KENNY WERNER QUARTET at JAZZ STANDARD, nyc, NOV 8
photography by ©Clara Pereira / text by Filipe Freitas
On Friday, November 8th, the vastly creative pianist Kenny Werner presented tunes from his new quartet album Church on Mars, released in July on the vinyl-only French label Newvelle Records. The venue was the Jazz Standard, one of New Yorkers' favorite venues, and on the bandstand with him were saxophonist/flutist Dave Liebman, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, and great bassist Scott Colley, who stood in for James Genus.
The group hit the road with “Feel Good”, the album's opener, which lived up to its title, promoting good disposition among the crowd. Liebman was the man in focus here, starting by moving winds on the flute and finishing with sweeping, expeditious rides on the soprano.
“Church on Mars” and “Superfluous” were two other numbers selected from the record. The former, propelled by a smooth funky groove, pushed Werner into a melodious solo where each line was articulated to give an absolute coherence to the speech in its entirety. On the other hand, Liebman’s tenor intonations gained further expression through plaintive cries, pitch-inflected meowing, and fierce objections packed with exclamations. “Superfluous” appeared with a percussive introduction, with Carrington accentuating well-patterned bass drum kicks for a hip-hop feel and Colley joining her with nimble funk-jazz spells.
The quartet played two pieces by Liebman: “Is Seeing Believing?”, a soft and quite romantic waltz with a Coltranean feel to it, and “Get Me Back to the Apple”, a fervently swinging barnburner uplifted by Werner, who tenaciously swam against the rhythmic current in the course of his statement. This last piece closed out the set, but before that, there was a special rendition of Gershwin's “Embraceable You”, which featured guest Dutch vocalist Vivienne Aerts.