by Glenn Siegel
The times I like best are when I come face to face with the rich vastness of the music. When I’m around musicians who know the recorded history, who have the lived experience of interacting with the people who shape the art, who have reverence for deep theory and the practice of music, I’m in heaven. In moments like these, I am glad I have devoted my life to jazz.
Tony Malaby was in town on Thursday, performing with Bob Stewart, Christopher Hoffman and John Hollenbeck as TubaCello. Their Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert at Gateway City Arts was amazing, filled with nuance, texture, drive and feeling. Before, during and after the performance, it was clear they were serious about their music and their place in it. They were filled with joy at being part of the unfolding story.
At brunch the next day, we talked about players (Charles ‘Bobo’ Shaw, Abdul Waddud, George Braith) and their whereabouts. We talked about recordings, about gigs and concert producers, laid out in stories that invariably ended with a laugh. These itinerant musicians spend their lives criss-crossing the globe, spreading love and provocation, relying on guile and resourcefulness to get by. It was a treat to have them light down in the Valley for a day on their way to New Haven (Firehouse 12), New York (Cornelia Street Café), then Europe.
Over two sets, the band performed the five compositions that make up TubaCello’s recent inaugural release, Scorpion Eater (Clean Feed), plus three new pieces written by Malaby. I was impressed by Hollenbeck’s constant variety of sound and pulse. One minute he was rubbing a thumb piano on a tom-tom while plucking it and the next he was tapping the piano he had prepared with newspaper, drum sticks, cymbals and a folder to add color and harmonic ambiguity.
Bob Stewart performed at the very first Magic Triangle concert in February of 1990 with Steve Turre and Mulgrew Miller. I gave him a copy of Close to the Music, the book Priscilla Page and I put together to commemorate the 25th anniversary of the UMass Series. There’s a wonderful photograph, taken by Ed Cohen, of Turre playing conch shell, with Stewart playing tuba in the background. Stewart had fond memories of the concert: the cool space (the black box Hampden Theater, now black), the enthusiastic audience, the unique instrumentation (tuba, trombone, piano), and the late Mulgrew Miller. “Some concerts, you just remember. We never got another chance to play together.”
Malaby put himself in elastic, Threadgill-like settings all evening, soloing over shifting grooves (marches, swing, open, ballads) laid down by Hoffman and Stewart. The evening had an arc; a story to tell.
Can we finally say out loud that Tony Malaby is one of the most dynamic soprano saxophonists of our time?