Hitomi Oba
Many tenor saxists blow; Hitomi Oba breathes. Her quartet's calm confidence felt like a model approach to hard times.
Oba began with a traditional Japanese travel song, moved on to a playful fugue, and finished with an interpretation of a graphic score rife with Coltranish arpeggios, all supported by the flexible push and relaxed swing of drummer Justin Brown and bassist Jake Leckie. Sometimes gyrating slightly in a flowing pantsuit, Oba approached her reed with the intimate ease of a garden conversation. In fact, the performance found its strongest drawing power in her interaction with alto saxist Sam Gendel, with whom, she said, she had first played jazz. Chasing, harmonizing, uniting, blending overtones, the two often seemed like two hands in service to one mind.
Weather, imagination, aspiration. In this together.
Gene Coye's Jazz Gene
"We're gonna have some fun, so vibe with us." Drummer Gene Coye's easy smile guaranteed it.
Coye built this trio around pianist Adam Hersh, who played as if he had been somehow extracted from 1962, when bebop was unexpired and musicians were stretching out into melodic/modal territory. Sort of a Bill Evans to Keith Jarrett thing, but Coye's steady foot, and the way he surrounded his central beats with emphatic toms, put him in a rockier place than, say, Jimmy Cobb.
The three leaned on bop for the first two tunes, then slid into a romantic ballad with Hersh stroking electric piano; Frank Abraham switched from standup to greasy Fender bass for another ballad, bobbing his Dodgers cap as Hersh chose the simplest piano notes a pianist has ever had the discipline to delineate; Coye worked magic with fuzzy mallets.
The trio returned to percussive mode for the closer, Stevie Wonder's syncopated, wonderfully harmonized "Too High." The screen went black for the last several minutes, but it was time to close eyes and bliss out anyway.
Christian Euman Quintet
Christian Euman wrote & played his way out of the doldrums with a three-part suite commissioned by the L.A. Jazz Society. (Money well spent in a number of cases this past year; kudos to the LAJS for its New Note program.)
Bassist Dave Robaire stalked a dark groove in the wordlessly narrative first segment, which ended in a musical question mark; then he broke into an unhurried blues walk for the interior beauty of the second segment, where Euman's drums tumbled like a stream over boulders. Paul Cornish pulled springy solos out of a Wurlitzer electric piano; trombonist Ido Meshulam grew excited over a dream of freedom.
Josh Nelson's acoustic piano got through a trepidatious mood thanks to soothing trombone and hushed cymbals. Finally, the band poked heads from burrows to marvel at the splendor of nature returned.
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Through November 2, you can watch all 12 of this year's Angel City Jazz Fest presentations for $20 (total!) by ordering here. Thanks for another great festival, pulled off with imagination and high standards against all odds.