MATT WILSON’S ARTS & CRAFTS | THE SCENIC ROUTE (PALMETTO)
INFO 773-878-5552
Best of Chicago voting is live now. Vote for your favorites »
Irwin, a veteran bassist with a huge resume, balances Wilson’s irony with a dry tone and impeccable note choices. Stafford, a young classically trained trumpeter, has finally shed the last vestiges of his concert-hall posture–you can practically feel the swing start down in his knees and work its way up to his horn. And Wilson’s loosey-goosey bounce on Monk’s “We See” makes me wish he’d lived earlier or Monk later. I’d have paid real money to hear them work together.
Even given all that, it’s the new keyboardist in Arts & Crafts who deserves the attention here. Versace has replaced Larry Goldings, the preeminent jazz organist of his generation, on piano and Hammond B-3. No one should be asked to fill those shoes, but on Versace they look pretty good.
On one of those three, the bustling “Cedar’s Mood,” Bailey’s fiery opening solo brims with well-paced excitement and well-placed technique, building to two separate peaks before Versace grabs the baton. He begins with a stuttering motif that by the end of the first chorus has grown into a nugget of melody; he tosses it around the scale, then develops it into a solo both busy and lyrical, all the while echoing the initial motif. It’s short, very sweet, and a telling example of his improvisatory approach: Versace thinks like a pianist more than an organist, refusing to allow the instrument’s bells and whistles to distract him from his devotion to melody. On the very next tune, “A Soft Green Light,” he starts with three- and four-note riffs as humble as paving stones, then quickly assembles them into an ornate musical cityscape. Though his materials here are the most basic of musical building blocks–mostly scalar runs and arpeggios–he balances them so artfully that a coherent and original statement emerges in just under two minutes. Throughout the album Versace makes a wonderful foil for Bailey: his nuanced performance, on an instrument that tempts so many players into bluster, complements her wilder solos and supports her quieter turns.
