Jazz At The Atlas

[bertrand]

I should have posted this before. Sorry about the delay. I should have mentioned a Lee Konitz gig that took place.

My friend Brad Linde is curating a new jazz series at the beautiful Atlas Theatre in NE D.C. in the H street corridor. I will post a complete schedule later. The program is a mix of local and out of town artists. In the case some of the visitors, they are playing with Brad's tentet. In other cases, they are coming down with their own bands.

Two upcoming shows of note:

Wednesday, 10/5 (i.e. next week): Teddy Charles with Brad's tentet playing the arrangements from the Teddy Charles Tentet on Atlantic.

Wednesday, 12/7: Grachan Moncur III with Brad's group playing Mark Masters' arrangements from Exploration. There will be other concerts using Mark's arrangements later in the series. A special thanks to Rooster Ties who first hipped us to the Moncur/Masters record which led to a fruitful collaboration.

PM me if you think you will be going to one of these.

Bertrand.

[Rooster_Ties]

The performance here in DC last week with Moncur was nothing short of amazing. Grachan played quite a bit more than I had expected (fairly long solos on every tune, including multiple solos on at least a couple tunes - iirc), and he played more strongly than I had expected. In many ways, I thought perhaps he played better than on the original 2004 release Exploration. (This isn't suggest he was all 'bombast', but I'd heard varying reports on him in recent years.)

The local ensemble's performance of the Mark Masters arrangements was spot-on, with several soloists (particularly the tenor-player) who more than ably expressed what I'd only previously known from the all-star line-up on the record. There was also an extra Masters arrangement (of "Riff Raff" from Destination Out) that got left on the cutting-room floor during the Masters album (never appearing on the CD).

The evening easily ranks up there with any of the best couple dozen jazz performances I've ever heard.