June 26, 2025 – Hoke's Jukebox

REVIEW: Jeff “Siege” Siegel Quartet at Jazz on Jay, Thursday, June 26, 2025

Jeff Siegel Quartet – From left, Siegel; Chris Pasin, Rich Syracuse and Francesca Tanksley

A special sense of occasion enriched Thursday’s Jazz on Jay show by drummer Jeff “Siege” Siegel’s quartet of veteran straight-ahead players.

Philip Morris honors Tim Coakley

Coakley holds his plaque

The jazz community of musicians and fans filled Proctors Robb Alley, the series rainsite, to honor area jazz hero Tim Coakley as well as to hear the show. The drummer, long-tenured WAMC DJ and sparkplug of A Place for Jazz received a plaque from Proctors CEO Philip Morris and the plaudits of many friends including fellow Gazette retirees. Coakley has probably never been photographed so much in his long life as he was Thursday.

Siegel and pianist Francesca Tanksley, bassist Rich Syracuse and trumpeter and flugelhorn player Chris Pasin quickly turned the concert from social gathering into richly musical event. Longtime friends, the four are also fans of one another whose warm mutual regard filled the bandstand, and the house.

They played only originals, of a varied but mostly modernist mode; post-bop mid- and uptempo romps, entrancing ballads, a funk outburst and an Asian meditation.

“A New Freedom” hit a high altitude right out of the box; Pasin flying his flugelhorn confidently through and around the melody; he switched to trumpet later in the tune and was eloquent on both. Tanksley showed a profound McCoy Tyner influence in emphatic, pulsating chords and centrifugal scalar runs. Syracuse played just as swiftly while Siegel’s beat held everything together, and up.

“Inner Passion” honored Siegel’s recently deceased South African trumpeter friend Feya Taku (as “Ballad of the Innocent” did later), a mid-tempo waltz with a quiet ballad feel, a showcase for lyrical touches.

The uptempo “Finnegan’s Wake” – describing Syracuse’s grappling with James Joyce’s hallucinatory novel – opened things up again, highlighted by the bassist-composer’s droll solo.

Things went from high to higher as Siegel’s march-beat launched “Meter Made,” Pasin’s pun-title reflecting his admiration for the Meters whose New Orleans funk inspired it. Pasin plays this happy street-parade rip with all his bands, and it works with all of them; Thursday, it was full of playful spirit.

Siegel also kicked off “Dance In the Question,” a complex, episodic number with varied cadences. Tyner-esque piano power balanced a quiet trumpet interlude, a dancing bass break, then a drum solo with piano and bass support.

Siegel avoided imposing a drummer-centric over-emphasis on rhythm; the quartet grooved like a well-balanced machine, though this particular line-up had never played in public together before Thursday. Several trio sections where Pasin laid out proved they could have killed the place with piano, bass and drums only. But then we’d have missed the horn player’s melodic mastery, rhythmic push, going uptempo, and sweet simplicity on ballads.

Unaccompanied piano introduced “Ballad of the Innocent” that flowed into understated reverie where Pasin’s trumpet, shorn of his customary fire, ruled through simple phrasing and beautiful tone. Like the earlier “Question,” “Glimpse” used episodic structure to portray succeeding moods, Siegel clanging the bell of his ride cymbal to drive the hot spots to spirited effect.

The meditative “Pagoda” tastefully steered clear of stereotypical Asian imitations; but Pasin’s trumpet explored melodic variations in a sequential way that tastefully echoed the tiered roof structure of this familiar temple design.

Their concluding “Threads” stretched out from a cyclic bossa trio introduction as Pasin added bebop spice; then the whole thing flew in a happy upbeat bustle. Siegel caught the audience response to this driving flow and kept stretching things by cueing his band mates for more. At one point, he cued Pasin who had left the stage and had to hustle back to help build an extended coda that found his trumpet vamping on top as the rhythm section simmered below.

Afterward, the many musicians and fellow newspaper retirees in the crowd clustered around Tim Coakley in affectionate congratulation – another warm coda.