Making the Rounds

Shanna Carlson at Stanford

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Erika Gocka at the Great Basin Brewing Company, Sparks, Nevada

Someone who really is keeping Jazz alive is Tom Young in Nevada. He provides the venue for the music on Wednesdays and some Saturdays at his Great Basin Brewing Company in Sparks. As far as we could determine on a recent trip, that's the only live, commercially presented Jazz to be found in the Reno area. (If this is not correct, we hope readers will let us know.)

On the night of our visit, Erika Gocka and her trio were holding forth bravely in the courtyard of the brewery, to the delight of a fair number of fans. None was more ardent than a self-proclaimed former navy SEAL, musician, concrete layer, alfalfa farmer, and Central American entrepreneur named Roberto, who was kind enough to share his table with us.

Erika is an intense musician who sings and plays piano. Perhaps because she does both, you feel that she immerses herself in a song more deeply than most musicians do. Because she is a Jazz musician first and foremost, she doesn't hesitate to change the melody or the underlying harmonics, and she does this in ways that make you say, "Hey, that's really clever." Yielding to a rather strident request from Roberto to "play some Coltrane," she gave us a version of "Naima" with changes that said, "Here's your Coltrane, but this is me, Erika Gocka, and it's my song now."

With Erika were Phil Jerome on bass and Pete Spommer on drums. Trumpeter Mike Witnell joined the group for one set. Mike is a smooth trumpeter with a flair for the dramatic who obviously enjoyed playing with the group and contributed to their enjoyment of the gig. Pete is a right-on drummer from the old school who punctuates the music with deftly placed strokes rather than battering the listener with displays of percussive prowess. Phil had an unorthodox grip on the neck of the bass, seeming to press the top of his hand against the strings rather than pinching them against the fingerboard with his fingers. The sound had a kind of buzz or rattle that I didn't find entirely agreeable.

Toward the end of the set, Erika put on an impressive display of her keyboard skill. She is very definitely a pianist who sings, not a singer who accompanies herself on the piano. She builds her solos with meaningful phrases and an ear for melody.

Erika used to work at the Templebar in San Francisco. During a break she mentioned that life is hard for musicians in Nevada. She says most of whatever Jazz does get booked in the area comes from San Francisco and is prominently billed as being from there, so that resident musicians get little encouragement. Phil Jerome mentioned that he used to make a good living in the shows as a trombonist but that the work has dried up since they've started using taped music.

They're a brave band of musicians who deserve all the enthusiastic applause they got that evening and a wider audience as well.

by Robert Tate

Dan St. Marseille at the Ace Café, San Francisco

Southern California saxophonist and the head of Resurgent Music, Dan St. Marseille stopped in San Francisco for one night at the Ace Café on the way to a gig at the state fair in Sacramento. He brought a fine group with him: pianist Cecilia Coleman, trumpeter Ron Stout, bassist Benjamin May, and drummer Denny Dennis.

As often happens it took a while for the group to get into the groove. Sound checks had been done, but the acoustics change when the room fills up with people. When the saxist didn't play directly into the mike, the sound tended to get swallowed up. After a few adjustments, this problem went away.

Dan's sound was softer than I remembered from his most recent CD, Retrospection (JN, July 1995). As the evening progressed he experimented with the tone, achieving a variety of interesting sounds on the different numbers. It's good to hear this being done at a time when many players ignore this dimension of musicianship completely.

Trumpeter Stout played mostly in the middle range of his instrument. He stays in control of his tone, playing now fast, now slow, and alternating bursts of sixteenth notes with phrases to keep his solos interesting.

Cecilia Coleman has a beautiful technique and great imagination. She was already locked into the groove while the others were still feeling the place out. On Sonny Rollins's "Tenor Madness," the second number of the evening, she played a clever intro that both concealed and hinted at the melody. She made almost an art of laying out for a while and then coming in with a note or two that changed the sound of the whole group.

When the bassist and drummer caught up with Cecilia and settled in, things started to move. I remember the bass player commenting on something that Cecilia was playing during a trio passage. He plucked a string with particular vehemence and raised an eyebrow as though he had surprised even himself. Thereafter he seemed to play at a higher level of assertiveness and inspiration. Drummer Dennis got into the groove, too, but on some of the slower numbers, where the horns seemed a little too laid back, I felt he could have helped by pushing a little harder.

By bringing his own group, St. Marseille was able to use his own arrangements, some of which were tricky. On "Tenor Madness," for example, when the horns traded fours with the drummer, the lines were played in unison by Stout and St. Marseille. Voice leading was common on the heads, with the two horns (and maybe the bowed bass and piano) playing different notes and building up chords.

New England saxophonist Cercie Miller (JN, July 1995) was in town that evening and dropped by the Ace Café to check out Dan's group. She caught a quote from Monk's "Rhythm-A-Ning" in Dan's burning solo on the final flag-waver, Charlie Parker's "Anthropology." Too fast for my ears!

by Robert Tate

Larry Ridley at the Charlie Parker Festival in New York

Gaylord Birch Benefit

Jun Kobayashi at KPFA

Reggie Workman's Summit Conference