There isn’t a better tuba player in jazz than Bob Stewart, as he has proven time and again, from early work with the Gil Evans Orchestra, Dizzy and Mingus and others, and the pivotal role he played in Arthur Blythe’s late 70s trio, serving as both rhythm section and second horn. He plays in the ensemble and solos on one of the great jazz albums of the 70s, Lenox Avenue Breakdown, 1979). Now he heads his own groups and he’s determined to show all that a tuba can do. This is his fifth album on his own. I own one other, Then & Now (2000), and I love it.
Mind the Gap has many strengths, not least of which are Stewart’s musical imagination and his agility on that huge and unwieldy horn. The arrangements are inventive and varied, the other principal players –Curtis Stewart on violin and Jerome Harris on guitar are good. The music, too, is varied. The choices of songs, and the order in which they’re presented –arranged as if in a suite with short string quartet plus tuba lead-ins—is creative. The best of the performances, in my mind, are Arthur Blythe’s “Bush Baby,” Bob Stewart’s “Nothing to Say,” and Mingus’s “Jump Monk,” on which the basic quartet of Stewart, Stewart, Harris and drummer Matt Wilson is joined by the trumpet and trombone of Randall Haywood and Nick Finzer to produce an almost old-timey New Orleans-ish sound that Mingus himself would have loved –ragged and raw, joyous and almost on the edge of polyphony.
The compositions and performances on this album flow so well that it makes me feel bad to say the album is uneven. But it is, not in the thought that’s been put into it, but in the quality of the performances. Stewart is a master tubaist. But … a tuba is still a tuba, an instrument cumbersome to move around on (though not a problem for Stewart, who is quite adept) but more seriously, burdened with an uncertain tonality and sound. The problem shows up most on slow tunes, most of all on Monk’s classic ballad, “Monk’s Mood.” Stewart’s solo statement of the melancholy, lovely theme is almost painful to listen to as his horn almost hits but doesn’t quite get there on certain notes and instead of soaring, the sound blats. Stewart’s not the only tubaist to have a problem on slow tunes: I remember Ray Draper’s solo rendition of “I Talk to the Trees” and “Yesterdays” on a 1957 quintet album with John Coltrane. I winced when I first heard it. There are some things I doubt a tuba can do well, no matter who plays it. Tuba notes don’t come out with a defined enough edge to them for this type of song.
I have problems also with guitarist Harris’s two forays into song on the album. “Fishin’ Blues” is adequate but the version on Then & Now, with Taj Mahal taking the vocal, beats Harris hands down. And Harris’ own composition, “Hand by Hand,” is just pop jazz in my judgment (which I admit is subjective).
In sum, this is a worthwhile album, intelligently presented and played by competent musicians. Stewart himself is a whiz at his instrument but he pushes its boundaries beyond where maybe they can stretch and the result is a piece or two that doesn’t make it, or makes it only in part. He’s got a good guitarist, a great violinist in his group, a competent drummer but I wish the guitar player would stick to his axe and not sing. If I were grading the album, I’d give it an A for effort but a C+ for execution. David Keymer
Tracks
01. Red (Jessie Montgomery)
02. Simone (Frank Foster)
03. Aqua (Jessie Montgomery)
04. Bush Baby (Arthur Blythe)
05. Fishin' Blues (Henry Thomas)
06.The Poet (Jessie Montgomery)
07. Odessa (Arthur Blythe)
08. Libertango (Astor Piazzolla)
09. Purple (Jessie Montgomery)
10. Monk's Mood (Thelonious Monk)
11. Nothing To Say (Bob Stewart)
12. Makina (Jessie Montgomery)
13. Hand By Hand (Jerome Harris)
14. Jump Monk (Charles Mingus)
15. Red 2 (Jessie Montgomery)
BOB STEWART tuba
MATT WILSON drums
JEROME HARRIS guitar
NICK FINZER trombone (13, 14)
RANDALL HAYWOOD trumpet (13, 14)
AMANDA GOEKIN cello
NICK REVEL viola
CURTIS STEWART violin
JANNINA NORPOTH violin
Recorded October 29, 2010 at Cornelia Street Cafe, NY
Sunnyside – SSC 1394