Evolution of a Jazz Quartet
It Could Happen To You
Out of Nowhere (into somewhere)
Noel Jewkes Quartet
Recorded Live in Eugene Oregon at The Jazz Station on August 20, 2016
Noel Jewkes - sax
David J. Kim - piano
Mark Hammersly - bass
Kurt Deutscher - drums
Thanks to Ron Steen’s musician connections, this “band” was put together by phone/email/text for this one gig. David and I had played together in a band a month prior for one evening in a group I was subbing in. Other than that, none of us had played together before, and due to the constraints of this gig, we only had a 20 min. rehearsal to get acquainted on stage as the audience was coming in.
What you’ll hear is in these recordings is the evolution of a jazz band in front of a live audience. The players span 40+ years in age, and bring decades of unique musical experience to this performance, for one evening to create jazz, in the moment.
The evening starts off with a tiny bit of hesitation as we enter into “It Could Happen to You” one by one. Everyone is listening and playing tentatively as we get use to the acoustics of the room (none of us had played there before either), and the timbre of our instruments. We are all finding our way through a hall of sound like a blind man; listening intently with a purpose. In a new space, even your own instrument might sound, blend and respond differently to you. David is settling into a piano that’s totally new to him too, so we’re all ears at the start of this tune, and you can hear it in our playing.
As we get our bearings, you’ll hear the music start to relax and as the players begin to explore the song and each other’s musicianship. By the time the first song finishes, these four strangers have become a band, and are bound musically for the evening.
“Out of Nowhere (and into somewhere)” Noel’s fine arrangement of this great standard was new to the three of us in the rhythm section, While we all had our heads buried in our music stands at first, we do get through the head and into the first solo pretty smoothly. David sets us up with a great solo as we settle into the reharmonization behind this familiar melody. Mark seems to float over the changes as if he’d played this before many a time. At the end of bass solo, you’ll hear me negotiating with Noel about my solo. He signaled me to solo next, but since the arrangement of this tune is new to me I was worried about getting lost in the form, so I asked to trade 8’s with the band; twice, and twice Noel says, “no, I want you to take a full solo (over the form)”.. so we somehow found our way though as I tried to outline the melody in my solo.
The video is of a tune of Noel’s called Viol Blues we played in the second set. I don’t think Mark ever even blinked once sightreading that melody.
Unfortunately, the memory chip in our recorder let us down during the second set, so this video was the only tune captured. Vocalist Kay Kostopoulos joined us for several tunes, including a great rendition of “Caravan” which she also played finger cymbals on (and very well I might add), but we didn’t manage to capture any of her performance this time. We’ll just have to have Noel and Kay back up to Oregon again so we can capture her sound.
* Thanks to Carrie Rambo for making these recordings for us.