Tribute to Dewey Redman

[bertrand]

My friend Brad Linde is presenting a tribute to Dewey Redman this Thursday 6/3 at Bohemian Caverns in D.C. It's his large ensemble with Joel Frahm as guest tenor, playing Mark Masters' arrangements from his album Farewell Walter Dewey Redman.

Hope some of you can make it. This will be very special to me - Dewey was one of my first musical heroes, even before Wayne Shorter and Jackie McLean who I discovered later (discovering Dewey first was kind of a fluke, but a happy one). I'm glad that I got to see him a number of times, but I still wish there could have been many more opportunities.

Bertrand.

Edited May 31, 2010 by bertrand

[bertrand]

Sorry this seemed to have gone under the radar screen of D.C. jazz fans, but it was a beautiful, memorable performance. Joel Frahm kicked ass - very imaginative solos. At one point he slipped in a quote of 'Bewitched, Bothered etc.' in such a sneaky way that it just cracked me up. Many great soloists in the band - a special mention needs to be made of drummer Tony Martucci who just was on top of every rhythmic trick in the arrangements.

Mark Masters' arrangements are wonderful. His original piece for the project, 'Sitatunga' so cleverly captures Dewey's spirit that Joel was fooled and thought it was one of Dewey's tunes!

I can think of no better testimonial to the genius of Dewey Redman than the following fact: some of the musicians in the orchestra were probably not that familiar with Dewey's work (although Tony did record a couple of tracks with him). Yet, by the end of the evening, clearly everyone was totally into it and really successful in capturing Dewey's spirit although they were playing his tunes as re-arranged in a far different setting than the originals. This was particularly obvious when they played two tunes over from the first set: 'I-Pimp' and "Boody'. The versions in the first set were excellent. The versions in the second set were even better. After playing them once, the members of the band showed that they had completely grasped what Dewey (and Mark) had in mind.

One of the best gigs I have ever attended.

A special thanks to whoever it was on this forum (Rooster?) who first hipped me to Mark's work (the Grachan record), leading me to get to know him and eventually hook him up with Brad. I am a human rolodex.

Bertrand.

Edited June 5, 2010 by bertrand