The Michigan Daily-Saturday, February 25, 1978-Page 5


Virtuoso Montoya
dazzles Hill crowd
By KERRY THOMPSON
S HAKY JAKE'S guitar-playing style is actually much closer to Flamenco
- the style of Carlos Montoya - than to rock. One can hear a definite
similarity between the fanfare-like passages typical of Flamenco and Jake's
wildly dissonant banging.
The difference is, of course, that Flamenco is a highly developed art
form and Carlos Montoya is a good - very good - guitarist. Where Jake's
meanderings on the fingerboard are mildly amusing, Montoya is elec-
trifying. The people who came to -Hill Auditorium Thursday night were
rewarded with a rare treat.
Montoya appeared on stage to slightly warmer than perfunctory ap-
plause = but his open-armed gesture of acknowledgement seemed to tell the
audience "We're doing this together," and from that point on the audience
was his. He alternately dazzled us with truly wonderous technique, lulled us
with poignant gypsy melodies, and set our feet tapping with stirring dance
rhythms.
ONE THING THAT stands out about this performance was Montoya's
technique.,Until one actually sees and hears this phenomenal man perform,
it's hard to imagine the things he can make a guitar do. And, even upon hear-
ing him, it's still hard to believe. The warmth and sonority of the instrument
are given new dimensions - not to mention the sheer volume of sound. He
did amazing things with his two hands - he would tap a percussion rhythm
with his little finger, strum a lazy, Balilaika-type melody on the upper
strings with his next two fingers, play a counter-melody underneath with his
index finger, and a bass line with his thumb. His left hand was remarkable,
- he has the facility there of a fine violinist, and then some. The left hand
"pizzicatto" (for lack of a better term), peculiar to Flamenco style, was
done masterfully. With use of special techniques such as harmonics,
strumming on the wood, and some techniques for which I know no names,
Montoya was able to make the guitar sound alternately like a tambourine, a
bugle, and several snare drums. This was particularly effective in the first
encore, where he gave a convincing impression of a parade during holy week
in Granada.
There was a problem that should be mentioned, though, and that is am-
plification. Perhaps it was poor microphone placement, perhaps it was a
poor sound system, or perhaps the-guitar simply should not have been am-
plified for this type of music. Whatever the reason, the amplification made
the guitar sound cheap, tinny, and muddy at first. In fact, there were a few
people who left after the first couple of numbers because of this. However,
the problem was either resolved or I became used to the effects, because af-
ter the first few numbers I ceased to notice the amplification and was able to
thoroughly enjoy the program. Further performances or guitarists,
however, should probably appear either in Power Center or Rackham,
where amplification is not necessary and the atmosphere is more suitable
for the intimate style of the guitar.
IT IS HARD in such a program to single out specific numbers as being
especially liked or disliked. There is a great deal of similarity among dif-
ferent songs of the Flamenco genre, with its stereotyped rhythms and har-
monies, its syncopations and dissonances. A few numbers did stand out as
being particularly enjoyable, though none were especially bad. The Taran-
tas was more melodic, perhaps a bit less frantic than most of the other num-
bers. There were the typical rousing sections, but these turbulent rhythms
melted into the bittersweet melodies of the Spanish Gypsies. The Garrotin
was pleasing to my classical ear because it was more metrical than the
others, and had pleasing melodies (Flamenco style, while very rhythmicar.
is highly syncopated and tends not to be metrical). The Taranto was in-
teresting because of the depth of the music - it was something that went
beyond dance music, and seemed to touch on the soul of people. The first
encore, as mentioned, was almost startling in the vividness of its tone pain-
ting.
Flamenco guitar playing is not very similar to'any other form of western
guitar playing - rock, folk, classical, or any other. It is a folk form, that of
the Spanish Gypsies. It comes to us as an aural tradition; until now, there
has been no written music, and each guitarist is also a composer and
arranger in the troubador tradition. Carlos Montoya, in addition to being a
fine technician and a top-rank artist, is one of the great.est practitioners of
this tradition.

Crusaders:Funk, not jazz

By MATTHEW KLETTER
THE Second Chance was the
showcase for the L.A. sound of pop
jazz this Thursday night as the
Crusaders, along with Ann Arbor's
Mixed Bag, performed to alively
audience. The evening onened with
Mixed Bag', which maintained a con-
temporary sound featuring a syn-
thesizer and a fashionable percussion
table. Ron Brooks, the bass player, un-
derlined the band by weaving behind
the group as they displayed a strong
rhythm section.
The Mixed Bag sound is a planned out
type of bar jazz, with room for oc-
casional solos. The guitarist was
technically good but was restrained and
lacked feeling. Most of the band's jams
ended with the typical fusion ending
where the whole band fizzles out. g
The Crusaders came on stage presen-
ting a tight rhythmed, funked out
music, which some might call jazz,
others might call R&B, and I would call
"fusion". The Crusaders are a tight
band, and on their first number, "Sweet
and Sour," appeared to have studio
talent. Actually the Crusaders have a
very commercial sound, that which you
would expect to hear on WJZZ in
Detroit, followed by a Louis the Hatter

