Bird Lives in the Adulation of a Young Saxophonist
Bird Lives in the Adulation of a Young Saxophonist
Kitra Cahana/ The New York Times
The jazz musician Francisco Calfiso plays the saxophone at Birdland on West 44th Street.
By NATE CHINEN
The Charlie Parker tribute being held this week at Birdland, the club that bears his nickname, isn’t meant for anyone harboring resentment about the commodification of Parker’s art. Nor is it for anyone who insists that jazz belongs strictly to the Americans, or that it glances backward at its own peril. Presented by the Umbria Jazz Festival, with the help of various Italian cultural organizations, the engagement traffics in nostalgia even as it revels in new talent.
Make no mistake, though, the talent in this case is considerable. Filling the Bird role on alto saxophone is the former prodigy Francesco Cafiso, who recently turned 18. Backed by a working quartet and a chamber orchestra, I Solisti di Perugia, he’s revisiting the string arrangements from Parker’s popular recordings of the late 1940s. And he’s managing to make them feel roomy.
Mr. Cafiso favors the tone and articulation of Parker, as well as the dartlike rhythmic cadences. The mark of his hero has been a constant throughout Mr. Cafiso’s 10-year career, so there’s less trepidation in his approach to the role than there might be for other comers. In the first set on Tuesday night his sound was light but assertive, with hints of a fluttering vibrato. When he was relaxing into the beat, rather than urging it forward, the results were winsome.
The 13-piece orchestra played the music with equal flair. Essentially performing without amplification, it sounded rich and resonant in the room. High fidelity may be the real treat of this engagement for anyone who has worn through the grooves of the old LPs. “Just Friends” was newly vivid with its harp glissandi and sighing cello invocation; later there was a brief but effective interlude by an oboist, Simone Frondini.
Of course most tunes were less eventful. Whatever the scope of Parker’s classical ambitions — he was fond of Stravinsky and fascinated by orchestration — his sessions with strings produced a middlebrow music, full of garish sentiment. The arrangements, while charming in measured doses, don’t fare as well in succession. After about a dozen of them you feel as though you’ve consumed a three-course meal of consisting entirely of sponge cake.
Mr. Cafiso seemed aware of this predicament, even if he did open the set with the same four tracks as on “Charlie Parker With Strings: The Master Takes”. So he had his drummer, Stefano Bagnoli, improvise a powerful prologue to “Repetition.” And he counted off one tempo, for “What Is This Thing Called Love?,” at a precariously brisk clip. (Later he offered an alternate take, acknowledging his overcompensation.)
As a coda Mr. Cafiso led his quartet through “Happy Time,” an engaging original with a fidgety approach to rhythm. It gave him a chance to shrug off the burden of emulation, and he took it, still speaking Bird’s language but in his own emerging voice.
No comments:
Post a Comment