Three for Three—Sort of (9/22/13)

A breezy Sunday afternoon found me in Riverside Park. Not exactly a new venue, as I believe I heard The Main Squeeze, an All-Girl Accordion Orchestra, there a couple of summers ago. But that was in the West 70s while Sunday found me at West 116th Street for The Overlook Concerts series. The Manhattan School Jazz Quintet, led by Isaac Kaplan, put on a fun afternoon of jazz and popular music standards. We heard Isaac Kaplan, trombone; Jonathan Ragonese, soprano saxophone, Kevin Bernstein, piano; Ethan O’Reilly, double bass; and Joseph Peri, drums.

Here’s the program: All the Things You Are, Kern/Hammerstein; How High the Moon, Lewis/Hamilton; Black Orpheus, Bonfa/Maria; On the Sunny Side of the Street, McHugh/Fields; These Foolish Things, Strachey/Maschwitz; A Night in Tunisia, Gillespie; and Things Ain’t What They Used to Be, Ellington.

I don’t know who did the arrangements but I’d be surprised if Mr. Kaplan didn’t at least have a hand in them. As an overview, in standard jazz format, every player gets a crack at the main tune (or a variation on it), and that was the case here. Both of the first tunes carried that format through, and the arrangements were both a little too much the same and a little too long for my taste.

In Black Orpheus, the piano, bass, and drums set an exotic mood and then the trombone laid out the tune. After another piano/bass/drums interlude, the sax stepped in working around the tune as opposed to giving us the straightforward melody. It was a nice arrangement.

These Foolish Things was a little less familiar to me, though I recognized portions of the melody. I like the fact that the lyricists’ names were included, even though there was nobody singing them; that might have been a nice touch. Beautiful Love had a calm ballad-esque feel to it.

A Night in Tunisia took us into more of a bebop jazz style, in contrast to the earlier standards with jazz applied to them. It was bebop—but not too frantic, which is just fine by me. The sax really got a chance to wail, and this (and the Ellington) felt like a more structured arrangement. Or maybe they were just better-structured jazz tunes.

All five of the guys, students and/or recent graduates of the Manhattan School of Music, played well and seemed to be very comfortable playing together and throwing cues back and forth.

There are two more concerts in the series—French Cookin’ Blues Band and the Manhattan Wind Ensemble. I’ll keep an eye on the weather (these are outdoor concerts) but I’m intrigued by a 50-piece wind ensemble. Still, I’m also in search of new venues. Do I want to repeat right away? Tune in ...

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