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Wallace Roney :: 10.06.04 :: SOhO Restaurant and Music Club :: Santa Barbara, CA
Wallace Roney |
My passion for jazz runs deep. For me, Kind of Blue is practically a religion and Miles Davis is almost a god. I never tire of listening to the old stuff, oozing out my speakers as fresh as it was upon creation. Enjoyable as that is, the holy grail of jazz is what it always has been: being witness to the live performance. In this day and age, the opportunity to see an old-school jazz performance by a truly exceptional band is few and far between, at least for those of us not in NYC, Chicago, or New Orleans.
My local club here in Santa Barbara, Soho, just so happens to be a New York-style jazz loft. They have music every night of the week, which is great except that on occasion excellent performers can slip into town relatively unnoticed. Such was the case last Wednesday with Wallace Roney and his band. If there's a better trumpet player on earth, I'd love to know about him.
Wallace Roney is no new kid on the block, having played with his hero, Miles Davis, at the Montreaux Jazz Festival in 1991 and then filled his shoes in the first incarnation of the Miles Tribute Band. Many albums and a decade of touring later, the man I now consider to be the greatest living trumpeter is still known only to a chosen few. Such is the nature of jazz. Artists so rarely get the recognition they deserve while they're alive.
I had only heard of Wallace Roney thanks a friend loaning me a copy of his funky album Village. Two years later his name pops up on Soho's schedule and my jazz radar goes on red alert. Discouraged at first by the $25 ticket price, I persevered knowing it would be worth it. What I couldn't foresee was that I was in store for the finest jazz performance of my life.
Roney and his quintet couldn't have been any better. Accompanied by long time collaborators Antoine Roney (his brother) on tenor sax and Eric Allen on drums, as well as a piano player and upright bassist, the group transported the audience back to the heyday of the Village Vanguard a la 1963. It was as authentic and scorching as it gets.
The instant Wallace Roney's tone graced my ears, all my senses awakened, a smile flooded my face, and I knew this was as close as I would ever get to Miles. Roney expressed his reverence in elegant fashion, paying tribute to the master while adding his own complex nuances.
I could fill pages with superlatives in attempts to convey the power, virtuosity, and precision of each musician and the songs they played. For now I'll just let those thoughts fly through my head. Wallace Roney and his band are out there, carrying the torch for the greats of jazz history, ready to blow your mind if you should be so lucky to find them playing your local spot.
Tyler Blue
JamBase | California
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