Hal Russell Tribute Concert Review

[Lazaro Vega]

Here's a Sun-Times review from 11/2/07:

NRG inspires energetic response with Russell tribute

CONCERT REVIEW | Halloween reunion allows players to stretch out

November 2, 2007

BY JOHN LITWEILER

Today's jazz is awash in tributes -- earnest, sober, respectful. By

contrast, the NRG Ensemble's Halloween-night tribute at the Hideout

was screaming, booming, full of banshee wails, before a hollering

crowd, many in Hal Russell masks.

The beloved Russell led this Chicago-based band from 1978 to his

death, 15 years ago. Most of his men grew up in NRG -- they were 30

years younger than he -- and by the end they were well known, with

ECM albums and European tours. As befits Russell's spirit, this

tribute was wild and joyous.

This was an NRG reunion, and once again NRG's idiom was not only

highly energetic it was highly musical. Chuck Burdelik was more than

shocking on tenor and alto saxes. With a big, honking sound, he

crafted shapely solos with arching lines and melodic curves, and he

was often the eye of NRG's maelstrom. By contrast, there were Mars

Williams' virtuoso, free-association bursts from extreme alto and

tenor sax ranges. And Brian Sandstrom's guitar solos were quite

original explorations of musical lines that develop out of dramatic

fuzz, metal squawks, and other distortions.

Of Russell's hundreds of songs, NRG's tribute explored seven fast

ones, most with multiple themes. There was "Krupa," a comic crush of

swing-band themes, with bassist Kent Kessler and a guest, cellist

Fred Lonberg-Holm, snapping and biting at each other in a

duet. "Calling All Mothers" had hilarious horns-and-strings

chases. "Song Singing to You" had a dozen folk-song parodies, and NRG

sang the first song Russell ever wrote as a boy: "Smells like fish,

tastes like chicken/That's the Gilbert Stomp."

Inevitably, there was "Hal the Weenie," climaxing in Steve Hunt's

monumentally constructed drum solo and a comic duel of sax sounds.

Williams' soprano sax and Hunt's vibes barely peeped an abstraction

of a standard, "Moon of Manakoora," over low string moans.

John Litweiler is a local jazz critic and author.

[alocispepraluger102]

thank you.

hoping it was recorded.