Drummer Jimmy Cobb, alto saxophonist Sonny Fortune, bassist Buster Williams and guitarist Mike Stern range in age from 82 (Cobb) to 58 (Stern). Miles Davis, the man they play to honor, would have been 85 on May 26th. Sitting across from me at Seattle’s Jazz Alley, Tom Kipp wasn’t completely sure if four sidemen from four decidedly different phases of Miles, would gel into a cohesive ensemble. From the first minute I knew neither one of us need have worried.
Across a commonly-understood melody, through their respective axes, Stern spoke to Fortune and Fortune answered him. Williams and Cobb kept to the background of this conversation at first, although Cobb, the last surviving player on Miles’ seminal “Kind Of Blue,” album, leavened every beat with idiosyncrasy. His mesmerizing solos seemed almost superfluous, given his constant pushing and pulling on the pulse, opening dimensions between beats. He rarely looked down at his sideways-to-the-audience kit, the confidence of a crafter whose hands learned how to work alone ages ago.
The quartet knew how to please an audience—towering altissimos and distortion flourishes abounded, although never simply exhibitionist. The quartet also knows how to follow its collective muse; “All Blues” started with a long bass solo and nearly finished with another one. Williams worked his strings with the first three digits of his right hand, leaving ring and little fingers curled under, sometimes hammering from on high with his left hand. His solos caught the undercurrents of the music’s changes, its modal manifestations, and dove confidently deeper.
“My Funny Valentine” opened and closed, started and stopped, with many soft passages for Stern’s ringing chords. The foursome chuckled, and coordinated with each other—verbally, this time, though off-mic—trying, to get the important parts in before the set time ran out. Sonny Rollins’ “Oleo” finished business, pointing simultaneously backwards with its classic rhythm changes, and forwards, with that famous bridge that Rollins never bothered to codify. “Free blowing” it says in the fake book. With each other for assurance, these four men caught the breeze.
– Andrew Hamlin
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