Bela Fleck Trio!

[Robert J]

The Toronto Jazz festival is having Bela Fleck playing as a trio which includes Stanley Clarke and Jean Luc Ponty. Has anyone heard this configuration? They don't start their tour until June. First gig is in Burlington, VT. Just want a heads up as to whether or not it will be a wank-athon. Thanks.

[Joe G]

I never, in a million years, would have thought to put those three together.

I like Bela, but I'm not overly optimistic about this trio. Could be wrong, though.

[Robert J]

From Fleck's website:

Trio! is a brand new group featuring French violin legend Jean Luc Ponty, bass superstar Stanley Clarke, and Béla. They are putting together a repertoire of new music, and are at least as curious as you are about what it will sound like! It's gonna be fun and a brand new experience.

Look for Trio! shows throughout the US and Europe this summer.

You might want to hold on to that pessimism Joe.

[chris olivarez]

Maybe they'll record something and give us a better idea about this paticular trio.

[Jazz Kat]

Sounds even more different than the Metheny Group.

[gdogus]

Sounds even more different than the Metheny Group.

Different...from what?

Bela's okay. Ponty's had some great moments. Clarke is Clarke.

I predict a wankathon.

[CJ Shearn]

their playing here in June, I might go see it to see Stanley Clarke live. I thought they were on the bill separately but all these jamband kids wil attend and probably think their getting jamband stuff but will find its totally different.

Edited May 11, 2005 by CJ Shearn

[Robert J]

Good thing I avoided it. I'd be upset if I paid full pop for it (over $40)

30 June 2005

Copyright © 2005 The Toronto Star

Few bass players in the world could muster the nerve to fill the breach for Stanley Clarke with two minutes notice, as Toronto's Atilla Darvas did last night on the main stage of the Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival.

Clarke, the American jazz legend, failed to put in an appearance with his bandmates - New York jazz banjo wizard Bela Fleck and French master jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty - in Trio!, one of the Festival's big-draw headliners.

Darvas and drummer Frank Botos had just performed for an hour with pianist Robi Botos, Frank's brother, in a singularly athletic and well-organized set that drew a standing ovation.

When Clarke was a no-show - his 3 p.m. flight to Toronto was cancelled, as were subsequent flights from New York yesterday evening, because of a severe thunderstorm, TDJF artistic director Pat Taylor told the Star - Ponty and Fleck pressed The Robi Botos Trio's rhythm section into last-minute service.

To put a little more pressure on Darvas than the virtually unknown musician needed, the jazz stars then decided to open their set with the absent Clarke's own complex tribute to John Coltrane, "Song to John." While Fleck and Ponty established the melodic theme, Darvas and Botos settled into a quiet, restrained, un-Clarke-like groove and seemed quite content with this achievement until the violin solo suddenly peaked, and all eyes fell on Darvas.

To his great credit, the stand-in made not the slightest attempt to imitate the missing master, and while his solo was admirable under the circumstances, it seemed to have a lot to do with ad hoc scatting and little to do with the weighty structure of the composition. And it barely hit the lip of the stage.

Even so, the 1,000 people inside the big tent roared their approval. A for effort, Attila. One for the scrapbook.

Despite the applause, Fleck and Ponty seemed unable throughout the 90-minute performance to overcome the shock of their colleague's absence. The second piece, the standard, "All The Things You Are," was clearly thrown in to provide some cohesion between the two sets of players, strangers to each other. While the simple shuffle was solid enough, and Darvas held the groove steady, the star solos were little more than exhibitions of astounding technique - Ponty's rich, fluid, elegant and quite classical in construction, Fleck's furious and fast as the beats of a hummingbird's wings, a million notes per bar defined in brilliant, breathtaking detail.

Ponty and Fleck then politely dismissed the bass player and drummer to perform Fleck's composition "South" as a two hander. It was probably the gem of the evening, a brilliantly constructed, modal abstraction of the musical imagery of the traditional American South, from Appalachia to Louisiana - all flailing banjo and fiery fiddle licks.