In composing his musical tribute to baseball border breaker Jackie Robinson, Bobby Bradford made some conceptual connections.
Blue was the team color of the Brooklyn Dodgers; the blues is the dominant hue of Bradford's suite. "Stealin' Home" was Robinson's baserunning specialty; in order to integrate baseball, he had to steal a home. Robinson improvised and found new ways to harmonize; that's what jazz is all about.
Robinson grew up in Pasadena, where Bradford has taught music for many years. Robinson briefly taught basketball at the Texas high school which Bradford later attended.
The Robinson-Bradford commonalities helped to engender the natural feel of "Stealin' Home," which often draws from an ensemble sound reminiscent of Charles Mingus and Eric Dolphy -- musical partners raised in Los Angeles who made their names in New York, just as Pasadena-bred Robinson did.
In some ways, composer Mingus relates to soloist Dolphy as Bradford does to the somewhat younger Vinny Golia, a New York-to-Los Angeles transplant who has shared stages and studios with Bradford on hundreds of occasions. Tonight, out of his copious woodwind options, Golia chose Dolphy's main instruments -- alto sax and bass clarinet.
Golia even sounded like Dolphy at times. After ripping post-bop alto lines to complement the energy and conflict of Robinson's military service, Golia's bass clarinet underbubbled the apprehensive excitement of the player's rise to the major league, and added evil baritone-sax growls to accentuate the hostility that met Robinson's early road trips.
This was an all-star band, spotlighted by Bradford's writing mode, wherein a melodic statement of mood -- mournful expectancy, stately dignity, uptempo challenge -- was followed by a world series of solos. Don Preston's piano switched easily from wild star-sprinkles to trudging blues. Chuck Manning's flowing tenor sax cried with down-home soulfulness one moment and Coltranelike aspiration the next. Henry Franklin kept stinging extra-bass drives. William Roper alternated between tuba blasts and improvised vocal commentary ("It's so out in here"). Proud goddess Tina Raymond crisply framed and accented the scenes with avantish omniscience. And all often collided into mass jams that located thrillingly unexpected harmonic nexi.
As Bradford ages, his cornet and trumpet solos exude more and more intuitive grease, finding spaces the way Albert Pujols, no longer expected to club a home run every day, might stroke a key RBI grounder through the infleld. Bradford's a Hall of Famer. Around L.A., we have our own interpretation of the B on the old-time Dodgers cap.
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You can still watch this performance here. Donations to the World Stage encouraged here.