Greg Abate’s Tribute Album for Kenny Barron

courtesy of Naxos of America

This past Friday Whaling City Sound released a two-CD album entitled Magic Dance: The Music of Kenny Barron. Saxophonist Greg Abate compiled a collection of fourteen of Barron’s original compositions, performing them with a rhythm section led by Barron himself at the piano, joined by Dezron Douglas on bass and Jonathan Blake on drums. However, as will be seen shortly, it would be somewhat incorrect to call this a quartet album.

I have been fortunate enough to see Barron twice in Herbst Theatre. The first time was a two-piano gig with Mulgrew Miller presented by SFJAZZ in May of 2012 (back when I was writing for Examiner.com). More recently, however, Barron returned to Herbst in October of 2019, this time for a celebration of Monk’s 102nd birthday. Barron’s attention to Monk was entirely appropriate, given that he had been the pianist for the Monk tribute band Sphere, a quartet formed by Monk alumni Charlie Rouse on tenor saxophone and drummer Ben Riley, along with Buster Williams on bass.

This is my long-winded excuse for the fact that, prior to the release of Magic Dance, I knew next to nothing about Barron as a composer. While none of the fourteen tracks evoke any of the sharper edges of Monk’s approaches to composition, there is considerable diversity across the fourteen tracks that Abate selected, providing more than ample opportunity for Barron to exercise his own inventive improvisations from the keyboard. That said, Abate had his own approaches to inventiveness that were more than a little eyebrow-raising.

Abate is primarily a saxophonist equally comfortable with all four of the usual sizes of the instrument: soprano, alto, tenor, baritone. He is equally skilled at the flute, and all five of these instruments come into play over the course of Magic Dance. However, the eyebrow-raising come from those winds frequently performing in groups, thanks to the overdubbing and mixing skills of John Mailloux, owner of Bongo Beach Productions, which was responsible for mastering the album tracks. (Recording took place at the Van Gelder Studio under the supervision of Maureen and Don Sickler.)

The fact is that, in preparing the tracks for this album, Abate had his own keen sense of harmony; and he wanted to “give voice” to homophonic support to the melody line with techniques that would go beyond the usual approaches to piano accompaniment (even by the composer of the tunes). Indeed, on two of those tracks, “Innocence” and “Voyage,” that homophony extends over five voices, both of which involve two separate lines for tenor sax. The result is an “ensemble sound” that one is unlikely to have encountered in Barron’s own piano work.

I suspect there will be many purists that will dismiss Abate’s approach as “creating an artifact,” rather than “making music;” but the chemistry among Abate, Barron, and the technical team was strong enough to warrant attentive listening for every track in this collection.