THE NEWS & OBSERVER
Saxman's neighborhood a wonderful place to visit
Saturday,September 20, 1997
Review By OWEN CORDLE, Correspondent
DURHAM -- Tenor saxophonist Ellery Eskelin's trio, which performed Thursday night
at Duke University's Nelson Music Room, resembled a downtown neighborhood without
zoning restrictions. You had the music conservatory (Eskelin) adjacent to the mystery
theater Italian restaurant (accordion and keyboard sampler player Andrea Parkins) adjacent
to the steel fabricating plant (drummer Jim Black).
Let's say you're walking down the street and the sounds from these places hit you
simultaneously. This is how the trio sounded, only more synchronized so that there
was order and form to the performances and so that one sound colored another.
Eskelin played about everything you can play on a saxophone, from esoteric scalar
designs to broad register leaps to textures from A (angel hairlike) to Z (zigzag).
One of his best solos was a mighty rhythm and blues effort, as if he were trying
to best Junior Walker, Rusty Bryant and Red Prysock all at once.
Parkins didn't solo in a conventional sense. She offered mostly chords on the accordion,
sometimes sustained, plain vanilla major chords and sometimes the sudden dissonant
chords you hear in horror movies when something frightful is about to happen. But
there were ever-so-brief melodies from the Old Country, too.
If ever a drummer hovered over his set and slapped and tapped on every available surface,
it was Black, a man rattling and splashing around in his machine shop in time --
well, mostly -- to Eskelin's vigorous playing. Excellent drummer.
The compositions were all originals; many changed moods from section to section.
I liked the trio's performances, although I wouldn't want a diet of this style all
the time. But as color, spice, something different -- bravo! Now wouldn't it be cool
if some of the young players who are recycling jazz these days took an occasional
trip in Eskelin's neighborhood?
THE NEWS & OBSERVER
Copyright 1997 The News and Observer Publishing Company
Raleigh, North Carolina
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