Earshot Jazz: heart and soul

The 16th annual Earshot Jazz Festival is underway. The festival has become a Seattle fixture, sponsoring performances by artists from all over the world, as well as spotlighting tenacious local talent. As always, this year's lineup includes some serious heavyweights, including T.S. Monk, Nicholas Payton, Jim Hall and Abdullah Ibrahim.

What makes Earshot special is seeing the amount of support that exists within the Seattle community for jazz. To most, the Seattle jazz scene might seem like a sidebar to omnipresent rock music and dance clubs. However, at an Earshot show, there's a wealth of camaraderie among musicians, there are the loyal fans who have been going to shows for years and most importantly, there's great music.

Here are some highlights from week one:

On Wednesday at Tula's, fresh from a two-week west-coast tour, Matt Jorgensen +451 played. The local quartet boasts a Rhodes electric piano, but the rare instrument was damaged when a drunk driver hit the truck carrying it. The band was substituting a more modern Kawai. The presence of electronica in the band's rhythm section says something about their eclectic approach, covering songs from the likes of Radiohead and Led Zeppelin.

"I've listened to equal part Led Zeppelin and equal part Coltrane growing up," said Jorgensen, the band's leader and drummer. "I categorize music as good as bad, not necessarily as jazz/rock/Latin."

Although their openness to other genres is commendable, the rock covers have a tendency to sound like muzak. What saves them from the shopping mall aesthetic is improvisation and well-honed chops, plus an invigorating tendency toward the dramatic in almost every tune they play.

Phil Sparks' bass lines creep like a thief ascending a dark staircase while saxophonist Mark Taylor paints a noirish picture of headlights struggling through sheets of rain in the night. Ryan Burns conjures the sound of glittering beads from the keys against the hiss of Jorgensen's brushwork. Suspense gives way to dramatic breaks, followed by ripping, fluttery sax solos and Jorgensen going full steam ahead a la Elvin Jones.

It's a youthful, scrappy bunch, and it's tempting to say that Jorgensen, who grew up in Seattle, must have had some of the angst of the grunge-era burned into him.

Vocalist Kelley Johnson couldn't be further from Jorgensen in her attitude. Her performance at The Triple Door on Friday was all about love, family and friendship. Not that the International JazzConnect Vocal Jazz Competition's 2002 winner can't draw a crowd on the merits of her singing alone, but it seemed that everyone there had some connection to her. Her mother (a local artist and former Cornish professor), a neighbor and several longtime friends showed up to listen to the longtime Seattle resident.

Even with the band, family is key. Johnson plays piano, but when asked if she ever performs on the instrument, she replied, "I married a piano player, so I don't have to."

Johnson's husband John Hansen heads up the rhythm section, which included guests Ugonna Okegwo on bass and Jon Wikan on drums. Trumpet and flugelhorn player Ingrid Jensen also made a special trip to appear at the gig.

"It was very special to have them here," Johnson said of the three New York residents. "I love to hear them play. They just move me."

In her rendition of Bobby Troup's ballad "The Meaning of the Blues," Johnson became ethereal, drawing velvet out of her lower register for a scat run that bore her unique signature. As Johnson puts it, she breaks with tradition by emphasizing vowels and leaving the consonants behind. The result is almost primal, reminiscent of tribal chanting.

The atmosphere was quite different Saturday for Brad Mehldau's performance. The pianist performed solo in First Hill at Town Hall. The music was well suited to the converted church, as Mehldau swooned and dipped to his own creations like someone touched by a divine presence. Mehldau was so touched he often came close to planting his nose on the keyboard.

As a soloist, Mehldau has the freedom to explore, and explore he does, covering the spectrum of human emotion. At times it seems we are witnessing a man exorcising his inner demons. If you really watch and pay attention to Mehldau's playing, you often feel that you're intruding on a therapy session.

Mehldau's 12-step program included selections from Thelonious Monk, Paul McCartney and the ubiquitous Radiohead, a band whose work also shows up on the latest album by Mehldau's opener, Robert Glasper. Apart from their common musical interests, the dredlocked 26-year-old was a good match for Mehldau.

Glasper was backed by bass player Brandon Owens and drummer Damion Reid; both fellow New School at NYU alumni. The tight-knit trio, who also played three nights at Tula's, provided the audience with a well-placed buffer between the outside world and the virtuosic madness of Mehldau. Glasper's playing was just as sophisticated, but the necessity of keeping it together with a rhythm section made for a more structured performance. In addition to this, Reid and Owens busted out some wicked solos.

Speaking of wicked solos, Patti Summer's hosted a special performance Sunday evening by The Here and Now, a trio made up of recent Garfield and Roosevelt High School graduates.

It's tempting to say that The Here and Now's members are good for their age, but really, they're good for any age. So good that at the end of one of their songs a woman from New York got out of her chair and made an announcement to the entire room. "Excuse me," she said, "we're tourists from New York, and this is by the far the most impressive thing we've seen since we've been here."

The Here and Now, who just released their first album this year, is made up of alto sax frontman Ben Roseth, drummer Sean Hutchinson and bassist David Dawds. Their ages range from 19 to 20, but if you were to overhear them from outside, you'd swear they were decades older. Even Andrew Mulherkar, a junior from Garfield High who sat in for one tune on tenor sax, played like he'd experienced a lifetime of heartbreak.

"We've listened to a lot of different stuff over the course of our lives, from traditional jazz to everything else that's happened since we've been alive," said Hutchinson. "So I guess we kind of take everything we've listened to and try and put our own spin on it. So if we play like it's 1940, cool; and if we if play like it's 2030, that's also cool."

All three are attending college in different parts of the country. They plan to keep this band going in spite of the distance, and to see where they can take it after graduation.

Let's just hope this trio drops in once in a while.

TOP JAZZ FESTIVAL PICKS

Friday 10/29, Triple Door, 7:30 & 10 p.m., $22 general

T.S. Monk

Friday 10/29, Tula's, 8 p.m.

Charles McPherson Quartet

Saturday 10/30, Meany Hall, 8 p.m., $28 general / $25 discount

Wayne Horvitz's "Joe Hill"

Thursday 11/4, Consolidated Works, 9 p.m., $12 general / $10 discount

Paul Rucker Group

Saturday 11/6, Tula's, 8 p.m.

Ernie Watts & New Stories