming from jazz back into pop, maybe. Do you think about those stylistic trajectories?
Back 50 or 60 years ago, a lot of jazz was pop music at that time. That was the popular music of the day. A lot has changed in the last 50 years.
You opened up for Shirley Horn at Vienne last summer, on your travels. Are you getting a chance now, in this situation, to play with, or meet a lot of your heroes?
To a certain extent, yeah. It can be surreal. Another one was getting to open for Ray Charles in Montreal. That was so exciting for me. I remember watching his entire show after I played. I learned so much just by watching him, watching his command on the music and the way he cued the musicians. It was really amazing. I got to talk to him for about twenty minutes after the show, one on one. I couldn't believe it. There's another guy who isn't stuck in one style. He includes so much.
When did you decide to go the route of the singer-pianist. You started out on piano, right?
Yeah. I do consider myself a piano player first. I've been playing since I was three, and then I started singing when I was 15, relatively later on.
Which wasn't that long ago...
No. Musically, and with the styles in which I've been playing, it was never calculated. It keeps changing. That's the beauty of it for me. What I was playing when I was ten was different from what I played at 13. When I was 19, I got a chance to record my record, which represents where I am musically at that age. The next record will be representative of where I am at that point.
So much has changed over the last year. A year is a long time for a musician. A lot changes, especially earlier on. I've been writing a lot more, and lyrics, too, which I never did before a year ago. I want to explore different musical contexts and sounds. It's exciting to have the opportunity to document it. I can't wait to make the next record.
On your debut album, it's a cohesive mix. You go from "I Stepped Out of a Dream" to "Spinning Wheel-" done in a stride style. Were you conscious of representing your diverse musical interests there?
Yes. We wanted to create a theme of old and new on the record. It's not like "Spinning Wheel" or the Beatles are new, but the music is representative of different generations. I combine "Fool on the Hill," the Beatles song, with Nat King Cole's "Nature Boy" and had a chance to create a hybrid of these generations. A lot of different generations are important to me, everything from pop to rock to jazz.
A lot of my CDs in my collection would surprise people who have heard my first record. That's representative of where I was, but there's so much music I listen to and so much out there to absorb, it's overwhelming at times.
With "Spinning Wheel," I wanted to use the Blood, Sweat and Tears song to pay tribute to Erroll Garner, one of my favorite old-time jazz piano players. That was the thought behind that album, to combine a lot of things.
I asked John Pizzarelli if he felt like something of a geek, being into the great American songbook while his peers were more into pop culture. You're a generational further along from him, and by the time you were into music, Harry Connick, Jr. had helped put those songs in the mainstream culture, hadn't he?
In a certain sense, yeah.
Were you a geek, in a positive way?
Of course. No, I don't think so. The music that liked never created any kind of a rift me and other kids my age. We all had our interests and even the music listen to now, some of it is the same as other kids my age and some of it isn't. But it never affected any personal relationships or anything like that.
Who were the pianists you were most influenced by?
There have been so many. I would kind of listen to one guy, absorb as much as I could and then move on to the next. I went through a lot of phases. Oscar Peterson was one of the first guys. Then there was Bill Evans, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Red Garland, Bud Powell, going back to Fats Waller and Art Tatum. So many good piano players. There's so much.
It sounds like you're very open to different music, and a lot of jazz musicians get locked into one groove or another. Is that important for you to stay open-minded?
Yeah, I think that's the beauty of music. There are no rules. You play music because you can escape from the rules of society. It's about emotions, and there are no rules when it comes to that stuff. I try to listen to everything. What I love one year I may not love the next and what I hate one year I may love the next year. I've gone through so many phases like that.
I'm constantly discovering new music every day. When I write music, some of the influences from other musicians come through, and influences from life and personal experiences also comes through. That's what music is about-it represents what happens every day in peoples' lives. There are no rules. That's what it comes down to.