Concert Review: Evan Christopher Trio @ The Cock ‘n Bull, 08/27/2023

The clarinet may be the most vocal of instruments, made to spin stories and evoke emotion. In a return to the Cock ’N’ Bull Sunday, Evan Christopher told tales and translated feelings with persuasive power, playing with area stalwarts David Gleason, piano; and Mike Lawrence, stand-up bass.

Christopher began his two-hour-long sets with high wails that grabbed attention. The trio found its way quickly, forming “Bye Bye Blackbird” from early explorations into a cozy swing. Christopher playfully quoted other tunes in his second solo, bookending Gleason’s.

A simmering vamp framed Christopher’s spoken intro to Sidney Bechet’s “Blues in The Air,” promising an evening of joyful noise. They delivered right away. A longtime New Orleans resident now transplanted to New York City, Christopher paid poignant homage to the pioneer/hero of Crescent City blues swagger, preceding Louis Armstrong.

Telling stories, sharing feelings both need ace techniques to connect, and Christopher showed this off by (river-) boatloads Sunday. He took just a few early songs to establish the clarinet’s full tonal and emotional range. Mixed things up, he always swung forward, using vibrato tastefully and expanding melodies with blindingly fast runs. 

In “Blues in The Air” and a second Bechet classic – the quieter, stately blues “Si Tu Vois Ma Mere (If You See My Mother)” – the players began to echo, listening and commenting, completing each other’s musical sentences. Christopher often encouraged his one-night crew with shout-outs; stamping a foot to set the tempo, tapping his head to cue a recap.

Two Louis Armstrong tunes followed the Bechets: “Wild Man Blues,” with Christopher interjecting the Armstrong classic “I Cover the Waterfront” into his solo and echoing Armstrong’s trademark hesitation phrasing, then “Hello, Dolly.” Christopher said, “I never play it,” but if that was off the cuff, he packs endless tricks up that sleeve. He called out, “Yeah, Baby!” In Gleason’s solo, and he was right.

After the Caribbean change of pace, “Hear the Thunder Roar,” sympathetic to hurricane-ripped islands but also deliciously tropical in its strong rhythmic spirit, came a surprise. 

Christopher’s seven-year-old daughter Elena left the front table where she dined with her mom, April, and longtime friend of jazz, Paul Siegel, to climb onto the bandstand to sing “Alice Blue Gown” and “Show Me the Way to Go Home” with pretty good pitch and even more impressive aplomb. 

Noting the show-biz adage not to follow kids or dogs, Christopher wrapped the first set here, hugging his bandmates as they left the stand.

“Stella By Starlight” gave a mellow ballad start for the second set, and the mood deepened into the Duke Ellington/John Coltrane “Angelica,” then Duke’s “Prelude to a Kiss.” Both felt interactive. Christopher decorated Gleason’s solo with quiet comments, then handed off to one of Lawrence’s few solos with a riff that Lawrence repeated, then turned inside out. In this sequence, Gleason at times played Ellingtonian arpeggios; once Christopher cued a change to their pathway through the tune by pointing to Gleason’s tablet, where the pianist read his charts. He gleefully proclaimed, “Big bands are back…as TRIOS!”

He then invited Gleason to play an original, so the pianist-composer intro’ed “Shoe Shop Blues,” a family saga. Christopher fell right into its mood, tapping his clarinet rhythmically to evoke a cobbler’s hammer; making Gleason laugh. Again, Christopher fed a riff to Lawrence that the bassist blew up into his own solo.

“Satin Doll” began from a bold clarinet call, and Christopher ended it in a big, complex solo, then said, “Just like we rehearsed it!” They hadn’t actually practiced it at all but played it smoothly anyway.

The mid-slow tango “Surrender Blues” had a compact coziness, but “You Must Believe in Spring” went more expansive, upshifting from a ballad flavor to a mid-tempo glide.

Christopher now considers himself semi-retired from touring but still plays with electric excitement, swaggering swing, and a poignant blues or ballad feel. Both Gleason and Lawrence noted afterward that they had felt challenged on the gig. The clarinetist’s dexterous technical skill and complex musical vision, rooted in New Orleans but spanning centuries, would daunt any temporary sidemen, but those guys stepped up. I commented as much on the break to Christopher, who agreed but said, “Now I’m going to stretch them.” And they stepped up again.