Joe Lovano Us Five
At Koerner Hall in Toronto on Tuesday
Jazz saxophonist Joe Lovano brought his hot young quintet Us Five to Toronto Tuesday, in a makeup gig for an October show that had to be postponed after a freak blizzard grounded the band in New York.
Here are five things you should know about those Five:
Why Lovano is first among five
That Us Five is Joe Lovano’s band was obvious from the first notes. It wasn’t just that his tenor led the band into the opening tune, Us Five; Lovano both set the pace and directed the flow of the band, shaping the music even when he wasn’t playing.
In his grey Mao suit and black porkpie hat, Lovano was clearly the dominant figure onstage, and the fact that he played with such fire only underscored his authority. But he also has the great bandleader’s gift of being able to make each of his players shine brightly, and shine together, and that’s key to the band’s chemistry.
Lovano is not the band’s only star
When Lovano first put Us Five together, the other four musicians were typically described as “young,” “up-and-coming” or “little-known.” While that may have been true in 2009, it’s not the case now, particularly after Us Five bassist Esperanza Spalding was named best new artist at last year’s Grammys.
Because her double bass sat between the band’s two drummers, Francisco Mela and Otis Brown III, Spalding was hard not to notice, and her beaming smile stood out against the sober mien of the drummers. But she earned her applause not through charisma but with driving bass lines and nimble, inventive solos.
They play standards with a twist
Although a number of Tuesday’s tunes were composed by Charlie Parker, nothing in the band’s nearly two-hour performance sounded remotely like bebop – and that was the point. In order to make Bird live again, Us Five recognizes that his music has to sound just as audacious as it did 70 years ago.
So Yardbird Suite got played mostly as a waltz, Moose the Mooch was given a funky rhythmic twist, and Passport teeter-tottered between hard-swinging straight four and blistering double time. Lovano in particular seemed to relish the freedom this approach brought, and the Parker mash-up Birdyard pushed his playing to the limit.
Want drums? They got ’em
Easily the most noteworthy thing about the Us Five instrumentation is its use of two drummers, a format that turns up occasionally in rock but almost never in jazz. Mela and Brown each had a full kit on stage and played full-out, refusing to pull back into a more genteel drums-and-percussion format.
The roiling torrent of rhythm that resulted was easily the best thing about the band, energizing the melodies and pushing Lovano to ever more intrepid heights. With Spalding’s bass urging them along, they turned Folk Art into a sort of hyperkinetic samba, inspiring pianist James Weidman to cut loose with a rollicking, Tyner-esque solo.
The Five are best live
Us Five has two albums so far, and its Grammy-nominated current offering, Bird Songs, was ranked the No. 3 jazz album of 2011 in a poll of U.S. critics.
But as good as they are on album, Us Five are even better live. Some of that has to do with the immediacy of the sound, as even the best stereo can’t hope to convey the power of those two drum kits going full tilt. Mostly, though, it’s because the spark of communication that binds this band is something that burns brightest in the moment. By all means, catch them if you can.
