The Jazzcat

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The world has many treasures. One of them is a man who has been an essential part of the music that has influenced us for quite some time. From Miles to Herbie to McCoy to Pharoah, Lee, Woody and a number of others, Bennie Maupin has played with and inspired the best. Those associations are threads in the fabric of life’s path. A road that leads us to who we are, what we are about and the gifts that we share with the world.

<?xml:namespace prefix = o /> Today’s concert is part of a chamber music series sponsored by the Da Camera Society with support from the National Endowment of the Arts. These organizations have made it possible for this audience to experience jazz music inside the historic Egyptian Theater in Hollywood. Today’s audience was not a jazz audience. I took a look around and saw many new faces for the first time, eagerly awaiting to be what must be somewhat part of the unknown to them. They would certainly not go away with unanswered questions.

John Coltrane once shouted out to John Gilmore, “You got it man, you got it!” What is it? Do you know what it is? It can be many things and you will know that you have it when you get it. Bennie has an it. It, in this case, is called quiet power. People like Bennie, Shirley Horn and a few others exude a sense of calm and quiet that can be understood when listening. It’s like the old advertisement about E.F. Hutton, “When E. F. Hutton speaks, people listen. And listen they did because if you drift, you might miss out on key elements in the formulation of sheer beauty. The air is sensitive, an although the Egyptian Theater does not quite have the sound of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the essential quantifiable acoustic elements of the room still apply.

On one of the most rainy days in Los Angeles history, the auditorium is filled with those who gathered for a jazz chamber music experience. They endured horizontal wind and rain in search of the peace, beauty and love that this music exudes. The red and pink lights that shine from the east glow and paint hues of warm tones on the musical tapestry that is unfolding before us.

The music is healing and soul penetrating. It is an unspoken universal language that vibrates off of our bodies, massages our internal organs provoking thought, with malice towards none. When you have something to convey, don’t you appreciated it when someone takes the time to listen to your every word without interruption and they get it? This afternoon, the audience has discovered the key to comprehension. Simply open your ears, listen and let the story be told.

  

Each of these players today, vested with years of commitment and dedication, let the language of their instruments tell their stories with fantastic solo expressions that speak loud and clear, even as cacophonic love embraces a composition. Feel and hear the sounds of the world.

    

Darek Oles is so phunky on “The Positive” that as he plucks the strings on his bass, so to do the chords of you soul. Michael Stephans is the thunder, the storm and the calm before it. He beats your heart as your heart beats. Munyungo is the spice. A touch of this, a tap of that, a shake of this for savory palletonian bliss! And then there is the painter, the piper, the leader of freedom from the booby traps of your mind, Mr. Bennie Maupin!

“Tapping” is a piece that is based on the noises around us and how those noises affect our lives. “Vapors” is a quiet piece where the band takes their time and accentuates small breezes that glides past the top of the microphone exhaling to a state of relaxation. The diaphragms of the audience follow in response. “Trope on a Rope” is a musical form, this one in five notes, that leaves you to answer the question. We also heard “My One and Only Love” and the title track from his latest compact disc “Penumbra”

 

Coming up next week on January 15^th at the Luckman Fine Arts Auditorium, Bennie will be performing with the Luckman Jazz Orchestra, conducted by James Newton, playing the music of our hero, “Eric Dolphy”!
DO NOT MISS THIS PERFORMANCE.
Eric Dolphy is one of Los Angeles’ great legends and, on hand to provide us with some inside information to the man himself is another beautiful treasure of Los Angeles, Mr. Buddy Collette! For tickets and more information, Click Dolphy!

 

LeRoy Downs