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Best of the soloists were Benjamin, a promising firebrand, and Blake, an accomplished master of pairing scat vocals with his bass solos. Dr. Mambo, who hosts a monthly "World of Jazz" radio program under the more worldly name of Dwight Brewster, isn't in quite the same improvisational league. He more than compensates with his arranging gifts, coaxing Davis' "Seven Steps" and Mongo Santamaria's "Afro Blue" into a fresh Afro-Caribbean groove. Dr. M also served up his original song, "Unity," written for the Obama presidential campaign and sung in a style reminiscent of Dizzy Gillespie when he went calypso on his irresistible Jambo Caribe album.
The set, wrapping up with two more Dr. M originals, seemed to us about 20 minutes shorter than it should be. But the cover charge for each set, at $15, is about half the usual. We would have stayed for the 10 o'clock set if this weren't our third show of the day. The music was as much to our liking as the menu. Ilana sends her shout-out for the coconut shrimp.
Simone Dinnerstein and Zuill Bailey (***1/4) -- A half century ago, the legend of The Village Gate was born on Bleecker Street. Before it folded in 1995, jazz greats from John Coltrane to Carmen McRae, from Nina Simone to Horace Silver, and from Herbie Mann to Mongo Santamaria had all recorded live at the Gate on albums that still proudly bear its name. Flip Wilson, Bill Cosby, and Jerry Seinfeld developed their stand-up comedy chops on the same stage.
Now a younger generation has taken over, renamed the club Le Poisson Rouge, and they're breaking new ground on hallowed ground. There's still that Village disdain for fluff, but the Red Fish's musical horizons have widened to embrace progressive rock and classical. Ilana and I dropped in on a fairly retro classical night, when pianist Simone Dinnerstein teamed up with Zuill Bailey in an evening of Beethoven cello sonatas, coinciding with the release of their new 2-CD set on Telarc.
Chamber music has a decidedly different feel when it's performed in a nightclub amid the bustle of waiters and the clank of shot glasses and beer bottles. Formality peels away, and the musicians' passions surge outwards into the audience in the flattering spotlights. And while classical is alien to clubs -- and amplification is classical heresy -- the sound crew at Le Poisson keep it real.
We would have happily listened to every note Beethoven wrote for this instrumental pairing if we had snagged a table, but we learned the hard way that classical music draws SRO crowds on Bleecker Street, and a Poisson Rouge reservation doesn't guarantee you a seat. So the brevity of the concert -- Dinnerstein and Bailey didn't play all five of the sonatas and they didn't play any of the other piano-cello nuggets on their album -- was something of a godsend for us.
Standing is more the norm when they do pop and rock. Tables are whisked off the floor and all of the audience stands and raves. This week, the big name on the events list is jazz songbird Norah Jones. But you need to have reservations already to find out if there is any seating for that one. It's a sellout, but classical hounds can still queue up for Gil Shaham, headlining next Tuesday.
All-Beethoven with Yevgeny Sudbin (***) -- The brief pre-concert recital at Avery Fisher Hall was pure bliss, with Sudbin playing two Scarlatti piano sonatas, a Nikolai Medtner trinket, and a Rachmaninoff piece, "Spring Waters," arranged by the soloist. When we reconvened for the all-Beethoven, moving from the seats we had chosen to those printed on our tickets, I found that I wasn't nearly as thrilled with the view or the sound.
The Fisher, you see, is one of those shoeboxes that don't place a design premium on keeping the audience as close as possible to the musicians. Depending on where you sit, sound quality is a crapshoot. Treble reached me clearly enough, but bass frequencies seemed to reverberate through a fog.
Osmo Vanska and the Mostly Mozart Festival Orchestra were the best possible antidote for the ills of the hall. Size of the string section was a trim 27 players, and Vanska drew rich textures from the podium. Where Beethoven's music is expected to flex its muscle in Symphony #8, the oomph just wasn't there. Sudbin was unperturbed by his lightweight accompaniment and delivered beautifully on his end of the Concerto #4 dialogue. It probably did sound better up there on the stage.