JAMES CARTER ORGAN TRIO
JAMES CARTER ORGAN TRIO
SOLO DUO TRIO FESTIVAL
JAMES CARTER ORGAN TRIO
Krakow, May 24, 2018
Teatr Nowy Proxima
James Carter's Elektrik Outlet is a quartet that played in Katowice at the Chamber Hall of NOSPR (the Polish National Radio Symphony Orchestra) in Katowice on Wednesday. This relatively new building has already been famous for its extraordinary acoustic qualities.
The next day they drove to Krakow and became James Carter Organ Trio, as they were to perform at the Solo Duo Trio Jazz Festival. It was a festival started in the 1980's (February 1984) by a local jazz activist and manager Andrzej "Kuba" Florek to promote those less popular nad experimental jazz formats. I mean less popular, except for, perhaps, a trio, especially if you mean piano, bass and drums. The last edition of the festival was in 2001, a few years before Florek's untimely death in 2005. Now the festival has been revived and hopefully shall last longer than the original one.
So the quartet, minus the great bassist Ralphe Armstrong, whose amazing talents were recognized by Mahavishnu Orchestra, Herbie Hancock, Frank Zappa, Santana or Jean-Luc Ponty among others, now became a trio. That is James Carter backed by a rhythm section of organist Gerard Gibbs and drummer Alex White. And James Carter played three saxes: soprano, alto and tenor. Unfortunately this time no baritone, one of his greatest advantages.
Still the concert was a dazzling show of James Carter's unparalleled talents, skills and performing techniques. Energy, power and torrents of precise sounds were especially impressive when he employed circular breathing. And he was able to go on like that for hours, luckily he always knew when to stop, as even perfection could be boring if you get it all the time. Still, his hard-driving playing combined with frequent overblowing, squealing, slap tonguing and use of multiphonics add much more color to his exceptionally virtuosic performances.
Carter included a couple covers of Django Reinhardt's compostions in his act, Manoir de mes Reves (Django's Castle) being one of them, perhaps to indicate his longtime fascination with the genius Gypsy guitar player. In the year 2000 Carter released an album on the Atlantic Jazz label titled Chasin' The Gypsy. It was his sixth album and it was planned to pay homage to the outstanding Romani musician.
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