Review: Jazz piano great leads amazing quintet in Bay Area debut
The bandstand was filled with players who presumably were very happy with the outcome of Super Bowl LIX.
“This band is known as ‘Four of Us Are from Philly and One of Us Is Not,'” joked legendary pianist Kenny Barron as he introduced his quintet to a packed house of jazz lovers on Thursday night (April 10) at SFJAZZ Center in San Francisco.
Sure, Mike Rodriguez hails from Queens, rather than the City of Brotherly Love, but we like to believe that the trumpeter still had the good taste to enjoy watching the Philadelphia Eagles triumph over Taylor Swift and the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL’s title game back in February.
Yet, as far as pure enjoyment goes, that lopsided gridiron matchup certainly had nothing on what Barron and company — Rodriquez, bassist Christian McBride, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins and drummer Johnathan Blake — delivered on Thursday.
It was 90 minutes of pure jazz bliss as Barron kicked off the first of four nights at SFJAZZ. He’ll perform in a different setting each night, following up Thursday’s quintet gig with a solo piano show on Friday and a performance with a chamber orchestra on Saturday. Barron plans to close out the run on Sunday with the West Coast premiere of a new chamber work with harmonica player Grégoire Maret, flutist Elena Pinderhughes and cellist Noah Johnson. (He also plans to play two sold-out trio sets at the Kuumbwa Jazz Center in Santa Cruz on Monday.)
All of those very different shows should be thrilling in their own ways — and, at last check, tickets were still available for the remaining Barron SFJAZZ dates at sfjazzz.com. Yet, it’s hard to imagine that any of them will top what we saw from the pianist and his vastly accomplished sidemen on Thursday.
From the moment the first note was played on the opening rendition of Wayne Shorter’s legendary “Footprints,” the group was absolutely working in the pocket and grooving together like they’d been sharing the stage for years. The sense of synergy was astounding, as players’ styles and contributions quickly fell together like pieces of a puzzle, and it was amazing to later learn that this was all happening during what was the very first time this particular quintet had ever performed together.
How is that even possible?
“Every so often you get one of those special quintets,” McBride would remark to me after the show.
The group underscored that statement at every turn in this performance, moving from an epic 20-minute version of “Footprints” — which offered up meaty leads from everyone except McBride — right into a gorgeous take on the new Barron original “Tragic Magic” from the pianist’s latest album, “Beyond this Place” (featuring both Wilkins and Blake).
McBride did get a nice spotlight in “Tragic Magic,” grabbing the moment — and his bass — with those powerful hands of his and delivering one mind-blowing rhythmic exploration after another. Yes, the bassist does hail from Philly, but Bay Area jazz fans would be excused for thinking he might actually be a local these days — given how much time he’s spent at SFJAZZ and other venues recently. In the past few weeks, McBride has performed multi-night runs with his own Ursa Major band as well as part of a trio with pianist Brad Mehldau and Marcus Gilmore, before settling back into SFJAZZ for a one-night stand with this awesome quintet.
The four sidemen departed the stage following “Tragic Magic,” leaving Barron alone at the piano to work his magic on — well — a tune that he momentarily forgot the title to.
“Don’t worry — I’ll play it,” he remarked to the crowd. “And you can tell me what it is.”
Baron, an 81-year-old bandleader who has appeared on hundreds of recordings during a career that dates back to the early ’60s, sounded great on everything he played and seemed thrilled to be working in front of a band with such firepower.
The group really flexed its collective muscle on the Latin jazz dance tune “Thoughts and Dreams,” a Barron original hailing from 2002’s “Canta Brasil,” and then upped its game to an even higher level with a glorious take on Thelonious Monk’s brilliant “Well, You Needn’t” that was highlighted by Blake’s thunderous work on the drums.
The group closed the show in satisfying fashion with “Baile” — another Barron original, this time from the 2018 quintet work “Concentric Circles.” And then the legendary pianist was finally willing to share something that he’d been keeping from audience members — and, honestly, we could’ve never have guessed — during the show. And the big reveal was that the middle finger on his right hand was injured and “hurt like hell” while he performed.
“I wasn’t at my best,” Barron admitted. “But I did my best.”
He certainly did. And the result was an absolute pleasure to behold. it’s strongly recommended that Bay Area jazz fans follow suit and try to catch Barron in concert this weekend.