appreciated them none the less and this
was evident with the crowd's thun-
derous clapping and occasional dan-
cing. Yet the carelessness of the band
was found best in a drum solo by
drummer Stix Hooper. His solo
displayed how a man can stand up and
bang away at nine tom toms, sometimes
letting both sticks remain in one hand,
and attaining an audience response.
BEST OF ALL, were his amazing
solos with the foot cymbal. The crowd
didn't seem to notice this void and they
continued to scream with blind faith
toward the band. Even the latter guitar
solos by Rogers were smoking; his
solos were accompanied by his cigaret-
te in right hand. Behind it all wobbled
bass player Robert Popwell with his
chic L.A. fashion glasses.
The audience loved it, and screamed
for an encore, which brought out the
band to do "So Far Away." Thursday
night's version shattered those sen-
timental feelings I once had for the
song. All I could notice was the drum-
mer's nice pink glittered shirt and the
band's stunning double knit pants.
The second encore was "Keep That
Same Old Feeling", a popular Crusader
song. The audience was dancing and
the place was shaking.
Trying to judge this performance
could be difficult depending on what
you judge it as. To a jazz enthusiast it
was a disappointing concert. But to the
rock and rolliig disco kings and queens
it was a very good concert.


commercial.
THE CRUSADERS were one of the
first bands to supple a bridge for me to
jazz, when I heard Carole King's "So
Far Away" performed on their live
album. The band lives in L.A. and their
sound is very characteristic of the
Hollywood pop jazz style, made
somewhat popular by Tom Scott and
the L.A. Express (Starsky and Hutch).
Joe Sample, the Crusader's piano
player and one of the original founders
of the Jazz Crusaders in 1953, spoke of
the work he has done with artists such
as Joni Mitchell and Tom Scott and
said, "I have to learn to. interpret
another person's music; in doing that it
just broadens my scope". One wonders
if there isn't more to it than just
broadening his scope.
After the third cut, tenor saxophonist
Wilton Felder announced that the next
cut was going to be "something with a
little more feeling." Expecting to hear
the band take a step towards jazz, the
band just became funkier. This funk in-
fluence was found in bass player Robert
Popwell, who utilized his whole hand in
a wild fashion to hit the notes that give
this band so much punch.
LISTENING TO an earlier Jazz
Crusader album, you wouldn't even
think it was the same group. The Jazz
Crusaders once had such notables as
Wayne Henderson, Joe Sample, Hubert
Laws, Wilton Felder,, Joe..Pass and.
Monk Montgomery playing for them.
By the 70's the group dropped the
"jazz" part of their title stating they
felt it was "misleading to what they
were doing". The Cruaders reside in
L.A. and when asked about the idea of
living in New York, Sample replied,
"The New York scene, I couldn't
make."
One of the most interesting gimmicks
r, presented by saxophonist Wilton Felder
g. was his usage of a portable mixer to
as change the texture of his saxophone.
nd Eventually, Felder turned on his
a automatic wah-wah, converting the
ec- saxophone into a funk instrument. As
th usual this cut ended with a snazzy
nd guitar lick by Billy Rogers.
nd By the time the show was through I
er- felt the band was quite sloppy, and had
ks demonstrated what a commercial jazz
sell out band was all about. The crowd

Doily Photo by PETER SERLING
Saxophonist Wilton Felder and the Crusaders appeared at Second Chance
Thursday evening.

'Direction'Ensemble'mediocre

By JEFFREY QUICK
THE CONTEMPORARY Directions
Ensemble of the School of Music
played their first concert of the
semester Thursday night at Rackham.
The program consisted of three works
by University Alumni and two neglec-
ted pieces by masters of the earlier part
of this century, both of which involved
the human voice.
Comtemporary Directions Ensemble
ftrkhwos lurhrIrorii,,,
February 23. 1978
In Memoriam Dylan Thomas ... Igor Stravinsky
C'anzonni, Overo Sonate
C(oncertare............Paul Martin Zonn
"Hin Und zuruck" ...........Paul Hindemith
... From Behind the
Unreasoning Mask..."....Roger Reynolds
Quintet....................... Gerald Humel
Stephen Osmond,
Eric Hansen., ,',,,,,,,gn,.ir,,. rr
Igor Stravinsky's In Memoriam
Dylan Thomas was written in 1954, then
the composer was just beginning to ex-
periment with the serial procedures
which characterize his last decade of
creativity. It is a setting of Thomas' Do
not go gentle into that good night for
tenor and string quartet, flanked by an-
tiphonal dirgecanons for the quartet
and four trombones. The entire piece is
constructed from a five-tone row, which
explains the difficulty of the voice part.
Tenor David Parks was more than
equal to the challenge. Not only was his
pitch accuracy at least as good as any
performance on record, but his diction
was crystal-clear, a crucial factor in
this piece, since Stravinsky did not
always respect the accentuation of the
English language. Unfortunately the
instrumentalists were not equally
skilled. The first violin in particular
was sloppy in intonation, and but-

