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Drummer In the Driver’s Seat

by K Hank Jost | Jan 19, 2024 3:51 pm

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Posted to: Music

Cameron MacIntosh Quintet
Dizzy’s Club
Jazz at Lincoln Center
Manhattan
Jan. 18,2024

If you’d have told me that the big tacky shopping center on Columbus Circle with the Whole Foods had a jazz club in it, I’d have scoffed and called bullshit.

If you’d have told me further than it housed not only a jazz club, but THE Jazz at Lincoln Center, I’d have written you off totally as a head case.

But it’s true. The home of the music’s preparators and scholars is in a mall by Central Park. I should have already known this … but I suppose that just goes to show that I can’t usually afford nights out at Jazz at Lincoln Center.

As a lover of the music, I always found jazz in a concert setting a little strange to me. All the hoped-for chaos contained in such an austere presentation just doesn’t sit right. Though the folks at Dizzy’s Club, the casual-sit-eat-drink-carouse space within the larger complex of concert halls at Jazz at Lincoln Center, have done their level best to create the facsimile of a jazz club, one still cannot escape the feeling of decorum that comes with the pedigree. It’s a weird space, in a weird space, full of — and I say this with thanks and love — weird folks. At least they haven’t squeezed the off-beat out of the musician’s souls.

On to the music: the center is currently celebrating the centennial of percussion legend Max Roach. If you know jazz, you know Max. If you don’t, here’s your sign to investigate.

Over the next few weeks all the programming at the center will be focused on not only Roach’s music, but also the role of the drummer within this sprawling tradition.

The late show Thursday night was headed up by Cameron MacIntosh, who lovingly titled his program Drummers in the Foreground.

His mission here was to string together a series of tunes that not only trace the development of percussion in jazz, but also were awritten by drummers themselves. As he said, ​“It’s a rare and special thing when drummers trade the sticks for a pen.”

And he couldn’t be more correct. The small crowd that gathered for the late show was treated to a program of decades-spanning music from the likes of Chick Webb, Buddy Rich, Max Roach, Tony Williams, and Elvin Jones — not a bad spread! — all in a variety of styles, ranging from second line to driving, modal odyssey. 

This is where it gets interesting, and where MacIntosh’s choice a band couldn’t have been better.

There’s often a twin impulse in jazz music: 1) To preserve, pay homage to, honor, and living the tradition that teaches each individual musician, indulging a sacred history. 2) To innovate, cut-up, shit-talk, and party, to remember fundamentally that music is something joyous.

Under these two guiding principles a jazz program that operates as a retrospective or tribute still will always teeter into something contemporary and of the moment. Or, in the case of MacIntosh and company’s set, barrel full speed into the irreverent, funny, and ecstatic.

Whether it was a wry little lick from Noah Halpern’s trumpet to cue the ballad into bop, or a lush, multi-octave arpeggiation from Luther Allison on the piano, throwing the minor-blues explorations toward outright gospel shout, MacIntosh put together a band with wide ears and more than a curatorial curiosity.

That’s all to say little of MacIntosh’s playing, which was tuned deep to each of these scattered styles and deft in a way that evades the words at my disposal. MacIntosh was a metronomic force to be reckoned with, tectonic in his patience and near melodic in his solos. A joy to witness, and well-deserving of his place in this program’s foreground.

The two wildest cards in the group were guitarist Aayushi Karnik and bassist Russell Hall. Aayushi’s shredding approach and angular harmony kept whatever tune was being played from slipping into toward the stale and staid. Hall’s brought a sick sense of humor and irony to the bottom end, breaking a ballad to bits with a textural bowed solo or dropping bombs in quiet moments.

Though the practitioners being memorialized last night are by-and-large long dead, their music was made to truly alive by the sensitivity and fellowship of MacIntosh’s ensemble.