deedles and toots, whoopee

Sept. 2, 2005 performance, reviewed by Dave Conlin Read

Diane Schuur

Tanglewood Jazz Festival 2005 got underway with a pair of concerts in Ozawa Hall that continued the tradition of opening the festival with Latin American music. Broadcast live over a network of NPR stations, the show got underway promptly at 8 pm with Dave Samuels and the Caribbean Jazz Project, joined about twenty minutes later by Diane "Deedles" Schuur, whose ebullience and vocal dynamics enthralled the audience.

They were followed by Toots Thielemans and a trio of all-stars, guitarist Oscar Castro-Neves, pianist Kenny Werner, and percussionist Airto Moreira who played until 11:30 pm.

On a picture-perfect day in the Berkshires, the travails of those in the hometown of Jazz were on the minds of the headliners, who expressed their anguish with eloquence. Midway throught her set, Ms. Schuur spoke of "our loved ones, friends, and family in New Orleans" before delivering a searing rendition of “More Than You Know.” Mr. Thielemans' offering was via his "still number one guru" Louis Armstrong, whose "What a Wonderful World" was given a most affecting reading with an ethereal quality and none of the sugary feel it has when heard at wedding receptions.

Tanglewood Jazz Festival
Friday, September 2, 2005
Artists' websites:
Diane Schuur
Dave Samuels
Toots Thielemans
Kenny Werner
Oscar Castro-Neves
Airto Moreira

This was quite an evening for Oscar Castro-Neves because he produced and arranged Ms. Schuur's current release, "Schuur Fire" from which the core of her set was drawn, (and toward the end of which, she beckoned for him and her husband to come onstage for acknowledgment - and smootching!).

Caribbean Jazz Project

In addition to Samuels, whose resume lists stints with Gerry Mulligan, Frank Zappa, and Spyro Gyra, the Caribbean Jazz Project includes drummer Mark Walker, pianist Dario Eskenazi, bassist Oscar Stagnaro, Diego Urrcola on trumpet and flugelhorn, and percussionist Robert Quintero. The CJP was established in 1993 when Samuels was asked by a promoter to put together a group for a special event at the Central park Zoo (the first lineup included Paquito D'Rivera). Highlighting their set was an exciting re-do of Oliver Nelson's ''Stolen Moments" with Samuel's meandering mallets leading into a sweet trumpet solo before a clever piano and vibes coda.

Ms. Schuur had the audience in the palm of her hand right from the start, ten years to the day since her first concert in Ozawa Hall. Of her work with the CJP for "Schuur Fire," Mr. Castro-Neves said, “The idea was to do a Latin-oriented album with repertoire originally not recorded as Latin music. It’s a twist, so people can revisit tunes they know, but this time they’ll hear them fired up by Latin rhythms."

One such is a composition by Berkshire favorite son James Taylor that, by way of introduction, she told the audience, "No, it's not Fire and Rain!" It was ''Don't Let Me Be Lonely Tonight" and easily validated the concept behind the album, with a simple couplet like "Do me wrong/Do me right" seeming to be tailor-made for Ms. Schuur's dazzling vocal range.

Another highlight was "Lover Come Back To Me," which she sang with an overwhelming urgency and compelling force that no wandering miscreant would've been able to resist.

Kenny Werner, Toots Theilmans, Oscar Castro-Neves

Toots Thielemans

It's the ecumenical beauty of jazz that Latin American night can be headlined by a man from Belgium, and Toots Thielemans, whose music has been heard by hundreds of millions of people who've never heard his name, provided the evening's most unexpectedly beautiful moment when he played "God Bless America." His plaintive reading had none of the treacly sentimentality that so often spoils Gershwin's hymn and it showed his genius and the capability of harmonica, the "miscellaneous" instrument that got him his first big job with Benny Goodman in 1950, and later with the likes of Charlie Parker, Ella Fitzgerald, Quincy Jones, Bill Evans, Jaco Pastorius, plus Oscar the Grouch and Ratso Rizzo (he played the themes for Sesame Street and Midnight Cowboy).

This was an extraordinary outfit of headliners backing Thielemans and he gave each of them plenty of space to display their artistry. Kenny Werner, who had a synthesizer atop the house Steinway, had some sweetly languorous solos that he played with an unusual physicality. Airto Moreira, whose rhythms and accents were always just right, was particularly good in evoking the sounds of water on a couple of numbers. Oscar Castro-Neves, eloquent on guitar all night, was introduced by Theilmans as "a handsome devil - but more than just a pretty face" before singing a haunting rendition of Jobim's "Waters of March."