Last Saturday the Steve Lacy Roswell Rudd Quartet played two sets at
the Noe Valley Ministry, a little church in San Francisco that has
folding chairs instead of pews in a cozy and pretty sanctuary. Lacy
played soprano sax, Rudd trombone, and Lacy's usual cohorts
Jean-Jacques Avenel and John Betsch bass and drums. The place was
packed. Parts of the audience were seated on the stage and in the
choir loft.
Rudd had played with Rob Scheps at Yoshi's a few months ago. Before
that his last visit to the Bay Area had been in the mid-1960s when he
recorded -Live in San Francisco- with Archie Shepp. Rudd is a funny
and affable character, which one might not have expected from some of
his playing on records.
Rudd and Lacy take an interest in each other's solos, to the point of
joining in with sympathetic material. In fact, Rudd punctuated the
other players' solos with whoops and exclamations.
The set went:
"Monk's Dream," title piece from the new album. I wish Betsch had
played with Monk - he has the feeling of the music, like Frankie
Dunlop did; understated yet punchy.
"The Bath," a cool, light, swinging piece by Lacy. EBD says he
always plays it. Rudd began his solo with watery white noise. A
three month old person seated next to Inga seemed to enjoy this.
Rudd whined through the horn, "I don't wanna take my bath!" Later he
developed this into a dialogue: "You get in that tub and take yo'
bath!" "I don't WANNA take my bath!"
"Bamako," by Rudd, was my favorite piece of the evening because of
its strong rhythm. (Bamako's the capital of Mali.) The drum part
was samba-ish. After the horn solos, Avenel continued the two chord
vamp and Lacy and Rudd made jungle noises over it, Lacy doing some
altississimo monkey squeals and smacking his reed with a fingernail.
"Grey Blue" was a blues with a comic vocal by Rudd about how he feels
blue, but notices a lot more grey creeping in lately, which he
finally demonstrated by removing his hat. Well, he has white hair,
but he has more total hair than Kaufman or I do.
Lacy introduced the next tune with the cryptic statement, "Another
traditional thing in jazz is boogie-woogie. Here's one called
'Morning Joy.'" I detected neither woogie nor boogie in this piece -
it had more of a Lee Morgan Blue Note feel.
"12 Bars" - a whimsical blues by Herbie Nichols with some refreshing
unexpected chord changes.
I was disappointed not to hear a bowed solo from Avenel. Last time
EBD and I caught the Lacy trio, he did some beautiful bowing; he has
a tone like caramel candy.
I like watching Betsch's face. He has three basic expressions:
"Something is terribly wrong here but I don't know what," "Don't make
me come down there and box your ears," and "Hey, this is fun!"