Motéma Night at the Raven and the Ecstasy of Jazz

The Healdsburg Jazz Festival hit the weekend swinging, soaring, and sweating on Thursday with a concert at the ranging from the reflective solo piano of Geri Allen to the post-modernist Mingus bop of Babatunde Lea.
The audience filled about two-thirds of the seats, but was fully rapt in the presence of the committed jazz artists who filled the stage.

The entire bill was composed of musicians  on the Motéma label, a New York music house devoted to jazz artists of the sort who find Healdsburg a home away from home. The mood of the evening began quietly, with the internal, complex musical narrative that Allen wove on the Steinway.

Like an earlier Festival pianist, , Geri Allen is on the ballot for best jazz pianist of the year from the Jazz Journalists Association  – an award that is to be given tomorrow, Saturday.

Marc Cary was first introduced to Healdsburg audiences at the 2005 Festival, and as it happens that was his (successful) audition for the Motéma label as well, singing with them shortly thereafter.  For last night’s performance he diverged from his usual trio configuration, adding the muted trumpet of David Weiss and the manic percussion of Daniel Moreno.

Long-time Cary associate David Ewell was on bass, and Victor Lewis sat behind the drum kit, powering the complex grooves – and sometimes trying to figure out exactly where Moreno was going with his a constant whirl of brazil nut noisemakers, whistles, rattles, gongs and skins.

Babatunde Lea and Friends took the stage just before 9:30, but it wasn’t too long before their music filled the theater and spilled out into the street. Lea – a charismatic presence on drums, with his dreads and African tunics – led the charge through a series of songs from the Umbo Weti recording of several years ago that celebrated the vocal talents of the late Leon Thomas.

Among the musicians were Gary Brown on bass, the regal Patrice Rushen on piano, and local favorite Craig Handy on sax, his own trademark dreads shorn a few months back to present a more modern image. All of the musicians and the music they played – a sort of overture of the past 200 years of African-American music – were top-fllight, but it was that guy singing who stole the show.

Never having seen Leon Thomas, this writer can’t attest to the accuracy of Dwight Trible’s “channeling” of the vocalist’s manners. But this writer can attest to the magnificence of Trible’s performance, whose spontaneous exhortations and physical energy underscored his vocal power.

I had met Trible the evening before, at the show with Sandy Cressman; he was quiet, polite, curious. But a different man took the stage Thursday, one not so much channeling another talent as one possessed by the force of music itself. He opened up and let it all out, not just vocally but with his entire body – head thrown back, hands and arms milking the sonics, posture an unending dance.

If the percussion dervish of Daniel Moreno had been onstage at the same time as the frenzied vocal and physical idiosyncrasies of Dwight Trible, the Raven Theater might just have exploded from the overload. As it was, the Healdsburg jazz fans were treated to yet another rare night of  exceptional music, thanks to Festival founder Jessica Felix and the Motéma artists.

An earlier afternoon event, at , gave audiophiles a chance to exercise their ears in a “” featuring Geri Allen’s album “Flying Toward the Sound.” Yes, the disc played was a vinyl LP, one of two in the set that comprised the $49.99 high-definition edition. Sure, you could buy a CD for $15, and play it in your car, or download the tracks for your iPhone, but if you want the realest possible experience be willing to drop a couple thousand on a sound system from Lavish Theaters here in Healdsburg.

Indeed, the sound was stellar, emanating from the Wharfedale tower speakers, Krell amplifiers and Thorens turntable system set up in the tasting room by Ryan Lyeth of Lavish. (If you have to ask, you can’t afford it.) Pianist Allen was there, admitting  “This is the first chance I’ve had to listen to the LP, and I’m really looking forward to it.” Also in attendance were several other artists from the Healdsburg Jazz Festival’s current line-up, including vocalist Rhonda Benin and saxophonist Charles Lloyd.

So too was Jana Herzen, founder of Motéma Records, the label that presented all of the artists on the evening bill at the Raven. Motéma means “heart,” she told us at the listening party, in the Lingala language of central Africa. But the sonically pure heart of Allen’s piano was just a foretaste of the evening concert that unfolded on the Raven stage later that evening. It was a Thursday night event that in many another festival would have been the climax. Perhaps even in this one.