Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Jack Hutton and Friends - Always Charmers


                    Bob Livingston, Jack Hutton, Ric Giorgi, Brian Bauer, Will Wilson


Resplendent and timeless in their signature concert garb, five of the finest in the fields of ragtime, jazz, swing and beyond returned to the Gravenhurst Opera House on Friday 20 July 2012. Jack Hutton at the piano, Will Wilson on banjo and guitar, Ric Giorgi on bass, Bob Livingston on trombone and Brian Bauer, the clarinetist with the largest collection of saxophones known to Muskoka, or anywhere else, charmed an appreciative audience with mostly familiar tunes, and one that was nearly unknown.

Just as Brian Bauer collects clarinets, saxophones, weird sounds and terrible jokes, Jack Hutton gathers around him authentic players, multi-talented in all directions, and able to swing, literally and figuratively, from instrument to instrument to voice, and from style to style. Wag Bauer, an incurable punster, wants us to know that he is “cymbal-minded”. I want him and you to know just how effective are those well-timed, brassy, foot-activated clashes. Perfect punctuation.

As I relaxed and enjoyed this concert the word that came to me out of nowhere was, “Groovy”. Just what did that term from the twenties, revived in the sixties and seventies actually imply? I guess it means any number of experiences for musicians and audience.

For me, it meant: comfortable and refreshing for us refugees from a gruelling heatwave. Mellow, but a kind of mellow that keeps the listener entertained and alert for the unexpected.

Rounded tones from Bob Livingston’s masterly trombone underpinned a sparkling blend of sound. The sparkles sprang from all and any of the instruments, as the rhythms changed, with turns of a melody and travel in time. Flying fingers on piano or banjo painted with fresh colours time-honoured tunes like “Honeysuckle Rose”, “Just One Of Those Things“ and “If They Asked Me I Could Write A Book”. The clarinet in itself is a multi-lingual instrument. The bass abounds in tonalities.

Their final selection sounded rich and symphonic - as the five rounded out a delightful evening with a glorious burst of melody. Jack writes of “Tickletoe” by Lester Young:

“Only Will Wilson and Brian had ever heard this before. It was the very first time we had ever played it as a group, which is one of the things that makes this group special – constantly re-discovering gems from the past.”

The day after the concert, as this review took shape, I happened on an internet article that went on and on about “the groove”. All fascinating, but I sat up and took notice at this comment, lightly edited by me for comfortable reading:

“When a groove is established among players, the musical whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts, enabling them to experience something beyond themselves which no one of them can create alone.”

That neatly describes what happens when Jack Hutton and friends get together.

Links:

Will Wilson’s new CD: inquire at: guitarbanjoman@gmail.com 





Amy Dodington's "Touch of Old"





What better way to round off “A Perfect Day” than with a recital by Amy Dodington, accompanied by Doreen Uren at the piano? The Gravenhurst Opera House, dating from 1901, is a perfect venue for a merry mixture of Elizabethan, baroque, folk songs, Broadway musicals and Edwardian parlour music.

Right at the beginning of this review, I have to admit a certain partiality for Amy’s voice and finely crafted programs. My first draft clearly registered an overall 15 on my usual scale of 10 when reporting a performance. I decided to take a deep breath, set the gush-o-meter down several notches and make a new start in the morning, for the sake of coherence and objectivity.

The next day, instead of grabbing the pen right away, I stopped to analyze the effect on me of seeing, first on the program, a song from Purcell’s Fairy Queen that I have sung myself, at a Grade Ten Conservatory exam. It is not a cherished memory. While my accompanist struggled as if tackling a Himalayan mountain top without enough sherpas or equipment, my clenched teeth ensured that my intonation would get sharper and sharper. How I got a passing mark, I have no idea. Perhaps it was Mozart’s hymn to the Blessed Virgin that saved me.

A happier memory intervenes - a strawberry tea on the lawn of the Michelham Priory in Sussex, England, after a full performance of The Fairy Queen. I remember the strawberries and cream better than the music.

Now I come happily back to the Gravenhurst Opera House on the evening of 14 July 2012, when I at long last heard the Purcell aria as I would have liked to sing it - in fact, as I had not yet heard it sung to my satisfaction. “A Touch of Old” opened with Purcell’s triumphal flourish dedicated to the first Queen Elizabeth of Britain. The piano introduction flowed easily in the hands of Doreen Uren, wafting us lightly into a land of enchantment, where pleased cupids clapped their wings to the rhythm of a voice drenched in magic - Amy Dodington’s. She had a lot of fun with those cupids.

A cluster of art songs followed, Brahms expanding on the elusiveness of poetic inspiration, Reynaldo Hahn’s inspired setting of a poem by Verlaine, Barber’s ditty on The Monk and His Cat and Schubert’s setting of Gretchen’s spinning wheel song from Goethe’s monumental “Faust”.

Verlaine’s “L’Heure exquise” has encapsulated the essence of French Romantic poetry for me and my husband, who kept it on the wall above his desk. This was my first hearing of its evocative musical setting by Reynaldo Hahn. Before attempting any commentary, I went to youtube to listen to several singers' interpretations, and was amazed at how many of the greatest and the best of them fall short of evoking the scene painted by the poet's words. In general the singer was content with intoning the notes in a mellifluous voice.

What about the mystery and the beauty of moonlit woods, where the profound mirror of a pond reflects the silhouette of a black willow and a vast and tender tranquility from the heavens enfolds the scene? Amy Dodington’s voice has a visionary quality, breathing in magic and breathing it out again in “L’Heure exquise”. She seems to be experiencing this poem from within, and inviting the listener into Verlaine's woods under his moon.

Here I would like to highlight another of Amy’s outstanding performances: Gretchen am Spinnrade, an outpouring of enraptured love accompanied by the relentless rhythms of the spinning wheel. In this homely setting for unquenchable passion, Gretchen is on her way to ruin and madness, the victim of Mephisto’s wiles, with Faust as the engine of her undoing.

Glazounov’s “Oriental Romance”, the Irish folk song “She Moved Through the Fair” and the Scottish, “There’s Nae Luck About the House” completed the first part of our travel through space and time. Both Amy and her sister Victoria Banks are gifted unaccompanied singers of Irish songs. I could listen to them all night.

The second part of the program featured tuneful Broadway melodies, including “Edelweiss”, “If I Loved You” and a mischievous “Once in Love with Amy”. Then a costume change was in order from the diva dress to an heirloom outfit dating back to the parlour songs of the early 1900’s. Amy’s flexible voice revives the pathos, the joy and the courage of these nearly forgotten gems. She has unearthed a whole collection, like “When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day”. Her three encores were also of that charming vintage.

Links:
Amy sings Margaret (or Gretchen) at the Spinning Wheel

Amy sings: If I loved you


Gravenhurst Opera House: http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com