What a week: Carter, Winstone and Németh hit SoFla

Jazz and blues lovers have had pretty rich pickin's this past week. Here's a sample.

• Last Saturday, Ron Carter brought his quartet into the Miniaci Performing Arts Center for a Valentine's Day show. Attired in tuxedos, the foursome took the stage with the elegance of the Modern Jazz Quartet, but once they started playing, it became plain that this was not going to be the romantic, straight-ahead jazz show many people in the audience (not to mention their mates and dates) were expecting. Carter, as always, was magnificent, pulling a tone from a borrowed upright rivaled by few — Charlie Haden springs to mind — and laying down the foundational and often quite funky grooves upon which his quartet built. An opening vamp teased Miles Davis' familiar "So What," as the group began playing — and playing, and playing, and playing — the first of a series of lengthy rhythmic explorations that must have tested the endurance of all but the most avid listener. (And yet, maybe because it was Valentine's Day, audiences were more than respectful and seemed determined to make the best of it, although I suspect the applause was often a burst of relief that the song had finally ended.)

Carter was beyond generous with his sidemen, particularly percussionist Rolando Morales-Matos, who was ensconced in a curio shop of congas, gongs, wood blocks and assorted noisemaking implements. No knock against the very talented Morales-Matos, but, like spicy mustard on a sandwich, a little goes a long way; I wanted to go up on-stage and hide his freakin' triangle, which he ting-tinged with the glee of a second-grader and which seemed to amuse Carter who smiled broadly at him whenever he employed it. I might have enjoyed drummer Payton Crossley under different circumstances, but in this setting, I just found my attention wandering during his solos. Pianist Stephen Scott carried the burden of injecting tunefulness into these very non-melodic proceedings, and again, in a different context, I might have enjoyed him more. However, his challenging reharmonization of "My Funny Valentine" — Carter's single reluctant nod to playing on Feb. 14 — was a bright spot, as he segued into "Cheek to Cheek" and a lovely read of Leon Russell's "Song for You."

I love free jazz, and have had near religious experiences while hearing it performed live. However, Carter's show, for the most part, had me shifting in my seat and counting ceiling tiles. In retrospect, I think it was the over-busy percussionist who sunk this concert, and I wonder how much better it would have been with just bass, piano and drums, or better yet, just bass and piano. Ambition is to be applauded, but not at the expense of providing an interesting and entertaining listening experience.

• By (very welcome) contrast, Norma Winstone and her trio performed a remarkable show Wednesday night at the O'Keeffe Gallery in Palm Beach that was both artful and extremely palatable. A veteran of the London underground jazz scene, Winstone brought along Italian pianist Glauco Venier and Austrian reed player Klaus Gesing, both of whom accompanied her on her sublime 2008 recording, Distances, which earned her a Grammy nod for Jazz Vocal Album of the Year. (She lost to Cassandra Wilson's more mundane Loverly.)

The threesome started out with the perfect kickoff tune, the rousing "Chamber Music," which superimposes James Joyce's lyrical love poem of the same name (its opening line: "Strings in the earth and air make music sweet") atop a musical foundation based on the hymn "Nearer My God to Thee." At 67, Winstone still possesses a rich and gorgeous voice, and her intonation and elocution remain impeccable. The trio pulled several tunes from Distances, including an absolutely riveting read of "The Mermaid," in which Winstone sings her lyrics of a homesick sea nymph to Venier's mysterious melody. All three musicians subtly added otherworldly sounds to the proceedings, and Winstone gave her cohorts extended solo time. Even more moving, Winstone sang the lyrics to "Ciant da li Ciampanis" entirely in the Italian Friulian dialect. Another lament of a faraway homeland, its words were penned by Pier Paolo Pasolini and fitted, by Venier, to a piece by Erik Satie. No matter what language, her delivery was astonishingly heartfelt. A reconstruction of John Coltrane's "Giant Steps," the sighing "Giant's Gentle Stride" was offered as an ode to Trane, as Winstone's lyric alluded to the spiritual nature of his music: "Every song was a prayer." Got that right. The tune also provided Gesing ample room to craft a very non-Trane-derivative solo on soprano sax.

Venier is a marvel of understated accompaniment, his phrasing and tone perfectly suited to Winstone's voice and temperament. Same goes for Gesing, who switched from soprano to bass clarinet, upon which he offered staccato rhythmic bursts as well as longer lines, quiet breathy sounds, and perhaps inadvertently, the gentle clacking of his instrument's keys. All of it made a terrific backdrop for these rich explorations of words and tones.

Sadly, the show was far from overcrowded, and much of the music seemed to sail over the heads of the elderly Palm Beach crowd, who may have been expecting something more within their comfort zone. However, unlike the Ron Carter show, the disconnect didn't appear to be the fault of the musicians. With any luck, Winstone will book a hipper venue — perhaps the Manuel Artime Theater in Little Havana? — if she returns to South Florida.



