Saturday, April 07, 2007

Kenny Garrett

Tonight I went to hear Kenny Garrett at the Regattabar. I had never heard of him before but from the clips I heard on iTunes it sounded like fun jazz sax. I really enjoyed the show.

They started out playing Beyond the Wall which went on for about 20 minutes and was just all out balls to the wall excitement. I can appreciate John Coltrane (thought I don't understand it) and this verged on going beyond what I could handle into noise but it never quite made it. The piano solo by Benito Gonzalez was awesome, the bass solo was good and while I was expecting a huge solo by the outstanding drummer (missed his name), there was a (not really call-response) dialog between him and Garrett that was just loud and full of energy and wonderful. I was exhausted just listening to it. Oddly the songs got progressively quieter after that until the last song Happy People which everyone was humming on the way out. A lot of fun.

If you're into jazz and have a chance to check them out, I highly recommend them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Howard,

Yes, Kenny and his band are amazing and all I can say is welcome to the world of JAZZ. I hope this experience moves you to explore some of the other amazing artitst out there.

Lou of Pittsburgh

Howard said...

Thanks Lou, I'm fairly well versed. My iTunes collection shows 218 jazz albums (9.4 days) all of which I own CDs for. My tastes are mostly hard bop, Miles Davis's two Quintets, Clifford Brown, Monk, Mingus, Coltrane, Parker, Art Blakey, Cannonball Adderley, Oliver Nelson, etc.