Review: EC3 | It’s All About The Rhythm
Appropriately titled, It’s All About The Rhythm, the drummer you know as EC3 takes us on a whirlwind ride across the global rhythmic landscape. He does this because it is his obsession with jazz and his attire is reminiscent of yester-year when musicians were sharp dressed men.
Choosing to hang with pop, jazz, Latin, Broadway and Motown luminaries like Pedro Flores, Kurt Weill, Stevie Wonder, Frank Foster, Burt Bacharach and Mario Bauza as well as pianists Kenny Barron, Herbie Hancock and Cedar Walton who more than adequately provide the landscape to accentuate his talents.
But it is his arrangements that move us beyond the borders of the music constructed by their greatness and prompts multiple listens. His selection of musicians and the configurations he employs exhibit his playfulness within the madness. From trio to sextet, one begins to truly appreciate not only the individual contributions each musician has brought to the birth of this project but the genius behind the trap.
Surprises in this offering are weaved in the tapestry of the music taking you on an unexpected journey into the abyss. So to say he plays well with others is an understatement and I implore you to take a moment and put some enjoyment in your travels.
carl anthony | notorious jazz | october 13, 2013
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
Plain And Fancy opened at the Mark Hellinger Theatre on January 27, 1955 and ran for 461 performances. Albert Hague & Arnold B. Horwitt composed the music and the show starred Richard Derr, Shirl Conway, Will Able, Gloria Marlowe, Fletcher Rodgers and Barbara Cook. Bea Arthur was an understudy and Carol Lawrence was in the chorus. A favorite jazz tunes came from this musical was Young And Foolish.
The Story: New York City sophisticates Dan King and Ruth Winters travel to Bird-In-Hand in the Amish country of Lancaster County, PA to sell a piece of property to Jacob Yoder, who in turn intends to present it to his daughter Katie and her intended Ezra as a wedding gift. While there, they become involved with local villagers, including Hilda Miller, who mistakes Dan’s kindness for romantic overtures. Ezra’s banished brother Peter returns to claim the hand of his childhood sweetheart, Katie.
Broadway History: Previously, regardless of the size of the venue, a theatre was not considered Off-Broadway if it was within the “Broadway Box” (extending from 40th to 54th Street, and from west of Sixth Avenue to east of 8th Avenue, and including Times Square and 42nd Street. The contractual definition changed this to encompass theatres meeting the standard, which is beneficial to these theatres because of the lower minimum required salary for Actors’ Equity performers at Off-Broadway theatres as compared with the salary requirements of the union for Broadway theatres. Examples of Off-Broadway theatres within the Broadway Box are the Laura Pels Theatre and the Snapple Theater Center..
A number of Off-Broadway musicals have had subsequent runs on Broadway. These have included musicals such as Hair, Godspell, A Chorus Line, Little Shop of Horrors, Rent and The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee to name a few. Other productions such as Stomp, Blue Man Group and Altar Boyz have run for several years Off Broadway. The Fantasticks, the longest running musical in theatre history, spent its original 42-year run Off Broadway.
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From Broadway To 52nd Street
The Pajama Game drew back the first curtain at the St. James Theatre on May 13, 1954 and ran a record 1063 performances catapulting the show into the register of blockbuster musicals. Eddie Foy Jr., John Raitt, Janis Paige and Shirley MacLaine starred in the musical with music written and composed by Richard Adler & Jerry Ross. Jazz has had the privilege to give the song Hey There perpetual encores.
The Story: Adapted from the Broadway play, it’s a story of Sid, a workshop superintendent who must deal with a union demand for a 7.5-cent raise at the Sleep-Tite Pajama Factory. A strike is imminent and Babe the leader of the grievance committee leads the fight. However Sid is attracted to Babe and ensues a course of romance but is deflected. With slowdowns and machinery breakdowns promoting her cause, Sid reluctantly fires her. However he is convinced there is merit to Babe’s championship of the union and plots to get a peek at the books kept by Gladys.
Taking Gladys out to a nightclub Sid wheedles the keys from her but before he can leave the two are discovered by Babe. Sid gets a look at the books, sees that the boss has already tack on the 71/2 cents to production but has keeping the profits for himself. Sid confronts the boss, gets him to agree to the raise, goes to the union rally to bring the news and peace to his love life. Finally accepting her feelings for Sid, she falls for him. Everyone goes out to celebrate at Hernando’s Hideaway.
Jazz History: The free jazz movement, coming to prominence in the late ’50s, spawned very few standards. Free jazz’s unorthodox structures and performance techniques are not as amenable to transcription as other jazz styles. However, “Lonely Woman”, a blues by saxophonist Ornette Coleman, is perhaps the closest thing to a standard in free jazz, having been recorded by dozens of notable performers.
Free jazz is an approach to the music that was first developed in the 1950s and 1960s. Though the music produced by free jazz composers varied widely, the common feature was a dis-satisfaction with the limitations of bebop, hard bop and modal jazz, which had developed in the 1940s and 1950s. Each in their own way, free jazz musicians attempted to alter, extend, or break down the conventions of jazz, often by discarding hitherto invariable features chord changes or tempos. While usually considered experimental and avant-garde, free jazz has also oppositely been conceived as an attempt to return jazz to its “primitive”, often religious roots, and emphasis on collective improvisation.
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The Jazz Voyager
606 Club: 90 Lots Road, London, SW10, United Kingdom / Telephone: 020 7352 5953 Good jazz and good food in one of the best venues in London.Two Jazz groups a night Monday through Wednesday perform from 8:00pm – 1.00am. Thursdays – one band plays from 9:30pm – 1:30am and on Fridays and Saturdays 10:00pm – 2.00 am.
The club’s a policy is to book local British based musicians providing a platform for some of the finest British musicians as well as encouraging a considerable number of younger players. The club employs more than ten different bands a week, making it one of the largest club promoters of Jazz in Europe.
There is no entry fee, instead the musicians are funded from a Music Charge which is added to the bill at the end of the night. These charges are currently £5.00/head Sunday – Thursday and £6.00/head Friday and Saturday. For more information visit http://www.606club.co.uk
From Broadway To 52nd Street
The Golden Apple was staged for it’s initial performance at the Phoenix Theatre on March 11, 1954 and ran for one hundred and seventy-three performances. The stars of the musical were Kay Ballard, Dean Michener, Jonathan Lucas, Jack Whiting, Stephen Douglass, Bibi Osterwald and Priscilla Gillette. Jerome Morross composed the music with libretto written by John Latouche and their composition Lazy Afternoon emerged from the musical to make the pantheon of jazz standards.
The Story: In a small turn-of-the-century American village called Angel’s Roost, nothing of importance seems to happen until a traveling salesman arrives at the annual fair in a balloon. He so beguiles the wife of the sheriff that she elopes with him to the neighboring town. The mayor throws roadblocks in the pursuer’s path. After the sheriff outclasses the salesman in a boxing match, he returns home to find love from another woman waiting for him. Recreation of Homer’s The Iliad & The Odyssey.
Broadway History: The Off-Broadway theatre is a professional New York City venue with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, much smaller than those on Broadway. An Off-Broadway production is a production of a play, musical or revue that appears in such a venue, and which adheres to related trade union and other contracts.
The Off-Broadway movement started in the 1950s, as a reaction to the “perceived commercialism of Broadway” and provided an “outlet for a new generation” of creative artists. This fertile breeding ground, away from the pressures of commercial production and critical brickbats, helped give a leg up to hundreds of future Broadway greats. The first great Off-Broadway musical was the 1954 revival of the Brecht/Weil Three Penny Opera.
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