A week of jazz and blues in San Francisco, part III

As promised, here is the final installment of my recent adventure at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, the rest of which is recounted in previous posts below.

The Cecil Taylor concert at Grace Cathedral was highly anticipated, and San Franciscans showed up in number to hear the ever-thorny 75-year-old avant-garde pioneer. Pews were packed, as were extra seats in back. Visibility of the stage and performer were almost besides the point; the space itself — cavernous and magically lit — with its sweeping gothic arches and high-vaulted ceiling, was charged with excitement. Taylor's voice appeared before he did — there was a seven-second delay, we were told, until what happened on stage hit our ears — as his booming voice came echoing out of the darkness and the pianist recited cryptic verses that had something to do with the elements and the origin of man, his delivery wild and incantatory.

Then, suddenly, Taylor appeared, looking quite miniscule against such a massive backdrop. But when he took his place at the piano, his sound was huge. Lengthy pieces were dramatic, sweeping, building in intensity like the clouds of a gathering storm. Furious flurries of notes issued from the apse, thunderous, rolling chords contrasting with more filigreed, delicate sounds. Wizened and wizardly, Taylor truly presented a performance worthy of the space. I left the church dazzled but at peace and sat in the adjacent courtyard listening to the splash of a fountain before making the climb down Nob Hill.

The next afternoon's festival performance would prove equally remarkable. A dense fog had descended, cooling off a week of unseasonably warm weather, and the view of the bay (let alone the Golden Gate Bridge) from the hilltop Legion of Honor was almost entirely obscured. Inside the stately, columned building, Marilyn Crispell presented a solo piano concert in the round jewelbox of the Florence Gould Theater.

Attired all in black, Crispell seemed totally absorbed in her music, her brunette tangle of hair obscuring her features as she leaned into the keyboard. Crystalline notes seemed to hang suspended, as Crispell orgainically built her emotionally involving narratives. While they certainly are spiky, Crispell's compositions are nowhere near as untethered as Taylor's, and snippets of melodic and rhythmic passages appeared almost as if in collage. Transitions between edgy and melodic movements seemed natural albeit sometimes jarring; in one particular piece, the lovely tune seemed to lose its mooring and descend into a chaotic jumble as notes crashed and tumbled one over the next before returning to the serene music with which it started, like the sun breaking through again after a storm. The near-capacity audience cheered wildly, enticing the shy pianist, who spoke not a word, to re-emerge for a couple of encores, one spiky as hell, the other just gorgeous, which was a perfect a summation of what had just gone before.

I switched gears that evening with a concert by funk maestro Maceo Parker, James Brown's famed right-hand saxophonist and composer fronting his own tight ensemble. Tall and dapper, black wraparound shades hugging his bald head, Parker was Mr. Excitement as he danced to the funk rhythms, blew his signature alto and sang in a quite engaging voice. Amused at being included in a jazz fest, Parker did a double-take looking at the SF Jazz banner behind him and jokingly played a few bars of "Satin Doll." Parker knew what he was there to do, and he proceeded to stir up an ecstactic rhythmic stew, tossing in classics by the Godfather of Soul as well as The JB's, the latter represented with a no-way-to-keep-still read of "Pass the Peas." Indeed, seats up front were cleared and those so moved go up offa that thang and made themselves feel better. All in all, a perfect capper to the week's performances.

The only disappointing night of the event was the double bill of the Eldar Trio and singer Sophie Millman. I had never seen 21-year-old pianist Eldar Djangirov, but his recordings, which I have been listening to since he was being touted as a teenage prodigy, have never elicited much more than a "eh, the kid's talented" response. Live, I realized even more why I don't care much for his music. Grandiose and showy, Eldar lacks subtlety; he subsitutes virtuosity and flash for soul or any kind of meaningful expression or emotional connection. The sheer volume at which he played made his hands seem like canned hams crashing on the keyboards, each finger like an individual sledge hammer. Bassist Armando Gola was no help, and he actually sounded kind of lost, although I really enjoyed drummer Justin Brown's performance. (He'll be performing for South Florida Jazz in January if you want to see for yourself.) As for Millman, middling is the best way I can describe her. There was absolutely nothing special about her delivery or song selection, and there's no way in hell she should be headlining a major jazz festival, although many in the audience felt otherwise; she was enthusiastically clapped back for an encore, although I didn't sit through it.