Swiss movement, funkified: Journeys makes return visit to Jazz Kitchen

The conventional image of Switzerland has a few parameters of high order. They can make the brief

Journeys in action at a venue with elaborate lighting,

description of Journeys as "the best of Swiss jazz funk fusion" on its website seem a contradiction in terms. Consider: well-crafted timepieces, neutrality, secret bank accounts, skiing and mountain climbing, William Tell, Roger Federer. From the chalet to the shimmy might seem an incalculable distance.

But on Friday night, Journeys was there at the Jazz Kitchen bridging the gap. It was a return visit after eight years that the band was explicitly grateful for. A packed first set, the audience filled out with a last-minute offer of free admission (a rare JK offer for a first set), was mutually thrilling — from the bandstand to the tables and back again.

With 20 years of experience together, Journeys has what's required to undertake on a short, strenuous tour. It goes to Atlanta today, having come from New York the day before Indianapolis.  The well-honed band biography shows in the tightness of ensemble, inevitably focused on its all-original book. 

Some of the band's gratitude to be up and about is of course due to getting back into action, like everybody else, after the pandemic. In its first set, one of the tunes was "Bye-bye Covid," which suggests a forgivable optimism. Is the current shift from pandemic to endemic worth celebrating? Journeys must think so. Philippe Mall put aside his alto saxophone to pick up the tenor, and his hearty solo lifted the music to soaring through blue skies. Expletive-delete the pandemic!

The piece that followed, an apparent favorite of an audience member with whom the drummer and Journeys spokesman Robert Mark said he went to school, was the equally hearty "Transit." That featured another Mall solo that roamed freely around most of the tenor's compass. 

The composition also had a flaw that's familiar in the originals of many bands: a bridge that was ho-hum and proved useful mainly in making me grateful for the return to the "A" section.  That aside, Angelo Signore's two-fisted piano solo was one of several substantial turns in the spotlight he enjoyed during the set. He dominated his own slow blues, which opened with an unaccompanied, rubato solo. With Mall on alto sax, which he normally used for the mellower side of Journey's repertoire, "Hard Rain" (no kin to Bob Dylan's apocalyptic song) was distinguished by a fast, stinging Signore turn on keyboards.

The blues theme was typical of several Journey pieces in presenting sax and guitar in unison. The band has a signature sound, one that 's also confirmed by the presence of two percussionists, Mark at the kit and Willy Kotoun with an array of hand-played tuned drums, etc.

As for the guitarists, I enjoyed the steadiness and groove of Luciano Maranta's bass, but would have welcomed more exposure that could venture into funky-thumb territory a la Marcus Miller. The other guitarist, Fabio Gouvea, displayed facility and imagination and ought to have been showcased more, but he's a Brazilian who's just along for this tour, so his sideman role makes sense.

This is not to wish that Journeys resembled American representatives of its subgenre.  I'm not lofting a yodel for an imitation. The Swiss band had plenty to offer within its settled sphere, and it's no wonder it's internationally active once again.