It's not often that Dizzy's has more than two piano-led groups in one night, but it's easy to switch between two bands when they share a rhythm section. Heather came with me tonight too, which always makes it more fun.

Danny Green started the evening off with a quartet playing originals.





Danny writes some intricate compositions- you can tell by all the sheet music on stage. Even though he's the composer, he still need them spread out at the piano for reference.





It's always a pleasure to see Rob Thorsen on bass.



Tripp Sprague plays several types of horns, so he was able to change up the sound of the band at will.



Danny is getting married to Emily tomorrow, 6/14/09, and she had a smile on her face during his entire set. That's love! I can't get Heather to even sit through an entire set of my photos anymore. Congratulations Danny and Emily!

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I've seen Joshua White play in several groups, but this was the first time I've seen him tackle the challenging music of Thelonius Monk and Ornette Coleman.





I can understand why Joshua would present Monk's music since they're both piano players. As an exceptional pianist, Joshua can do justice to the music without sounding like a Monk clone by reinterpreting it into his own style.



But Ornette Coleman refused to use piano players in any of his groups. Only his debut album has piano, which he was talked into using for the date. Ornette developed his own branch of jazz that relied on total freedom for the soloist, even freedom from having to play over established chord changes. Piano, being a chordal instrument, had no place in his music. This made the music appear to be an odd choice for a piano player to explore, but maybe that's the exact challenge Joshua made for himself.

Joshua focused on Coleman's earlier-era work, which is the best in my opinion. His later work in the '70s and '80s can get a bit abstract.

 

Anchoring it down again was Rob Thorsen and Duncan Moore. I've shot Duncan a couple times before, but this was my first time actually meeting him. He's a photographer too (so is Rob), so hopefully we'll get a chance to do some shooting together at some point.





On tenor was Jason Robinson, who I shot for the first time the previous week. Ian Tordella played alto sax, Coleman's instrument of choice.



Jason has a Ph.D. in music, but his playing goes beyond mere theory. At a certain point, a sufficiently advanced artist, in any art, can forget what they have learned and just use their experience to create something new. A master can make it look easy.



Ian doesn't play with the same airy sound that Coleman uses, but the liveliness and skittering passages are there.





All in all, it was an evening of mesmerizing music that made me feel fortunate to be able to hear it.