Paul Brown Monday Night Jazz
Featuring the Billy Harper Quintet
Bushnell Park
Hartford
July 8, 2024
Monday Night Jazz is an institution in Hartford and beyond. It’s even been recognized as the longest running free jazz festival in the country by the Library of Congress. After a year of performances that ranged from lectures to jam sessions to concerts, it’s finally dawned on me that Hartford is an important jazz city. Like, really important. As in: People should think of Hartford when they think of jazz.
Why else do we attract the level of talent that we do every year for free jazz concerts?
Billy Harper, who headlined this week’s edition of the 57th annual Paul Brown Monday Night Jazz series at Bushnell Park, is a world-renowned tenor saxophone player, and he has performed with his quintet for over 40 years. He’s described as “combining John Coltrane’s spiraling intensity with a bluesy brawn that pointed back to his Texas origins.”
All of that talent was on full display on Monday night, as he and his quintet sliced through a 90-minute set with a razor sharp sound that filled the park. Harper was accompanied by Francesca Tanksley on piano, Aaron Scott on drums, Freddie Hendrix on trumpet and Hartford native Nat Reeves on bass, filling in for the quintet’s regular bassist.
Harper’s saxophone playing is sharp and confrontational. Each note, each passage challenges the listener’s expectations. As he worked through his solo in Time and Time Again, he ran his sax through the gamut of sounds that it could perform. Harper seemed to control the very texture of the music — how it felt when the notes hit your ear. He could deliver a spike of sound with the gentleness of a feather landing on a pond, or slam it into your eardrums like thunder.
A quintet can’t be a one-man show, and the rest of the band members did well more than just hold their own. Each brought their own style and expertise to their play. The performer who stood out the most besides Harper was Freddie Hendrix. Before the show began, the announcer remarked, “They share the same name, and Freddie Hendrix brings the fire with the trumpet like Jimi Hendrix did with the guitar.”
That was not an overstatement. During the trumpet solo for I Do Believe, Hendrix made the trumpet produce sounds I didn’t know were possible for a brass instrument. A sudden drop in register felt like going down a roller coaster, only to be snapped back instantly like a giant rubber band when the trumpet soared into the upper notes. Hendrix gave a beautiful performance that revealed a different side to the trumpet than I was familiar with.
Jazz in the Jazz City got off to an exciting start with the Billy Harper quintet. The music was challenging in a fun way, and showed a sharp side to jazz that sometimes gets smoothed over too much. I’m already looking forward to next week’s show.
NEXT
Monday Night Jazz returns on July 15 with headliner Shawn Monterio Quartet
Jamil heads to Elizabeth Park to check out their concert series.
