Joe Martin looked hip enough to be leading an indie rock band, but he’s a serious jazzman. The audience seemed animated enough it could’ve been a rock concert, but they were there for the jazz. As sax player Mark Turner quietly blew some warm up notes and looked down at his horn dissatisfied, Martin spoke of the Village Vanguard’s legacy and the presence of spirits in the hallowed venue.
One spirit of jazz past was the late Roy Haynes, whose grandson Marcus Gilmore was drumming in Martin’s quartet. There was also plenty of spirit in the crowd packing the old basement club. An enthusiastic voice somewhere behind me hollered “Go ahead!” as the quartet kicked things off.
The music had a searching quality starting with the opening piece “Prospectus”. A warm bassline from Martin rocked between low anchoring notes and higher harmonies, augmented by thick piano chords. The sax and piano extended a yearning melody for several minutes as the rhythmic tension kept building.
“Alright now,” the voice behind me called out as Turner launched into a sax solo. It’s not uncommon to hear jazz musicians shouting encouragement to each other, but I’d never heard an audience member vocally engaging with the band in the dozen+ shows I’ve seen at the Village Vanguard.
I’d spotted Turner in the hallway before the show on my way to the restroom. He was shaking his soprano saxophone, furrowing his brow and peering into the holes to inspect something inside.
Turner alternated between inquisitive staccato, Coltrane-esque sheets of sound, and sustained blue notes. His pauses felt like a climber scaling up a few steps and stopping to readjust before continuing the ascent. These pauses were often filled by cheers and whoops of encouragement from the voice behind me.
As soon as the first song ended, Martin quietly repeated a high arpeggio to introduce “Semente”. The musicians wove a complex pretzel of intersecting rhythms around him as a head melody gradually emerged over the first few minutes. The piano and sax passed solos back and forth throughout the middle of the piece.
“Freeze!,” I heard the voice shout. He must’ve wanted the pianist to hold a particularly arresting note. A man in front of me kept looking back, scanning the crowd for the source of the voice. The Village Vanguard asks the audience to keep conversations to a bare minimum.
I tried to pin down the subtly shifting rhythm: was the piece in 6? 5? 7? Eventually I gave up and just enjoyed it. Before returning to the opening bass line, Gilmore unleashed a long, crackling drum solo, spraying rapid fire from the snare down to the lowest tom and back. At times his wooden sticks moved so fast they looked blue and red, like a pair of giant birthday candles.
“That’s what I’m talking about!,” the voice rejoiced on an emphatic cymbal crash.
“Is that someone in the band talking?” my wife and parents quietly asked during applause. I pointed over my shoulder.
The songs were full of surprising shifts in dynamics or mood and rarely followed the straight head-solo-head format. A melody would build up only for an abrupt shift into a different groove that might or might not return to the original theme. The improvisations felt more like one instrument taking the lead during a different passage of a piece than straight solos over a shared riff. The overall sound was rich and warm, with Martin’s supple bass audible as the driving engine. Rhythms varied from fast straight-ahead jazz swing to more latinate pockets. Gilmore’s drumming was so interactive and responsive that the central pulse of the music was often held between the bass and piano.
During the next break, Turner rolled up a dollar bill and tried sticking it between the keys of his saxophone before putting it back in his pocket, still not satisfied.
The following piece, “Safe”, lurched out the gate with heavy syncopation. It emphasized a delayed beat to give the feeling of staggering to find one’s footing, then mutated into an uptempo swing beat supported by surefooted walking bass.
Martin didn’t play that many full-blown bass solos. He led more by establishing a riff or groove that set the tone for the next passage, and controlling the energy level with his dynamics. When he did solo, he employed a variety of techniques: descending runs down the top string, or echoing between a series of low and then high notes to create a call-and-response between bass line and melody.
“Okay, Joe,” called the voice behind as the other instruments fell back to let Martin take a solo.
During another pause, Turner tried poking what looked like a toothpick into one of the keys to fidget with something. Maybe something was wrong with his horn, but I sure couldn’t hear it. I suspect it’s just his style to never stop adjusting.
The set featured only one slow number, called “A Dream”. The bass repeated a single low anchoring pedal as the piece drifted between tender and mysterious moods. It sounded like John Coltrane’s “Naima” with an Egyptian twist. Gilmore traded his drum sticks for soft mallets, one coaxing shimmering whispers from the cymbals while the other softly bounced between the toms. The music fluttered so gently it almost could have floated away without the bass pedal holding it in place.
Even the voice behind me laid low during “A Dream”, and refrained from any cheering until declaring “Sold!” at the very end.
The final number, “Tomorrow Is Today”, jumped out with a punchy sax hook before abruptly dropping down into a minor and moody piano riff. As the band slowly worked their way to boiling point, the pianist hopped over to a Fender Rhodes keyboard. The regular pianist was out sick, but this young man, who looked like Jim Carey on a rough night’s sleep, navigated Martin’s polyrhythmic compositions admirably.
“Keep going! Keep going!” the voice gently nudged the pianist along as he acclimated himself on the Rhodes.
I grew up hearing recordings of Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea playing the Fender Rhodes, but had never seen this instrument played live. It’s an electric keyboard that retains the warm tone of an acoustic piano but adds a soft reverb, creating a lush and dreamy feel. The pianist’s face was a mixture of excitement and relief as his solo reached its climax.
“Come on!” urged the voice.
The sax took over unaccompanied as the band returned to the opening groove and the Rhodes player migrated back to acoustic piano.
A revved audience joined the voice behind me in howls of “wooo!” and warm applause at the show’s end.
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