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player ready...Chicago drummer Dana Hall leads so many distinct ensembles, and thrives in so many stylistically far-flung settings, that it’s impossible to say which one reveals the most about his musical identity.
But surely none shows a greater cohesion among musicians than Spring, the all-star band Hall led Friday night at the Green Mill Jazz Club. For these players have been working together periodically in Spring for several years, and in other configurations for still more.
Keeping a jazz band together over a long period of time — the only way to build instinctive communication — is not easy these days. But when the players work in the same town, share musical values and perform in each other’s company for more than a decade, the benefits are palpably clear, as they were on this occasion.
Hall and colleagues launched the first set with Billy Harper’s “Capra Black,” the title cut of Harper’s landmark 1973 album and a piece ripe for Hall’s reconceptualization. The ingenuity of the main theme — with its long, angular lines and unconventional melodic leaps — affords ample opportunity for development, and Hall and friends made the most of it.
Saxophonist Geof Bradfield took the first solo and set the bar rather high, packing considerable musical complexity and emotional intensity into the evening’s first extended statement. As he built this essay, Hall provided characteristically ferocious accompaniment, his sharp attacks and outsize tone egging Bradfield on.
Eventually, Bradfield, tenor saxophonist John Wojciechowski and trumpeter Victor Garcia joined forces to create a great wall of sound, the two tenorists articulating choralelike figures while Garcia laid out themes he soon would explore in a fiery solo of his own. Garcia’s upper-register cries, low-note growls and fast-flying passages attested to the expressive range and technical command of his work.
In all, quite an opener.
Hall’s “Bout Bidness” often turns up in Spring sets, but rarely as expansively cast as on this occasion. Everyone but Hall produced an epic-scaled solo, starting with Wojciechowski’s muscular cadenza on tenor saxophone. When Bradfield took his turn on soprano saxophone, he benefited from churning rhythmic accompaniment from bassist Clark Sommers, drummer Hall and Garcia playing congas. The high point arrived when Sommers stepped into the spotlight, his riff-based solo accompanied by Hall’s hand claps and thigh slaps, soon enhanced by Garcia’s congas. Here was long-running, free-flowing jazz improvisation spun out by the musicians for quite a stretch.
All of which set the stage for the set’s grand finale, Hall’s “Kasbah,” a piece the composer described as a contemplation on the African slave trade. Structured as a series of atmospheric vignettes featuring various combinations of musicians, “Kasbah” affirmed Hall’s ability to bring structure to a vast jazz improvisation, no small feat. For the instrumentalists entered and exited the musical texture at key junctures, three-horn passages alternating with duos and solos and other combinations. Garcia coaxed sounds that one hadn’t thought possible from a fluegelhorn, and Hall produced multiple layers of rhythm and color.
For those who appreciated the breadth of this music, the good news arrived when Hall told the crowd that he had recorded the band awhile ago and just needed to get around to releasing the music.
No doubt Hall’s demanding role as director of jazz studies at DePaul University’s School of Music, plus his many performance engagements, explain the delay.
But the strength of this set suggested that the Spring recording needs to be released sooner, rather than later.
Dana Hall’s Spring performs at 8 p.m. Saturday at the Green Mill Jazz Club, 4802 N. Broadway; $15; 773-878-5552 or www.greenmilljazz.com.
Howard Reich is a Tribune critic.
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