If SFJAZZ wanted to plant a flag in Contra Costa County, it couldn’t have picked a more majestic artist for that purpose than Kenny Barron.
At 82, the pianist has been recognized as a nonpareil bandleader, improviser, and composer for half a century, a status attained decades before he was named a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in 2010.
On Saturday, Jan. 10, Barron brought his long-standing trio to the Lesher Center in Walnut Creek for the year’s first jazz concert co-presented by the Diablo Regional Arts Association and SFJAZZ. The new program is part of the organization’s expanding regional footprint, which includes SFJAZZ-sponsored stages at the Monterey Jazz Festival and San Jose Jazz Summer Fest; the series at Lesher will also feature singer-songwriter Madeleine Peyroux on Feb. 21 and pianist and vocalist Sarah McKenzie on March 20.
Barron’s concert displayed all the virtues of the partnership, starting with his uncommonly pristine sound. Casually commanding, he presented a well-balanced program that centered on his capacious lyricism, rhythmic drive, and bright, impeccable touch. With Japanese-born bassist Kiyoshi Kitagawa and drummer Johnathan Blake, Barron’s trio is a marvel of dynamic calibration.
He opened with the luscious but rarely played ballad “For Heaven’s Sake,” a tune Billie Holiday defined on her penultimate album Lady in Satin. She imbued the song with her characteristic rueful ache, but Barron has made the melody his own, turning it into a vehicle for rhapsodic invention (he and Charlie Haden recorded an extended version on their 1998 live duo album Night and the City).
While Eddie Heywood’s “Canadian Sunset” was an R&B hit for the pianist-composer in the mid-1950s, Barron’s arrangement took a page from the Ahmad Jamal Trio playbook, powered by Blake’s train-leaving-the-station brushwork. Orchestrated with bountiful space, the piece bounced lightly as Barron evoked a gradually darkening soundscape in translucent watercolor hues.
Tyreek McDole, a stellar young vocalist who last year released the deeply impressive debut album Open Up Your Senses, changed the mood of the concert abruptly by adding a jolt of energy. He performed two Barron originals that he sings on the pianist’s latest album, Songbook: the mysteriously enchanting “Marie Laveau” and the buoyant “Calypso,” which was a showcase for his nimble scatting.
But the concert’s most sublime piece was their duo rendition of Thelonious Monk’s off-kilter waltz “Ugly Beauty” (Is there a composer with a more intoxicating roster of ballads than Monk, what with “’Round Midnight,” “Crepuscule with Nellie,” “Monk’s Dream,” and “Ruby, My Dear,” for starters?).
Carmen McRae popularized the song with Mike Ferro’s ambiguously cynical lyrics in 1990, and McDole’s plush baritone, which floats effortlessly into a rich falsetto, navigated Barron’s picante chords with Olympic-slalom dexterity. McDole brings his quintet to SFJAZZ for a two-night Joe Henderson Lab stand Feb. 12–13.
Barron closed the concert with a solo Ellingtonian medley focusing on Billy Strayhorn’s flora-besotted ballad “A Flower Is a Lovesome Thing.” It was icing on an already delectable cake, but the contrast between Barron alone at the piano and the trio’s quietly dazzling choreography brought out the varied flavors of the previous proceedings in a most satisfying way.
