July 10--One of the enduring wonders of the Chicago jazz scene is its knack for producing young talent.
Emerging musicians long have been ubiquitous in Chicago clubs and concert halls, but this doesn't happen by accident. Institutions such as the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), Chicago Jazz Philharmonic and Jazz Institute of Chicago -- as well as uncounted universities -- nurture and launch emerging artists who otherwise would have nowhere to take their gifts.
That helps explain the high level of music-making heard Thursday night in the Drake Hotel's Palm Court, where the Jazz Institute's NextGenJazz series gives up-and-coming musicians a shot at playing a chic downtown venue. Earlier this year percussionist Juan Pastor brought a new version of his Chinchano band to the Drake's Palm Court, to vivid effect, and on this evening Pastor played drums in a band led by another potential star of Chicago's next wave: tenor saxophonist Roy McGrath.
You don't expect a player of McGrath's vintage -- he's 27 -- to possess the poise, musical maturity and tonal depth and sheen that he showed in practically every work he played during his opening set. That McGrath also unfurled solos of considerable complexity and communicative power only deepened the appeal of his music.
Uninterested in revisiting familiar repertoire, McGrath -- who was born and raised in Puerto Rico -- focused on unfamiliar music, much of it drawn from his album "Martha." This work ranged freely in style and temperament, pointing to a musician of ample curiosity searching for original modes of expression.
He opened the evening with Daniel Iverson's "Spirit of the Living God," from the "Martha" recording, infused with a bit of Herbie Hancock's "Driftin'" (the latter from Hancock's debut album, "Takin' Off," which more than half a century ago launched another young Chicago artist quite spectacularly). The hallmarks of McGrath's sound were instantly apparent: a deep, dark timbre burrowing into the low registers and an imploring but still warmly cushioned tone singing openly up top. Here was a sound you could get lost in, especially considering the long, legato lines at which McGrath excelled.
In his "Kintsugi," which closes the "Martha" album, McGrath veered in quite a different direction, offering angular, jagged phrases interrupted by brief and unexpected silences. Even if you didn't know that the work's title referred to the Japanese art of repairing shards of broken pottery, the fragmentary nature of McGrath's melodic material and the clever ways he linked them made intrinsic musical sense.
The stillness and sense of reverie that McGrath and his quartet brought to bassist Kitt Lyles' "Though the Steady Hand May Tremble" epitomized the seriousness of their work, especially in Lyles' blues-inspired solo. McGrath, a musical extrovert to the core, eventually built to quite a frenzy in his own cadenza, yet he never sacrificed the gleaming purity of his sound.
Pianist Joaquin Garcia brought poetry of line to his solo in Tadd Dameron's "On a Misty Night" (Dameron's response to "September in the Rain"), with drummer Pastor providing medium-swing backbeats of a sort we don't customarily hear from him in his Peruvian-influenced Chinchano organization. Here, too, it was easy to savor the beauty of McGrath's tone.
The band finished big with the set's only standard, Cole Porter's "Night and Day," but McGrath and friends transformed the tune from the outset. What started as a coolly understated reworking of Porter's famous melody quickly morphed into alternate themes, rarefied harmonies and ecstatic exclamations from McGrath.
He's off to a most promising start.
The Roy McGrath Quartet plays from 6:30 to 10:30 p.m. Thursday and July 23 in the Palm Court of the Drake Hotel, 140 E. Walton Pl.; no cover charge; phone the Jazz Institute of Chicago at 312-427-1676 or visit jazzinchicago.org.
hreich@tribpub.com
