San Diego ArtsAthenaeum Jazz at The Neurosciences Institute: Peter Erskine, Alan Pasqua, Dave Carpenter
The Food of Love “Less is more.”—Robert Browning The notion that distilling expression down to its essential minimum results in great art is one of the most recurrent tropes in music, architecture, literature, art, cinema, and other creative media of the last century. Many profess to pursue this goal, but very few actually achieve it. If you were at the Neurosciences Institute on November 20, you were privy to a jazz demonstration of musical reduction of the highest caliber, in the form of pianist Alan Pasqua, bassist Dave Carpenter, and drummer Peter Erskine. These three exemplars of musical taste, at the invitation of the Athenaeum, celebrated the release of their new CD, which was recorded in the Neuroscience Institute earlier this year, by performing there again. The title of the CD is “Standards,” and their first set opened appropriately enough with three jazz chestnuts featured on the CD: “The Way You Look Tonight,” “Con Alma,” and “Dear Old Stockholm.” How to describe the trio’s tasteful, imaginative versions of these songs? Mere prose is inadequate to relate their gift for producing the right sounds in exactly the right places that evening, with nothing more added than absolutely needed. One would need a poem to capture that musical magic. Here goes: There was a jazz drummer named Peter Whose timekeeping couldn’t be sweeter. With sticks or with brushes His playing was luscious And his band mates weren’t chopped liver eit’er. Alas, to do verbal justice to the minimalist musical gems heard would require pithy haiku, but all that I can offer is a pissy limerick. Dear reader, if you were not there that wonderful evening, you will have to be content with a mere description of what I heard, and you’ll simply have to trust that it was musical bliss. Let’s talk about Alan Pasqua. While at times he demonstrated the ability to fire off ornate bop improvisations, his preferred method of soloing was to allow for a lot of space, and then find the perfect notes to inhabit that space. The touchstone for this type of solo was Miles Davis, and when Pasqua’s sparsely-placed notes would ring out, allowing the drums and bass to fill in the spaces between the notes, the ghost of Miles was in the house. On one of Pasqua’s four-bar turnarounds, I counted no more than four quiet notes. His solo for the first song, “The Way You Look Tonight,” had absolutely no left hand in his first chorus, allowing Erskine and Carpenter to do all the ‘comping (another Davis specialty—few musicians played off a bass part as well as The Dark Prince). In the second chorus of the song, the laid-back approach was put aside for a fast walk, and Pasqua opened up into more boppish lines. His solo ended with tenths in right and left hands, which tumbled down, almost falling apart (not Pasqua’s technique, which never faltered, but his melodic line gave the sense that it was breaking down). This cleverly played collapse led right into a bass solo: Carpenter picked up the line and brought it back up to speed. Pasqua’s sensitive touch at the piano, his reharmonizations of songs, and his highly altered chords bring to mind Bill Evans, but Pasqua’s solos are far more economical than anything Evans ever played. Pasqua allows more melodic dissonance into his soloing than Evans ever did, and Evans never would have played a melody that moved like a wedge up and down over two octaves, and even if Evans did, he wouldn’t have played such dissonant notes without a resolution, unlike Pasqua, who left those quiet yet biting tones just hanging. After the trio’s take on the above-mentioned standards, they presented an introspective, minimal cover of what Peter Erskine announced was a “recent” tune: Jimmy Webb’s Wichita Lineman. Only in jazz would a song that charted nearly four decades ago be considered recent. I didn’t catch the title of the closer for the first set, but it was upbeat, and yet had a very relaxed swing to it. Dave Carpenter had an extended solo here, then Erskine soloed—with brushes, and with great restraint. Unlike many drummers, Erskine’s solo was not crammed with overt virtuosity, but was rather a sincere attempt to create a musical solo. When Pasqua returned following Erkine’s solo, he went all the way back to the first tune of the set, and then brought in Con Alma for good measure. That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a recap of earlier tunes in a completely different number, and it’s typical of the creative, tasteful way this band operates. Bassist Dave Carpenter provided appropriately efficient accompaniment to Pasqua, and plucked out more lively solos on his own. His bass line jumped into spaces that were left open by Pasqua, and also complemented what Erskine added. Peter Erskine is a versatile drummer—he’s worked with many different groups and musicians, and fit in with them all, from Weather Report to John Abercrombie and Marc Johnson to Kenny Wheeler to Marty Ehrlich. His piano trio in Europe (pianist John Taylor and bassist Palle Danielsson) has a completely different dynamic: moody, shifting, cerebral ECM jazz. Erskine’s support for Carpenter and Pasqua was gentle and considerate, his rhythmic and timbral contributions to the trio indispensable to the group’s gestalt. He embraced simplicity when needed, and played with the utmost subtlety and taste when more rhythmic and textural complexity was required. I would have gladly stayed for their second set, but my companion was losing consciousness, and the Neurosciences Institute is the one hall in San Diego in which you do not want to fall asleep. Its perfect acoustics apply not only to sounds coming from the stage, but also from the audience: everyone in the hall will hear your damned snoring. Such euphonic sounds as the Erskine-Pasqua-Carpenter Trio produced there should be unadorned by somnolent snorts, rasping palates, and sputtering uvulas, so I regretfully left early. I’d like to believe the rest of the audience is grateful for that. For a copy of the program, click here.
 Christian Hertzog About the author: Christian Hertzog studied composition with George Crumb, Brian Ferneyhough, Robert Erickson, and Morton Feldman. He studied piano with Cecil Lytle and Aleck Karis. He has been hired by or collaborated with many local performing arts institutions, including the La Jolla Playhouse, SUSHI, Sledgehammer, Isaacs and McCaleb Dance, and City Moves. From 1995-2000 he was the executive director for San Diego New Music. In recent years, he has been a keyboardist with the Geisel Library Toy Piano Ensemble and the Teeny Tiny Pit Orchestra. In 2008 he won 1st prize from the San Diego Press Club in the category of Newspaper/Internet Reviews. More by this author Subscribe to Arts:
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