REVIEW: Old Friends Beckoned New Sounds Reckoned at Caffe Lena; Saturday, Jan. 11, 2025
With their new album as song-by-song roadmap, saxophonist and flute player Matt Steckler’s new quartet took the jazz fans who jam-filled Caffe Lena Saturday on a dynamic and dazzling ride from volcanic to wistful and back again.
From left: Tony Lewis, drums; Matt Steckler, saxophones and flute; Yayoi Ikawa, piano; Tarik Shah, bass
The title the album and band share – Old Friends Beckoned New Sounds Reckoned – explains both the old-friends connections among the players and the vitality of the new music they make, mostly Steckler compositions. But apart from exploring the music’s moods, melodies and meaning, they mainly seemed intent on making one another smile; audience, too.
Steckler played flute only in the opening “Forgive,” a happy, expansive number his staccato phrasing carried initially; then pianist Yayoi Ikawa took over to thrilling effect, kicking off her shoes and digging deep amid drum thunder from Tony Lewis and agile throb from bassist Tarik Shah, subbing for regular Lonnie Plaxico.
After the welcoming “Forgive,” Steckler shifted to tenor in “Labor Day,” running fast Coltrane-y scales and Ikawa and Shah echoing his busy bustle. In the waltz “Prince Eleventy” that followed, his alto gave only a short intro before handing off to Ikawa, but his second bite of the apple went further outside as Lewis swung hard in waltzy grace and march-time force before settling into a slow funk groove. Maybe from his R&B days, this fit nicely; then Ikawa and Shah locked a propulsive repeating riff into the coda.
Yayoi Ikawa, left; and Tarik Shah
Tarik Shah
Lewis’s old-school hard-bop beats might have overwhelmed lesser players, but the quartet balanced well apart from hard cymbal bell* hits that rang extra loud at times.
In Joe Deuel’s recent photos-and-stories presentation, the longtime sound engineer/photographer noted how Caffe founder Lena Spencer barred drums from her stage. Lewis’s mighty beats would either have won her over or sent her spirit flying far and fast.
Tony Lewis
When Steckler jokingly praised Lewis’s explosion in “Prince Eleventy,” reminding him they were playing a mostly folk venue, the cracked-up drummer nearly lost his just-quaffed mouthful of water, laughing. Then Steckler handed the mic to Ikawa to introduce her gorgeous “Butterfly.” She said the song linked a butterfly’s development, from caterpillar to winged wonder, to human self-definition and diversity. Its lyrical delicacy contrasted nicely with the uproar it followed, subdued at first, then more dramatic. Her solo told that tale to compelling effect that Steckler’s tenor echoed well.
Yayoi Ikawa introduces “Butterfly.”
His soprano sax fluttered through rapid sales in the playful upbeat waltz “I’d Know It If I Heard It,” Ikawa co-starring brilliantly with Lewis and Shah in close support before Shah downshifted into a funk walking pattern. They closed the first set with Sam Rivers’s “Beatrice,” their only cover all night and a liberating tenor workout. In the introduction, Ikawa studied her chart and bobbed her body to the beat before everybody dove into thrill-ride joy, with a sly quote of “Without A Song.”
“Show Some Class” punched in the second set with bluesy swagger, Steckler’s alto riding a jagged cadence and Ikawa exploding in all directions over bustling snare rolls. As in the “Prince Eleventy” to “Butterly” first set shift from fire to simmering coals, “Here and Now” downshifted; Ikawa powerful even in its expressive ballad mood. Things revved back up in “Mission Creep” with its jittery cadence and equally slippery melody. Here Steckler almost missed his cue to jump his soprano sax back in for the recap, hypnotized like everyone else by Ikawa’s McCoy Tyner-like zip.
They lounged into the cheesy schmaltz of “Vegas Mode” before rollicking round-robin short riffs punched the energy. Ikawa glanced over her shoulder at Steckler in full alto bop flight before taking her own dazzling turn. Shah revved the momentum double-time in the climactic “Nunavut,” Ikawa rising off her bench to chase its complex beats and suave melody around the place.
A happy virtuoso band of friends, they celebrated the album’s tunes in smiling mutual support, boldly soloing in shared, independent but linked imagination and, more than anything else, sharing the feel.
The full-to-bursting crowd welcomed this first show of the Caffe’s Peak Jazz Series, presented though support of Joseph and Luann Conlon to encourage jazz at the Caffe. Also a homecoming of sorts for Steckler, a Schenectady native now living and teaching in Manchester, Vt., it welcomed family, former teachers and, of course, old friends.
* When I asked musician brother Jim Hoke to identify that central zone of a cymbal, he told me it’s the “bell” and explained, “Drummers go to that part of the cymbal for an insistent, steady clang clang clang when they need that kind of energy and clarity. Jo El Sonnier, famous for his unique vocabulary replete with malapropisms galore, when he wanted to hear that would tell his drummer to ‘tang the hump.’ So in his honor, you may want to say the drummer tanged the hump.”
Pianist Chuck Lamb Duo welcomes guest vibraphonist Joe Locke Tuesday in the monthly JAZZ at Caffe series. Show time: 8;30 p.m., doors 6:30. $45.55, members $41.21, students and children $22.78. 518-583-0022. http://www.caffelena.org.
Steckler introduces Ikawa
Hoke's Jukebox 