Last semester, the Touhill Performing Arts Center hosted perhaps the only living jazz great when 78-year-old Sonny Rollins took the stage with his saxophone and claimed the night for Jazzistan. On Friday the same stage was home to another jazz group and any idea of a generational gap was shattered as 18-year-old Justin Faulkner eased into the drummer’s chair and watched his band leader, Branford Marsalis, for the cue to begin.
Marsalis falls squarely in between Rollins and Faulkner. At a youthful age 49, he has accomplished much, even as a member of an accomplished musical family that includes his brother Wynton. Those who are not blown over by his various accolades—Grammy nominations and collaborations with jazz masters like Rollins and Miles Davis—may recognize Marsalis as Jay Leno’s musical director on the “Tonight Show” for two years in the 1990s before Kevin Eubanks took over the position.
At the Touhill, in the magisterial Anheuser-Busch main-stage auditorium, Marsalis made small talk about football and poked gentle fun at the young Faulkner’s informal attire as the band prepared to play. Once they began, however, the hypno-chaotic grip of jazz took hold of the night and Joey Calerazzo (piano), Eric Revis (bass), Faulkner and Marsalis grabbed hold and never let go during this “Valentine’s Day” show.
Faulkner was the evening’s revelation. The drummer in a jazz quartet is the wild heart and the unchained soul of the show and, barring minute-or-two mellow patches, must make sweet jazzy love to his instrument throughout the entire performance, usually at a rat-a-tat pace. Even when the volume is subdued, the tempo tends to snap on. One can only imagine the apprehension with which as respected and professional of an outfit as Marsalis’ quartet must have approached the prospect of replacing their longstanding drummer Jeff “Tain” Watts (his leaving was the first change in Marsalis’ group in a decade) with a teen protege. Still, Faulkner was a whirlwind of set beat peppered with scatter-shot improvisations and a couple of ovation-inducing solo spots. His ability to shine in such a manner and yet allow the songs’ main focus—their melodies—have full life is a testament to Marsalis’ fevered band-mastery.
Thelonious Monk and other jazz greats were drawn upon and reinterpreted fairly faithfully as the evening progressed, and one down-tempo composition in particular (unnamed by the band) was luscious in its heart-rendering, bittersweet refrain (perhaps the only “Valentine-y” moment of the evening).
Still the real treats were Marsalis’ own compositions, one of which he described having begun in the early ‘90s and left unfinished for some 15 years until recently working with his quartet to polish and complete. That number encapsulated the jazz-core ebb and flow of the evening: open a song with an upbeat, quick-fire theme, build it to a boiling pitch, cut each player loose for a couple of minutes in the spotlight, wander far from the beaten path and approach a near delirium before somehow winding back to the familiar opening refrain.
