Jeremy Pelt brings his 'Soundtrack' to the Jazz Kitchen

It seems like ages ago, like many events pre-pandemic, when Jeremy Pelt brought his quintet with the same personnel to the Jazz Kitchen.  That time, the inspiration was the visual arts, and the latest Pelt  recording was "The Artist." 

In his return visit, with the well-honed  ensemble of Chien Chien Lu, vibraphone; Victor Gould, piano;

Cover of the current CD: The quintet returns

Vicente Archer, bass, and Allan Mednard, drums,  assisting him, the trumpeter cast a wider net with "Soundtrack," including the title tune. That had the most reliable order of solos, with engaging statements from Lu, Pelt, and Gould. 

Lu, a native of Taiwan, showed again how compulsively watchable and listenable an artist she is. She is one of those to whom the cliche applies that she becomes the music she plays: "Who can tell the dancer from the dance?" as W.B. Yeats once wrote.

The tendency of Mednard's apt drumming to cast a shadow over Gould, which I noticed in the quintet's 2019 visit, was regrettable. Mednard's lighter touch behind a piano solo, with rapid snare-drum patterning, was welcome on the next piece, a Gould original titled "Sir Carter."

Pelt introduced that tune with an anecdote about the great bassist Ron Carter, his long career recently honored with a documentary, "Finding the Right Notes." Though the information was offered in a teasing way to imply that the bassist now has to be addressed as "Sir Carter," the reason for the title doesn't make sense. The late Queen of England never knighted Carter, as Pelt claimed, because non-Brits aren't eligible for knighthood. And the title "Sir" is always followed by the  honoree's first name, never his last. So one needs to think of the whole story as facetious.

Back to the serious stuff: "Black Love Stories" is a  Pelt original built off a chain of simple phrases. It presents itself tenderly, but Pelt's solo cast aside its tone of understatement to bring out fiery assertion, presumably to reflect on another aspect of the truth Pelt wants the piece's title to convey.

A ballad with a sustained level of quiet devotion came next: Marian McPartland's "There'll Be Other Times." Pelt's Harmon-muted solo was effectively succeeded by Lu's, using soft mallets. The trumpeter's tone and breath control were fully wedded to his wealth of well-proportioned ideas, and Gould's accompaniment featured spacious, complementary placement of chords and figuration.

From an earlier recording, "Griot," whose title honors the itinerant storytellers of West Africa,  a piece titled "Don't Dog the Source" made an explicit connection with the jazz tradition, as its very title warns  against imitation. The phrase comes from an interview Pelt did with saxophonist J.D. Allen for Pelt's interview collection, also called "Griot."

It summed up saxophonist Allen's warning to younger musicians to honor the source of one's artistry without adhering to it slavishly. Gould sat out this admonitory piece, in which the bassist took his only solo of the set (well worth the wait). The pianist returned for the exuberant finale, "I'm Still Standing," which could well represent survival of the pandemic for performing artists and their audiences alike.