VINCENT-LEBRUN.COM
Updated: AUGUST 19, 2016 — 3:01 AM EDT
Philadelphia pianist Orrin Evans isn't just a brilliant player and composer, but a savvy curator as well. That's why, for the finale of Evans' live jazz series at South, he's welcoming one of post-bop's most poignant, pliable, even poetic drummers and composers, Jeff "Tain" Watts.
Watts was given that nickname by late master pianist Kenny Kirkland ("Kenny taught me to trust my ears and instincts, and I miss him dearly") when the pair played with trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and his saxophonist brother, Branford, for the better part of the 1980s. Kirkland caught a road sign for Chieftain Gas and came up with "Jefftain"
"Wynton's first band was assembled like buddies forming a garage band," Watts says. "The brothers, in conjunction with Mr. Kirkland and I, quickly became devoted to each other, even when separated. I had been studying jazz for perhaps two years when I began working with Wynton, and it took a long time for me to feel worthy of performing great jazz music. I love them all forever for believing in me before I believed in myself."
The drummer credits other leaders he played with - Geri Allen, John Hicks, Robert Hurst, and McCoy Tyner - to show him how to translate strength, passion, and will into a signature with composition largesse and rhythmic aesthetic. Call it Tain-ish, if you will.
"In the past, I was trying to portray emotional things in my music, but there always has to be a song at the end of it," he says, looking back at the complexity of his earlier solo albums in comparison to 2015's Blue, Vol. 1 and its sense of raw, subtle simplicity to go with its swing and balladry. "I'll make the analogy to, say, John Coltrane, who played many abstract and complicated [pieces], but would not have had the same effect to listeners had he not been a great blues player, a testifier, a preacher."
read more: http://news360.com/digestarticle/qFw3JZJAwE6irt3MjYx73w
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