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URI CAINE
SWITCHED-ON BACH


Pianist Uri Caine’s justification for his "jazz" take on Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations is as appealing intellectually as it is in execution. Bach was working with theme and variations, Caine reasoned, and that’s how jazz works, too. Bach’s theme is 32 bars long, and so is the "standard" pop song that is the typical fodder for jazz improvisation. Bach’s variations contained his encyclop¾dic knowledge of harmony and forms — of counterpoint and gigues and sacred music; Caine’s would contain his own personal encyclop¾dia: Bach, jazz, blues, klezmer, hip-hop, gospel, modal jazz, Brooklyn mambos.

Caine’s album of the Goldberg Variations (Winter & Winter; 2000) was such a joy because it achieved maximum variety at the same time that it was unified by Bach’s little theme. Caine marshaled a huge cast of characters for the double CD, including the Kettwiger Bach Ensemble and the Kšln String Quartet.

Taking the Goldbergs on the road is another matter. At the ICA a week ago last Monday, Caine led an octet — piano, bass, drums, saxophone, trumpet, violin, DJ, and vocalist. As broad as that sounds, it still doesn’t come close to the scope of the album’s instrumentation. But over the course of the single, uninterrupted 90-minute set, the group assayed swing and ragtime, rap and gospel (rapped/sung by Barbara Walker), Latin, bebop, the blues, modal jazz, free jazz, Bach, and a bit of John Cage.

The night started with kids’ voices (courtesy of DJ Olive) setting the right tone of playfulness, then Caine playing the stately aria theme joined by some light brushwork from drummer Cornell Rochester, then a second variation with violinist Joyce Hammann. Then Caine broke into a kind of fractured rag broken with dissonant note clusters and guffawing asides. In his program notes, he pointed out that he set one of Bach’s canons to a Wayne Shorter–like waltz, and sure enough, there it was, Shorter’s broad harmonies and floating time.

The scheme, for the most part, worked. Walker’s few numbers were crowd-pleasers. Trumpeter Ralph Alessi, in one extended solo, built to rhythmic peaks. Dave Binney’s tenor had the dry tone and coming-at-you linearity of the Tristano school, and when he joined the ensemble on soprano, he created a sweet, Baroque-like choral effect. Hammann’s violin was amplified, but tonal purity wasn’t what this show was about. She skittered and danced freely when the music called for it, and she delivered the "straight" Bach straight-faced, even when DJ Olive’s turntables were blowing raspberries in the background. And when a particularly raucous jazz passage broke for one of her unadorned Bach pieces, the effect was moving — from a jostling noisy crowd to a brave, vulnerable solo voice.

BY JON GARELICK

Issue Date: February 28 - March 7, 2002
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