NY Times Review of Allen Toussaint @ Village Vanguard

Note by Note, Manhattan Acquires a New Orleans Bounce

Chad Batka for The New York Times

Check out a bunch more pictures HERE.

By JON PARELES

Published: May 20, 2009

The New Orleans pianist Allen Toussaint hinted at the scope of his musical lore in a whimsical solo montage halfway through his early set at the Village Vanguard on Tuesday night. Fragments of old New Orleans songs (like “Big Chief”), classical pieces, boogie-woogie, “The Sound of Music” and other tunes interrupted one another and gradually mingled, giving barrelhouse flourishes to a Chopin prelude. After a few more segues Mr. Toussaint called Elvis Costello out of the audience to sing “Ascension Day,” a song from the 2006 album they made together, “The River in Reverse.”

No matter what the source, the rendition was poised and light-fingered, without an unconsidered note. And somehow New Orleans was in every phrase, with hints of swing, of humor, of sly sensuality.

In Mr. Toussaint’s long career as songwriter, arranger and producer he has honed a piano style that’s supportive and allusive; a little trill or tremolo sums up all the splashy joys of New Orleans patriarchs like Professor Longhair and James Booker, and a syncopated chord under right-hand octaves summons gospel. Mr. Toussaint has the two-fisted, rippling vocabulary of the city’s piano legacy, but he uses it in dapper ways.

He’s at the Village Vanguard through Sunday primarily as an instrumentalist; he sang only two songs in the set. Mr. Toussaint is following through on his new album, “The Bright Mississippi” (Nonesuch). It applies the Toussaint touch to old songs like “St. James Infirmary” (which was sung on Tuesday night by the album’s producer, Joe Henry), “Just a Closer Walk With Thee” and Duke Ellington’s “Solitude.”

His band echoes a New Orleans trad-jazz lineup — clarinet (Don Byron), trumpet (Christian Scott), acoustic guitar (Marc Ribot), bass (David Piltch) and drums (Jay Bellerose) — and reaches back without being fussy about it. When Mr. Toussaint played and sang his own “Southern Nights,” he turned it into a blend of gospel and Orientalism, with harplike glissandos. But for most of the set blues, slow-drag beats, parade struts and New Orleans-ized tangos and hymns were the foundations, with a touch of rhythm and blues. And melody always took precedence.

Mr. Scott, who has been a sideman on hip-hop albums, reached back to old New Orleans, playing the tunes with puckish pauses and smears; Mr. Byron, sometimes switching to tenor saxophone from his usual clarinet, had the scurrying, ornamental role, sometimes hinting at modernist harmony in his runs. Mr. Ribot’s guitar solos were spiky, down-home epigrams. And Mr. Piltch and Mr. Bellerose savored the vintage New Orleans beats, with rustling cymbals and ballooning snare-drum rolls.

It wasn’t a re-creation of old New Orleans music but a reverie on a New Orleans heritage: a lifetime of memories refined by a genteel sensibility that finds the elegance in the blues.

Performances continue through Sunday at the Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, West Village, (212) 255-4037, villagevanguard.com.

In Pictures/Review: Galactic @ Irving Plaza

Here's a quick review from Burning Wood:

The New Orleans-based jazz-funk ensemble Galactic continues it's never-ending tour with a run of shows being dubbed as the "Brass Tacks Tour." For this string of shows, New Orleans treasure and monster of the skins Stanton Moore and friends, have added the exciting young trumpet player Shamarr Allen and trombonist Corey Henry of the Rebirth Brass Band to the ensemble. I caught Friday's show at The Fillmore At Irving Plaza At The Copa At The Latin Quarter In NYC On Earth (or whatever my least favorite venue in NYC is now called) and it was definitely a New Orleans party. Galactic's non-songs are propelled into a musical earthquake by Stanton Moore. His drumming never fails to boggle the mind.

With the intensity and piston-pumping throbs of John Bonham and the laid back subtlety and in-the-pocket grooves of NOLA greats Zigaboo Modeliste and John Vidacovich, Moore's magic carries this band, whose extended jams on simple riffs would become quite monotonous without his creativity and what seems like impossible moves on the drums. Shamarr Allen was a joyful addition. Allen is a tasty player and master showman. His presence and playful solos were a highlight on just about every song.

Pictures by Dino Perrucci Photography

Corey Henry - Irving Plaza, NYC 10/18/08


Galactic- Irving Plaza, NYC 10/18/08




Ben Ellman - Irving Plaza, NYC 10/17/08


Galactic - Irving Plaza, NYC 10/17/08

In Pictures/Review: Porter Batiste & Stoltz feat. Page McConnell

The quartet brought the MOODOO to NYC's B.B. King's. Andrew DeRosa kindly contributed a full report which we've teamed up with Jeremy Gordon's typically stunning photographs.

