At age 62, Milford Graves is a physical phenom. His strength is
remarkable, not just as a drummer but as a gymnast and an entertainer.
His somersaults, dances and sprints through the room are part of his
charisma and no doubt part of his popularity. It's also a detriment to his
performances, with some people in the audience no doubt waiting for
the crazy stuff to begin and missing out on the music.
Fortunately for this show, Graves saved his antics for the encore. The
duet began with an explosion. Zorn squealing hard, Graves throwing a
low rumble from the drums, and Zorn soon stirring jazz lines into the
mix. Zorn doesn't show off his jazz chops often, but he's sure got them.
His pure jazz is often present in his projects but, Masada aside, is rarely
at the forefront. With Graves, Zorn moved readily between emotive blasts
and jazzy figures with a genre-defying intensity.
They played five fast, extended improvisations, Graves setting the
character (thunder, lightning). The two have met at least twice before,
having played in duo at past What is Jazz? and Vision festivals. During
the first, Graves left Zorn alone on the enormous outdoor stage as he
danced into the audience, frolicking and hamming it up, eventually
picking up an audience member (considerably larger than himself) and
tossing him over his shoulder. It's a fine line between charisma and
camp (there's probably even some overlap), but it's been good in the
last year to see Graves drop his shamanistic shtick; the low-level
gymnastics don't tend to add much to the music. As is the case with
Dutch funnyman drummer Han Bennink, if it gets predictable it's a
problem. It's the line between musician and showman, and it goes back
at least as far as Louis Armstrong.
Another, better part of Graves' musical mysticism is his vocalizing. His
sort of Afrochant speaking-in-tongues, however, doesn't distract, and in
a solo segment of drums and voice, he invoked a recognition of the
younger traveler, then redrew his dedication. "It is John's birthday time,
for John's birthday is here," he sang. "Time is all in here," he added,
pointing to his head momentarily. "Whatever you want it to be, it will be
there, huh, huh, huh, huh." Then, in near falsetto, "John Zooooorn," to
which Zorn responded with his reeds, as if realizing that the ante'd been
upped.
Before the encore, Graves continued his musings on art and time. "I
think it's kind of becoming right now to do a little departure with a little
history, maybe a little ritual soul," he said, launching into a Nigerian-
influenced dance. "All people are good, but young people are good. I
don't like when someone comes and says 'I like what you do,' and then
someone writes 'You should have seen him when he was 22.' So it's an
obligation that people have when they're over 50, John. It's an obligation
that you have. When I hit 50, I got good. I tell the young people, wait till
you're 50."
With that, Graves returned to the drums and Zorn began playing to the
elders. Graves then got up from his drums and pushed his way onto the
piano bench where Zorn was sitting, pulling Zorn's legs to his
shoulders and lifting the saxophonist up, then turning to play the
drums, Zorn balanced on top of him. The fact that the music they
played once stacked was weaker isn't the point. Graves had issued a
dedication and a challenge, and now it was time for a party.
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