Charlie Hunter made people backstage think they were hearing things. Kenny Garrett must have thought it was the last concert of his life. In Spaulding Auditorium this past Friday, the two jazz artists, an eight-string guitarist and a saxophonist, respectively, gave a two-and-a-half-hour jazz gift to those lucky enough to have seen the performance. All I can say is, "dang."
The concert, advertised as a "Jazz Double Bill," almost made it sound as if the two musicians were performing together, but each performed a separate set with his own band.
Hunter's quintet consisted of a tenor saxophonist, a trombonist, a harmonica player, a drummer and Hunter. A bassist was conspicuously absent, but Hunter's eight strings tripled as a guitar, a bass and through some sweet technique of electronic synthesizing, a Hammond organ.
The drummer, Don Edwards, was always on point. Gregoire Maret blew a devastating solo every song on the slide harmonica. Curtis Fowles looked about twice as old as everybody else in the band, but the man still strutted.
The crowd was rowdy; it must have been a Friday night. People were actually arriving late for about the first 45 minutes of the show. Stately applause was not adequate for our audience, either, and every song was cheered, hooted and hollered. I could see the white-haired Upper Valley audience members squirming in their seats.
Hunter looked like he was having as much fun as the fans. Halfway through the set, the band finished a song and Hunter announced to the audience, "You're gonna hear my band start this next song without me, I just broke a string."
Then, instead of walking backstage to retrieve a replacement string, Hunter just leaned over, picked one out of some kit on stage, and started fixing his guitar right there on stage! The band played a chorus or two, and then without even missing a beat, Hunter joined right in at the top of the melody.
The music was funky. Hunter was a long-time member of an obscure West Coast acoustic hip-hop group, and these influences were evident in the progressive style of the band as a whole. The harmonica sounded corny, I know, but the music was beautiful and added a pleasing European sound to the jazz. Imagine an accordion playing with Joe Satriani.
At one point in the show, Edwards played a solo that rocked so hard that a girl in the front gave him a standing ovation in the middle of the song. When the quintet left the stage at intermission and everyone got up to stretch, I amusedly thought to myself, "Shoot, Kenny Garrett's gonna have to blow some crazy sounds to show them up."
Kenny Garrett walked on the stage like no one I have ever seen at the Hopkins Center. He did not even acknowledge the audience. He had an alto and a soprano saxophone, both of which he set down on stage and turned around to wait for his audience to situate themselves.
When he and his band started to play, and the man did not even face the audience until three-quarters of the way through the first song -- but I was already sweating at the halfway point.
He played two or three choruses alone with the drummer and a saxophone. It sounded like 10 people were playing. In fact, I do not know if Kenny Garrett has not signed a pact with the Devil to play like that. Normal human beings cannot play as hard and as long as that man played on Friday night.
The band backed him up, too. The drummer, Kenyon Scott, would roll his head back at times like he just couldn't take anymore, and Garrett would turn to him and motion with his hands, "more, more." Sometimes his drumsticks were not even good enough. He would just hit the crash cymbal with his fist. But I personally liked Vernell Brown on the piano. His solos were amazing and could stand up against anyone in jazz today.
There have been many good performances at Dartmouth this year. But tonight, when you go to sleep, pray, pray to whomever it is you pray to, that someday you might be lucky enough to walk into a concert like this.