"Good funk, real funk, is not played by four white guys from Vermont." However, good real funk comes out the pores of George Porter Jr. and Russell Batiste. George Porter is a living legend. He's up there with Larry Graham– except George Porter never got cheesy. He left that to Art Neville. With Art Neville out of the line up, the other members of the Funky Meters are unhinged. With the addition of cow-funker Page McConnell we've got some shit yo. The first few tunes the band was warming up and I could barely hear Page in the mix. I wondered if this would be the case all night– a shy Page playing some back-up all night. As Brent Mydland once described his roll in the Grateful Dead, Page was "adding color". He played a nice version of Jealous Guy, which sounded closer to the Donny Hathaway version with such a solid rhythm section behind him. It was weird hearing Page play clean piano from a Yamaha rather than the Baby Grand. After Jealous Guy, the rest of the set saw the band warmed up, locked in and inspired. Brian Stoltz can really take off on guitar and has the ability to dial in his tone. However, sometimes he just sounds like a talented New Orleans bar band guitarist– good, not great. I can't say enough good things about Porter and Batiste. They are motherfuckers. The real deal. For the second set Page was front and present and kicking ass. He pushed and led the band on a textured terrain of layered, driving psychedelic funk. Like listening to the first solo efforts by members of the Beatles, it was immediately clear how large Page’s contribution to Phish was. I sometimes dismiss him as a mere Mydland-ian colorist. Or rather dismiss colorists because they are not right up in your face. However, I was witnessing Page in all his glory, and I found myself feeling a bit more confident that a Phish reunion might not suck. The “four white guys from Vermont” should be taking notes from the playbook of legendary motherfucker George Porter Jr. on how to keep it real, because after 40 odd years in the industry, he was so real and so good.

Nolafunky Show Reviews: New Orleans Bingo! Show @ Spiegelworld

Concert Review: The New Orleans Bingo! Show @ Spiegelworld (09/12/08)

By Dustin

A performance by The New Orleans Bingo! Show is something to behold, and Spiegelworld seems to be the location built for their Tom-Waits-meets-James-Chance-and-the-Contorations-at-a-burlesque-show live events. That’s the catch, too, it’s more event than live concert. The Bingo! Show consists eight members including a piano player with a pension for playing theremin, two foul mouthed clowns who hump audiences members, play cheese graters, police sirens, and accordions, a scantily clad burlesque performer, and a front man rotating between keys and his sax.

When the Bingo! Show hit their ragtime blues style dead on it was spectacular. They could play that old time sound to the tee, and make it into a spectacle, but, unfortunately, that didn’t happen frequently enough. Too often the music drifted into uninspired blues rock balladry with wafts of that roots sound, making them sound more like something from the early afternoon hours of Bonnaroo (not that good bands have not played that slot in the past) than a band that was meant to be seen in a beautiful intimate venue like Spiegelword (and believe me, that’s where they are meant to be seen).

Spiegelworld is an interesting venue, located in a faux circus tent on the South Street Seaport of Manhattan. The cloth tent look from inside, with the chairs and tables thrown everywhere they will fit, all placed under rocking chandeliers and a speakeasy kind of feel, complimented the performance in ways that few venues can do for an act, including a beautiful sound system that allowed for the subtlety of the instrumentation to shine through.

Bingo! Show’s main issue was that there wasn’t enough momentum behind what they were doing, there was often the passion (though not always), but the performance is given too much emphasis over the actual music. Mid set they stopped playing and threw on a film shot on bikes in pre-Katrina French Quarter of New Orleans. In the video the group does a soulful cover of the Kinks “Complicated Life,” which didn’t quite do justice to the Kinks brilliant arrangement. Following the film the band started a pretty thin jam and proceeded to have the audience participate in a twenty game of bingo. Yes, bingo. While this left a few die hard fans cheering and screaming as one of the clowns berated audience members who weren’t catching on to the rules, it seemed that the crowd lost a good deal of it’s enthusiasm for the music from that point forward. Though they would probably argue that it’s in the name and this isn’t just a concert, it’s performance, it nonetheless sucked the air out of the room for both the concert and the performance.

From that point on, aside from a few moments of great Squirrell Nut Zippers inspired roots tunes, the music never caught up to the performance – which, in all fairness, the performance was pretty grand and engaging. The Bingo! Show has a good sound going, but there seems to be a lack of confidence in the music’s ability to engage the audience within the band. The clowns and dancing routine works in it’s own way to create a one of a kind experience, but that’s just not enough in this case.

Watch The New Orleans Bingo! Show live:

Bingo! show at Spiegelworld

Clint Maedgen's Bingo! show landed at lower Manhattan's Spiegelworld as if the revue had been tailor made for the tony cabaret that caters to well heeled New Yorkers. The crowd for this show was unusual for the place, peppered as it was with hardcore fans of Louisiana music who hooted knowingly at the references to the Ninth Ward and Mid City and howled in delight when Clint name checked the Hi Ho Lounge and a series of Bourbon Street strip clubs. The fans knew when to get up and dance, how to clap along in time and especially how to interact with the guerilla theater moves of Bingo's players. The music was as well choreographed as the players and the program, using an array of kitchen utensils and garage junk for percussion instruments and working bull horns, sirens and electronics expertly into a sonic mix based around a two keyboard acoustic quartet with Maedgen's saxophone as the main solo voice. Preservation Hall's Ben Jaffe was along for the ride, playing sousaphone at several points in the show. The video of "Complicated Life" and of course the Bingo game itself, which ended with the "winner" being knocked to the ground and beaten with a bouquet of flowers, worked seamlessly into the theatrical mix. In the evening's most moving moment, the crowd recognized John Brunious in the video and offered up a spontaneous ovation to the late Preservation Hall mainstay. What amazes me most about Maedgen's presentation is how it can transmit so much love for and understanding of traditional New Orleans music without ever pandering to the audience or resorting to the usual cliches that most New Orleans performers use to translate content. When asked, of course, they will provide the hokum.

In Pictures / NolaFunkyNYC Review of the Week: Bonerama | 06.21.08 | NYC

Bonerama :: 06.21.08 :: Sullivan Hall :: New York, NY

Words & Images by: Dino Perrucci

Check out the Full Jambase Review HERE.

NolaFunkNYC Review of the Week: 12/30/07 Porter Batiste & Stoltz @ Gramercy Theater

Review from Brian Ferdman's "Intelligent Rectum" blog.

Photo courtesy of Mule.net

Download free live shows here.