It’s safe to say I’ve finally leapt on board the Esperanza Spalding bandwagon. I got her album Esperanza a few weeks ago, and it’s pretty darn good.
For a still-young musician (25 years old) Esperanza shows remarkable maturity in performance and composition. She reminds me a lot of a young Tania Maria, both in the fact she is a vocalist/composer/instrumentalist and because of her taste for rapid-flight scat melodies spread over latin grooves:
But Esperanza is also all about subtle and complex songwriting, both in terms of the lyrics and their harmonic structure. I wish Betty Carter were still alive, because she would understand exactly where Esperanza is going with songs like She Got To You. Esperanza is the real deal:
In the heady days following the Second World War, Paris was the world capital of one of the first modern “youth” subcultures. Before rock ‘n’ roll, before Elvis, before punk, before hip hop, kids flocked to jazz clubs and proclaimed themselves existentialists or beat poets. St Germain des Près was the European centre of the movement, orbiting around figures such as Jean-Paul Sartre and the inimitable Boris Vian.
Today almost all the jazz cellars of St Germain des Près are gone, replaced by specialist boutiques and restaurants. Along the Boulevard, the cafés that were formerly literary haunts of Sartre, de Beauvoir, Juliette Gréco and their offsiders are largely given over to the tourist trade.
One of the last surviving clubs is Papa Jazz on rue Saint Benoit, and it was thence that we repaired last night in search of a few hours of slow whisky and music.
Papa’s offers a perfectly acceptable line in non-offensive, well-played small group jazz and by all accounts an excellent dinner menu. Guitarist Jeff Hoffman was offering some nicely-turned licks in the style of Wes Montgomery, and Philippe Petit’s parallel chords on piano drifted increasingly Brubeck-wards as the evening drew on.
The highlight of the gig was the arrival of trumpeter Ken Barker who sat in for just one song – Bye Bye Blackbird. I caught most of it thanks to the recorder on my iPhone. The performance was pretty good, at least to these jazz-starved ears…
Bye Bye Blackbird, performed by the Jeff Hoffman Trio with Ken Barker
Jeff Hoffman (g)
Philippe Petit (pn)
Pierre Maingourt (b)
Special guest Ken Barker (tp)
Papa Jazz Club, rue Saint Benoit, Paris 6e – 7 May 2010
