review music: Classical Music | Tony Kiely | It was a late start to Stanley Clarke’s Jazz Café show, the virtuoso bassist making an eager audience wait before coming on and launching into a strident fusion groove to open a night of music th

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The Review - MUSIC - Classical & Jazz with TONY KIELY
Published: 29 May 2008

Camden classical music | Review of Stanley Clarke | virtuoso bassist | Jazz Café

REVIEW:STANLEY CLARKE
Jazz Café

IT was a late start to Stanley Clarke’s Jazz Café show, the virtuoso bassist making an eager audience wait before coming on and launching into a strident fusion groove to open a night of music that spanned the breadth of his long career.
Clarke made his name as the low-end legend of Chick Corea’s seminal fusion group Return To Forever, and as one of the first great innovators of the electric bass, pioneering the slap-pop technique and exploring the possibilities of the instrument far beyond what had come before.
His phenomenal technique, speed and fluidity on both upright and electric have endeared him to jazz-funk aficionados the world over, and these skills were certainly in evidence.
While all the members took solos, many of the tunes unsurprisingly made a little extra room for the bandleader to flex his musical muscles.
By and large this was a good thing, especially when he doubled up and traded phrases with Mads Tolling’s searing violin. But on occasions, especially in two acoustic tunes penned by Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, it would have been nice to see a shade more subtlety in his playing.
Ruslan Sirota’s piano and keyboard work was more sensitively handled, but against the might of Clarke and exceptional drummer Ronald Bruner Jr, surely one of the most impressive rhythm men around at the moment, his sound was often overwhelmed.
The intermittent use of synth bass to provide a backing to Clarke’s higher lines was also distracting at times, adding to an uneven mix throughout the performance.
Overall, this was an awesome display of technical mastery that was occasionally guilty of style over substance.
But with the encore, a storming rendition of his most popular hit School Days, Clarke proved that in some hands a little style goes a long way, and he’s got it in spades.
John Lyons

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