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Jazz Fest Diary, Day Four

Day Four

• The Bad Plus
• Orange Alert/Pete Carney
• Alex Torres y Su Orquestra

So all day, WGMC had been warning those who wanted to see The Bad Plus, to get in line early. I passed the warning on to Seth and Ted (who was driving up from PA to see the show), then scrambled around to get in line early. And even thought there were still a handful of empty seats (like, maybe five), getting in line early paid off with some seats in which we could stretch our legs as we settled in for the show.

And what a show! Jeff Spevak conjures up a pretty hilarious image in his review of the show:

If the Rochester International Jazz Festival continues to book acts like the Bad Plus, an appropriate new logo might depict Chuck Mangione running out of a theater with his head on fire.

Right from the get-go, Dave King was going bananas on the drums with bassist Reid Anderson providing a solid foundation and pianist Ethan Iverson amply filling the sonic space between the two. The set was made up almost entirely of new compositions that seem to be spinning off into even more exciting, experimental territory than what exists on their previous recordings. I was wondering when they would get to one of their famous (or infamous) covers of popular songs. It came near the very end of the set when some manic interplay slowly resolved into the triumphant chorus of Queen's "We Are The Champions." They get no argument from me.

Heads still buzzing, we made our way over to Milestones to catch the end of the set by the band led by Chicago saxophonist and turn-table-spinner Pete Carney, which is listed in the RIJF guidebook as "Orange Alert," although it's still unclear to me whether that's the band's name or just the name of Carney's debut recording. Anyway, our take was, either pick the saxophone or the turn-table, don't try to do both. The band was playing some pretty solid, straight-up funk with splashes of jazz and hip-hop thrown in, which after The Bad Plus, seemed just a tad too pedestrian to us.

So, after grabbing dinner at Golden Port Dim Sum and bidding farewell to Ted for the evening, I headed over to the festival tent to hear Alex Torres y Su Orquestra. If smoking-hot salsa and merengue is your thing, these guys are something to behold. Explosively entertaining, they play with as much energy as anything else you're likely to see at the RIJF. But maybe I was starting to get jazzed out after four straight days, but I could only stay for a few songs before hitting the road and ultimately my bed.