... and driving percussion too ...

The summer can be a time for great music. And one sparkling highlight of the 2005 Toronto Downtown Jazz Festival — now sponsored by the very characteristic local institution of a bank (TD Canada Trust) — was a June 30 saxophone double bill, in a big tent on the city hall square.

BTW ... WE'RE STILL RENOVATING THE SITE FOR THE NEW YEAR ... AND THE SPRING 2006 UNIVERSE IS STILL A BIT CONFUSING ... PARDON THE INCONVENIENCE ... PROGRESS IS STILL BEING MADE, JUST NOT AS QUICKLY  AS WE'D LIKE.

The Kenny Garrett Quartet was up first, starting not too long after 8 PM on a hot Thursday night. Years ago now, Garrett was Miles Davis's last saxophone player. "There are a few guys out there who are developing their own style," Miles said in his 1989 autobiography: "My alto player, Kenny Garrett, is one of them."

A decade and a half later the style has arrived, and Miles Davis would probably be still more impressed. With Garrett were Carlos McKinney on keyboards, Kris Funn on bass, Ronald Bruner on drums, and a considerable battery of electronic equipment. As others have reported, this group puts on electrifying high-energy performances, that almost literally grab the audience and get it involved. And that's what it did at the Toronto Jazz Festival this year too.

Drummers in the audience were listening especially intently to the rising 22-year-old Ronald Bruner. Wearing a baseball hat backwards, and smiling broadly, he drove the group along in a style that fit like a glove. (Maybe partly because he looks back to the same dead giant as Kenny Garrett. Bruner was asked recently: "If you had the opportunity to play with any artist in the world, who would it be?" He said: "Oh that's simple: Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Wayne Shorter. That would've been the ultimate drum chair for me. I would've loved it!")

A few over-subtle critics carped that Garrett, McKinney, Funn, and Bruner tend to stay inside a kind of funky gospel formula. It may take some inspiration from the later Miles Davis as well. It certainly pleases the crowd, even systematically. It may also limit the full extent to which the deeper musical talent on display can be expressed. In any case Garrett changed pace nicely mid-way through, with two beguiling Japanese tunes on soprano saxophone, accompanied only by McKinney. (Garrett, as his official website notes, has "a passion for all things Japanese.")

Then the funky gospel groove returned for a final high-octane burst. It may have just been the tent and the unusually hot late June evening. But at moments the Kenny Garrett Quartet almost seemed to be hosting an old-school revival meeting.

Individual members of the congregation intermittently rose to proclaim their salvation. Almost everyone clapped and chanted, in response to guidance from the musical prophet on stage. In one of several attention-grabbing false endings Garrett and his colleagues slid into stirring fragments of the great hymn "Goin' Home" (which originally figured in Anton Dvorak's New World Symphony). You can't escape religion these days, it seems, even at a jazz concert. Or maybe things are just going back to many, many years ago, when critics also noted the "religious ecstasy" of Charlie Parker's music.

Joshua Redman's Elastic Band arrived fashionably late, after a long intermission. Redman, who is younger than Kenny Garrett, but almost looks older, plays tenor and soprano saxophone. With him were Sam Yahel on keyboards (including bass, on the left hand), Jeff Parker on guitar, Jeff Ballard on drums, and another considerable assortment of electronic equipment.

Maybe because they arrived late and were not quite set up when they started, the Elastic Band took a while settling in. Redman was fussing with reeds on stage, and seemed to be struggling with some of the electronic engineering. This current incarnation of Redman's music apparently owes something to the later electric Miles Davis too (along with Weather Report and so forth). In any case, it all started to cook quite exactly soon enough.

There were certain echoes of Garrett's funky gospel mode in the work of Redman, Yahel, Parker, and Ballard. But there was less of a very tight crowd-pleasing formula — which did seem to give more room for strictly musical adventures. (If also less frenzied applause from the well-adjusting local fans, until the very end.) On a somewhat different channel, of a sort that Miles Davis himself might have quietly noted at the back of his mind, the Garrett group was all black. Joshua Redman's Elastic Band was half-black and half-white.

The drummers in the audience who had been fascinated by Ronald Bruner were inevitably scrutinizing the Elastic Band's Jeff Ballard in similar depth. He was older, (again) white, and not wearing a baseball hat in any direction. But he bore up very well under the pressure — adding highly energetic rhythmic accompaniment, and rising tall to the occasion for solo breaks.

Joshua Redman himself is a saxophone technician who often comes impressively close to Charlie Parker's ideal of playing "very clean, very precise, as clean as possible anyway." (Even though it is also reported that he went through several periods of not practicing enough in his youth.) He is nowadays experimenting with some intriguing electronic tricks on an amplified tenor as well. These sometimes give an impression of double stopping (or playing more than one note at once: a rare saxophone trick, displayed on a few occasions by Coltrane, acoustically, so to speak).

In the end, the Elastic Band's second half of the evening was more like a funky electric classical music concert — and less like a big-tent gospel revival. But after what Redman called "probably our last number" (he had already wondered aloud about who forgot to turn on the AC), the audience got to its feet at last and delivered a buoyant ovation. The band left the stage. The crowd remained standing and called and called for more. At last the band returned and delivered a stunning absolutely final performance, on the Redman tune "Birthday Song."

To sum both concerts up, these are fabulous and gifted players who work hard to convey intriguing musical visions of the global village today — and can also grab big crowds in tents, in one way or another. They are similarly carrying on and extending the great founding era of modern jazz, 1940-1970. Nice work if you can get it. And who could ask for anything more? [TNB/LB/RW].