Drummer Dexter Story's path to interpreting the racial disruptions of 1940s Los Angeles runs through the period's jazz. And he feels that music deeply.
With major help from 49-year-old pianist Eric Reed, who has made an exemplary career out of refreshing the bop tradition, Story's sextet presented only the second real performance of his "Bronzeville Little Tokyo Suite," commissioned in 2017 by the Asian Pacific Film Festival. The players' skill brought verve to ideas well worth developing.
The suite launched with the bluesy bepop of "Bonfire Jump" and nodded to other regional components with Latin jazz (through a Silvered lens), Japanese harmonic/drone touches, R&B flavorings and Coltrane-style preachifying. Reed rode Story's easy swing with a pianoforte mastery so confident and rhythmically clocked that one might've suspected he had sketched out his farflung improvisations in advance, which would have been impossible even with the sheet music everyone was eyeballing. Slickest of the supporting cast was super-munned guitarist Nadav Peled, who soloed with classic Gibson-hollowbody tone and served up harmony lines when the score demanded a dual riff behind young tenor saxist Randal Fisher, now a technical killer and a smart soloist across every range of the horn (I first saw him with the Ark when he was about 12). Upright bassist Brendon Owens stayed way deep in the pocket, and secret percussionist Carlos Niño subtly filled in spaces with shakers, drums and bells (and what the H was that wild fan instrument made out of peacock feathers?).
The sounds made us smile along with the open-faced Mr. Story. Considering the Japanese incarcerations, black ghettoizations and 1943 Zoot Suit Riot Latino beatdowns behind the music, though, some scowls and screams might have broadened the emotional palette. Story perhaps considered a contemporary protest song such as "Strange Fruit" the clear exception to the more sublimated local jazz climate, and didn't steer that way. Different South.
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This show was set up with small tables on which to place your beer or wine, an improvement over the previous row seating. And the new Cajun chef (food available on the patio beforehand) was getting rave reviews. Congrats to booker-interviewer-DJ Leroy Downs and gallery director Sam Milgrom for continuing a valuable jazz series.