Jazzfest Greats Bridge Two Eras
Spokane Falls Community College Jazz Festival Saturday, Feb. 10, SFCC
Two eras and two styles of jazz joined hands Saturday when Louie Bellson and Bob Berg took the stage at Spokane Falls Community College.
In his heyday, drummer Bellson anchored the bands of Ellington, Basie, Goodman, Dorsey, Tatum, Gillespie and Pearl Bailey.
Tenor saxophonist Bob Berg is a bebop-cum-fusion man. He played with Horace Silver and Cedar Walton and served three years in Miles Davis’s outfit.
Stints with Mike Berg and Chick Corea punctuate his solo career.
Saturday, Bellson and Berg showed how narrow the gap is between the big bands and mainstream bop.
Berg opened with the SFCC Jazz Ensemble, an excellent big band that stars veteran players and wet-behind-the-ears freshmen. He jumped right into it with a fluid, octave-skipping ballad, ideas flowing like warm lava.
Berg is an intense and intelligent player who has assimilated Coltrane. He’s also a theme-and-melody guy who stays close to the sinew of a piece.
He blew away the crowd with a long, inventive and unaccompanied solo and later engaged visiting drummer Keith Mallory, of Kansas City, in a furious sax-and-drum duet.
The contrast could hardly have been greater when the lanky, black-garbed Berg joined the diminutive and dapper Bellson for the second half.
Berg is modern and hard angles; Bellson is a gracious and welcoming host from the old school - he complemented the band, told jokes on himself and did a little soft-shoe shuffle for an encore.
But if Bellson’s a complete entertainer, he’s also a miraculous drummer. No one else plays with such meticulously ferocity.
He is economical in motion and has a lightness of touch that belies the reckless pace that sometimes occurs. He’s a marvelous brushman, having learned from the Basie drummer “Papa” Joe Jones, and more than one of his pieces featured gentle tap-dance rhythms.
In addition to the headliners, locals Brett Edstrom, Joe Brasch and Brian Ploeger played beautifully - Ploeger got off a heartbreakingly pretty flugelhorn solo on “Why Do I Love You?” - but the high point of the set may have been when Berg walked back to shake Bellson’s hand before leaving the stage.
Though they come from two different eras, each is a jazzman with all that implies, and the respect that passed between the two was palpable.
, DataTimes