McCoy Tyner at Blues Alley

The jazz pianist McCoy Tyner, who first gained fame as a member of John Coltrane's 1960s seminal quartets, can produce twice as much music as a man half his age. He can thunder away on the piano one moment, and thread together a nimble, delicate run the next. After almost forty years at the center of mainstream jazz, Tyner seems to overflow with the music he has lived. Not content with letting his two hands pursue only one musical idea, he made the trio sound more like a quartet during his Friday night set at Blues Alley in Washington, D.C.

In a solo number, Tyner built up a boogie-woogie tune and continually interspersed the traditional phrases with bebop innovations, making the radically different styles meld seamlessly. An original composition with a slow, driving motion recalled Ellington's "Caravan" but with a more intimate knowledge of African music. Throughout the evening, the Czech-born bassist George Mraz, who with his tweed suite and tie looked more like a diplomat than a jazz musician, handled the low end of the trio with an inventiveness equal to Tyner and displayed an almost classical grace when his solos led him towards the upper range of his instrument.

Originally posted at A Frolic of My Own.

Article Author: Todd A. Price

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