MUSIC

Monday, February 6, 2006

David 'Fathead' Newman

Saxophonist David "Fathead" Newman capped his opening set at Twins Jazz on Friday night by hoisting his tenor and tipping his hat to Ray Charles. "Hit the Road Jack" inspired a relaxed, vibrant and evocative tribute. Newman, who spent a dozen years playing alongside Charles in the '50s and '60s, released a wonderful CD dedicated to the late R&B legend last year titled "I Remember Brother Ray." Friday night's performance, though, offered a broader view of Newman's repertoire.

Nothing proved more soulful than Newman's interpretation of the Billy Strayhorn ballad "A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing," but a similarly affecting performance of "Time After Time" came close. Both performances featured Newman on tenor, infusing the melodies with an unusually warm, resonating tone. By contrast, Newman's flute work on "Delilah" and "Cousin Esau" was brightly lyrical, recalling the glory days of soul-jazz. Newman's playful spirit provoked laughter, especially when he briefly quoted melodies from familiar jazz and pop tunes.

Accompanying Newman were pianist Allyn Johnson, bassist Steve Novosel and drummer Harold Mann, who deftly wielded sticks, brushes and mallets. Johnson enlivened the set with cresting solos that contrasted single-note chromaticism with a two-fisted chordal attack. Novosel effortlessly sustained the ebb-and-flow pulse that often came into play, and his solos were typically concise and melodic. Newman performs Feb. 19 at the East Coast Jazz Festival at the Doubletree Hotel in Rockville. The five-day event begins Feb 16.

-- Mike Joyce

Getaway Car

Maybe after seeing three other bands Friday night, the kids were just tuckered out. Virginia's Getaway Car, the headliner at an all-ages, all-locals show at the 9:30 club, took the stage at nearly midnight and received first an enthusiastic, then tepid, then completely indifferent response from the audience.

The crowd's nonchalance wasn't a reflection of the trio's fine hour-long performance, however, and front man Todd Wright took it in stride. In between a string of radio-friendly pop songs and power ballads from the band's first LP, "All Your Little Pieces" -- think Fountains of Wayne flavored with a little Bon Jovi -- Wright moved things along with a sunny and sometimes odd sense of humor. (Acting like a baby boomer though he looks no older than 30, he asked if the audience remembered way back when Getaway Car was a hair-metal band and claimed that he saw high school pals in the crowd whose kids were now in high school themselves.)

Invitations to sing along were occasionally met with silence, and when the group closed its set and did the now-perfunctory leave-'em-wanting-more walk off stage, audience members walked out the door. Wright shrugged it off: Before the band baffled their remaining young fans by doing a cover of the Beatles' "She Said She Said" with a little "My Generation" thrown in, Wright cheerily pronounced their return as "the most pathetic encore in history."

-- Tricia Olszewski

Quartet San Francisco

The Quartet San Francisco, founded by violinist Jeremy Cohen of the crossover ensemble Turtle Island Quartet, is the latest in a line of classically trained string quartets bringing an eclectic mix of pop, rock and jazz works to the chamber repertoire. The program at Dumbarton Church on Saturday felt lopsided in terms of genre -- 10 Argentine tangos, five Latin dance-influenced pieces and three non-Latin jazz arrangements. Still, the musicians played with breezy wit, fine technical finish and a genuine feeling for musical idiom.

A set of Astor Piazzolla's inventive, groundbreaking tangos -- which, like nearly everything on the program, were performed in skillful arrangements by Cohen -- drew particular insouciance and rhythmic verve from the quartet. Cohen's playful renderings of older, more traditional tangos gave even more pleasure, with their slithering glissandos, percussive effects and growling notes played on the "wrong" side of the bridge. Most ear-catching of all, though, was an arrangement by Turtle Island's David Balakrishnan of "Cool," from "West Side Story," which managed to sound like Bela Bartok writing western swing.

Not surprisingly, selections by Ellington, Corea and Brubeck were denatured of the improvised give-and-take that defines their music as jazz. But the group played the music with clear affection. And, of course, what constitutes buttoned-up jazz can sound pretty darned unbuttoned in the context of a classical recital.

-- Joe Banno

RJD2

"This is easily the biggest show I've ever headlined," a giddy RJD2 told the sold-out 9:30 club crowd on Saturday. The attentive audience stared at the DJ hero born Ramble Jon Krohn and whooped it up whenever the fans recognized a banger off 2002's "Dead Ringer" or 2004's "Since We Last Spoke." But save for a video screen showing random images -- a break dancer on crutches, a performance by the District's Ian Svenonius, urban decay, cows -- there wasn't much to look at: just a clean-cut and stripe-shirted RJD2, a sampling drum machine, four turntables and a microphone. For beat nuts, that was enough.

RJD2's name has been on the lips of underground hip-hop and turntable fans since the mostly instrumental "Dead Ringer" picked up where DJ Shadow's 1996 classic cut-'em-up "Endtroducing . . ." left off: big beats layered with found sounds and soul samples to create first-rate collage music. After opening with a mash-up of classic rock, soul and hip-hop beats that neatly summed RJD2's eclectic aesthetic, the DJ ventured into his own tunes, like the rainy-day trip-hopper "Smoke and Mirrors" and the garage-guitar cruncher "Exotic Talk." On the latter, RJD2 recalled the electro-rock energy of the Chemical Brothers; on the former, it was the laid-back melancholy of Portishead. In between those extremes were the sorts of musical blends that have made RJD2's productions favorites among indie rappers and sample-spotting fan boys (and girls): "1976" reveled in bongo-flavored cop-funk, "The Horror" mixed a "Mission: Impossible"-type melody with scary-movie voices, and '70s-prog synths and dub Melodica shook hands over "Iced Lightning."

After 70 minutes of turntable trickery that finished with the raucous "Good Times Roll Part 2" -- which features the audience call-and-response "Are you ready? Do you want to hear it?" -- RJD2 came back for a one-song encore. But rather than return to the vinyl, the DJ morphed into a folk singer: He picked up an acoustic guitar and, in a shaky voice, sang his sensitive ballad "Making Days Longer." Top-class instrumentalist DJs have feelings, too.

-- Christopher Porter

Alexandria Symphony Orchestra

As an early Valentine's Day treat, the Alexandria Symphony Orchestra presented a prismatic and passionate performance of its "Shakespeare and Love" program on Saturday evening at the Schlesinger Concert Hall.

Music Director Kim Allen Kluge waited for absolute silence before launching into Prokofiev's "Romeo and Juliet" Suite No. 2 with a searing explosion of sound, what he aptly called a primal scream, in his remarks to the audience. The rest of the Montague and Capulets movement strode purposefully but was imbued with an ominous, almost impish quality. Much of the suite perched confidently on such dichotomies, melodies that were earnest yet tongue-in-cheek, sweet yet seductive.

But it was the closing movement's anguished cry and the way Kluge allowed the final few chords to recede into stillness that best portrayed the orchestra's trademark qualities and capabilities.

With the help of two energetic actors from Shakespeare Theatre's Academy for Classical Acting, the orchestra presented a one-hour version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Mendelssohn's music interspersed during and in between the many scenes. If the overture was perhaps not zephyr-like enough, the musicians more than made up for the deficit during the nocturne, with expressive and long-winded phrases.

The evening began with two selections from Erich Korngold's incidental music to "Much Ado About Nothing." Full of gentle caresses, the intermezzo unfolded as a love duet between the piano and strings while the hornpipe proceeded in a spry but stately manner with the brass brightly leading the way.

-- Grace Jean