mfs@mhuxr.UUCP (SIMON) (12/17/84)
On the 14th, Public Television (channel 13 in the NYC area) broadcast a program taken from the 1984 Newport Jazz Festival entitled "Jazz comes home to Newport". It featured French pianist Michel Petrucciani and his trio, Dizzy Gillespie and an all-star group including James Moody, Walter Bishop, Jr, Ron Carter and Louis Bellson, the Stan Getz quartet and the Dave Brubeck quartet. The music was uniformly good. Carter, as usual, was wonderful, both as lead and comping behind Dizzy (who, incidentally, has been playing with renewed enthusiasm, after a couple of indifferent years.) Getz demonstrated why he is the best ballad player on the scene today with a couple of ravishing tunes including one by Billy Strayhorn. Brubeck's set would have been perfunctory were it not for a portly, bearded alto who swung extremely hard, demonstrating a raw, urgent tone. He pulled Brubeck into rousing versions of "Blue Rondo" and "Take Five" that were far removed from the "I want to sound like a dry martini" reserve of Desmond. This in turn led Brubeck to turn in a two fisted, powerhouse soloof unaccustomed force. The filming was outstanding, both of the musicians and of Newport and its bay. The ogling shots of minimally clad lovelies swaying to the music was kept to a tasteful minimum, as was the voice-over, which was both informative and discreet. In fact, the only thing wrong with the broadcast was that it was too damn short. I would have wished for more of the sublime interaction between Petrucciani and bassist Palle Danielson, or for more of the unjustly underrecorded Moody. One cannot, however, thank the producers enough for convincingly demonstrating that jazz is NOT obscure and abstruse, but FUN (Bellson in counterpoint behind Dizzy, Brubeck's bassist behind the alto, the crowd shots....) It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing Marcel Simon ..!mhuxr!mfs