• Last night (Saturday), the dynamic John Németh and his four-piece rocked The Back Room into worse health than Chinese drywall. Németh was in exceptionally good voice as he took the stage attired in a sharp blue suit and his trademark snap-brim hat, and worked the mike like a natural-born soul man for two high-energy sets. The Bay Area vocalist and harmonica player owns a flexible tenor that can swoop up to a chill-raising falsetto, and he tested that range on a truly moving rendition of "Fuel for Your Fire," a tune from his new album, Love Me Tonight, that recalls vintage Philly and Memphis soul. Accompanied by a superb band — guitarist Bobby Welsh, bassist Michael Phillips and one of the best blues drummers in the biz, June Core — Németh performed several tracks from the new recording, which has been owning the Billboard Blues Chart since it was released earlier this month. Switching among chromatic and standard harps, Németh displayed an easy mastery, never overblowing and, as my pal Mark Fodera pointed out, eschewing the over-used bullet-mike that has become almost de rigueur for West Coast harpsters these days.

The personable and charismatic Németh introduced a couple of standout tunes from the new recording with humorous anecdotes, relaying the dangers of mother-in-laws before launching into the slinky "Daughter of the Devil," which has a menacing Slim Harpo-Magic Sam type groove, and talking about how he ended up in San Francisco after following his girlfriend from his native Idaho as a prelude to the autobiographical "Country Boy."

Németh and this exceptional band have been working at a fever pitch, touring hard behind the new recording, which, with any luck, will raise the 31-year-old blues and soul singer's profile even higher. Last year's Magic Touch, also for the Blind Pig imprint, earned him a Blues Music Award for Best New Artist Debut, and Love Me Tonight should get him at least on the list for even more categories next year.

Talkin' blues: John Hammond's tales liven a lively show

John Hammond put on a fierce, expertly played solo show Saturday night at the Colony Theater on Miami Beach. No surprise there. However, the veteran blues troubadour also charmed with autobiographical tales that led into many of his selections, regaling a rapt audience with stories from his youth, early career and dealings with some of the genre's legendary figures. Always affable and charismatic — especially when he gets lost in song and his rather elastic features contort into a roadmap of anguish — Hammond often comes across as shy and diffident on-stage. Not this time.

Fresh off the Blues Cruise, and a more-intimate Friday night boat trip with a few friends of Tigertail, the arts org behind the Colony show, Hammond seemed relaxed and was more talkative on-stage than I'd ever seen him. Hammond told of how he headed for California as a neophyte blues guitarist and found work pumping gas at a station on Wiltshire. One day, a guy pulled up in a convertible and caught young Hammond eyeing the expensive Martin guitar inside. The motorist asked Hammond to play him something — which he eagerly agreed to, just for the chance to lay his hands on the coveted instrument. Well, the driver turned out to be Hoyt Axton, who booked Hammond immediately, which led to more gigs and his eventually earning enough scratch to buy a car and get the hell out of L.A.

Another tale involved the idiosyncratic, nine-string guitarist Big Joe Williams, who Hammond met in Chicago through his friend Michael Bloomfield. One night, Bloomfield, who had already established himself as an young guitar ace on the Chicago blues scene, brought Hammond to Silvio's, a rough South Side club, to hear Howlin' Wolf. Outside the club, a bottle whooshed by Hammond's head, smashing against the wall behind him, apparently thrown by a member of the menacing street gang across the street. The barrel-shaped Williams, who had learned to take care of himself after decades of hoboing, pulled his piece, which Hammond described as looking — and sounding — like a cannon, and fired a blast at the hoods, who sensibility made themselves scarce. Hammond said he didn't know who to be more frightened of: the gang or Big Joe.

The stories lent insight into Hammond's musical performance. Switching between acoustic guitar and a vintage National steel, and accompanying himself on rack harmonica, he dipped into the rich and often poetic country blues songbook, offering stunning renditions of Robert Johnson's "Come on in My Kitchen" and Blind Willie McTell's "Love Changing Blues," both of which were played on the silvery steel. Blustery reads of "I'm Just Your Fool" and "Mean Ol' Lonesome Train," the latter of which he introduced as a Sleepy John Estes tune, conjured up the requisite mix of swagger and self-effacement that makes lyrics like "Gonna buy me a shotgun, aimed dead at you" seem less like abuse than humorous hyperbole. Over the past six years or so, Hammond has been writing original material, as well. His own swaggering "Slick Crown Vic," written about that first car he drove out of L.A., and "Come to Find Out," with the evocative lyric "The wind is howling, the leaves turned inside out/My world has unraveled, boy, I come to find out," held up just fine alongside the classics.

Expect a new recording by Hammond in March, on the Chesky label. As yet untitled, it will be a solo acoustic disc, recorded at a Chelsea church in New York City. As anyone who's seen him live can attest, Hammond needs no assistance, as he generates groove for days and blows notes on his rack harp that could cut steel.

With so many great stories at his command, Hammond could easily fill a book or two with rich, insightful tales of his 45-plus years in the business. Even if he doesn't write them down, I hope they become a regular part of his repertoire.