chered the last harmonic.
PAUL MARTIN ZONN teaches at the
University of Illinois. His Canzonni,
overo Sonate Concertare Conserere for
oboe and eight players (1974) featured
another gifted soloist, Cynthia Green.
This work is basically a concerto ac-
companied by two merging quartets, a
slightly jazz-tinged one of brass and
percussion, and a softer group suppor-
ting the oboe. While mostly strictly
notated there are several im-
provisational passages. Green seemed
to be reading these from a separate
sheet, which may account for their ef-
fectiveness. While perhaps a bit ram-
bling, it is an attractive, nostalgic
work.
Paul Hindemith's chamber opera Hin
und Zuruck (Away and Back) was writ-
ten in 1931. It is pure corn-and I loved
every minute of it. To the accom-
paniment of a small band of winds and
pianos, a jealous man kills a woman,
then jumps out of a window. God
(David Parks) appears, mourns that
men kill for such trivial reasons, and
decides to give the couple another.
chance. Then the drama is repeated in
retrograde, with characters moving
backward to the appropriate music.
ONE DIFFICULTY with this per-

formance was that the singers were of-
ten drowned out by the instruments.
Nancy Knote Evenson (Helene, the
slain woman) in particular had a weak
voice. Still, enough of the dialogue
came across to make the performance
convincing.
There may have been good practical
reasons for putting the large-scale
numbers on the first half of the
program, but the'effect was poor, since
the works after the intermission were
inferior to those before, though the per-
formance was good.
". ..FROM BEHIND the
Unreasoning Mask . . ." (1977) by
Roger Reynolds is a concerto for trom-
bone and two percussionists versus
tape. It contains the stylistic stencils of
these instruments (bowed
metallophones, singing trombonists)
but at first succeeds in making an im-
pressive musical ritual out of them. Un-
fortunately the piece is at least twice as
long as it should be.
Gerald Humel received his masters
in composition here, then spent the next
eighteen years in Germany. His Quintet
(1977) for flute, oboe, cello, and harp
divides into clear phrases and ends with
a blatant recapitulation, both traits
which I am all in favor of. I was less
impressed with the musical materials:
scalar ostinati, nervous string
ejaculations, and consistent dissonan-
ce. While there were nice moments, the
piece as a whole did not interest me.
But perhaps I was missing some
necessary, information. There were no
program notes. A mob can be provided
with information on a warhorse like the
Tchaikovsky Fourth, but a pitifully
small audience is given no help in com-
prehending unfamiliar a'id difficult
music. The result may be that audien-
ces may become yet smaller, an in-
tolerable situation for living compos-
ers. Music school, are you listening?

'Composers Seies'
'culturally interesting

By JEFFREY QUICK
COLUMBIA'S BLACK Composers
Series has presented obscure but
interesting works from the Classic
period to our own; but has dwelt most
heavil on contemporary music. The
three orchestral pieces on this ninth
volume have much in common. They
were commissioned from three Univer-'
Black Composers Series Volume 9
George Walker, Adophus C. lailstork, hale Smith.
Detroit Symphony Orchestra
Columbia M 34556
sity professors in the years 1974-5. More
to the point, this is all dramatic blood-
and-guts music, a welcome change
from the emotional constipation which
has afflicted too much white music
from 50's serialism to 70's minimalism.
George Walker, professor of piano
and composition at Rutgers University
and Peabody Institute, is the oldest of
the composers represented. He wrote
his Piano Concerto under the patronage
of the National Endowment for the Arts
in 1975 for pianist Natalie Hinderas.
Formally, it is quite traditional, con-
sisting of a sonata-like first movement
(complete with cadenza), a lyrical
movement in rounded-ternary form,
and a rondo finale. Yet the music is non-
tonal, with the interval of the second
playing a great role in unifying the
movements. Clangorous, motoric piano
writing is often contrasted with lyrical
orchestral statements, and one wishes
for a cessation of warfare in the elegaic
second movement, a tribute to Duke
Ellington in a style unrelated to his. The
situation is not helped by Hinderas'
harsh attacks. Still, there are many in-
teresting things in this solidly-
constructed piece , (including, unfor-
tunately, a gut-wrenching fluctuation of
pitch in the finale, which I can only at-
tribute to taoe roblems.)

Music Fund commission, is Ion
more diffuse, but also more interes
Its composer, Hale Smith (b. 1925)
had extensive experience in jazz
music publishing, and is nom
professor at the University of Con
ticut. This dark work is filled
meandering solos for woodwinds
tuba, high violin filigree passages,
an insistent concertante use of
cussion. The loud ending 1
inevitability, but aside from that th
quite an engaging piece.
This is the second recording
Freeman, Conductor-in-Residence,
made with the Detroit Symph
(Volume 4, Roque Codero's Violin1
certo, was the first the ensemble r
ded since the end of the Paray er
1962). While conducting, wind, and
cussion playing are of high caliber,
high violin passages are wavery ar
dubious intonation. While thisi
recording worth hearing, it is prob
not worth buying unless one ha
special interest in Black culture.

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,,.t ,

DONT GET CAUGHR UNDER A RAIN CLOUD-
ADVERTISE YOUR SUMMER SUBLET NOW!

A giraffe's elongated neck has only
seven vertebrae - the same number
as man's. But each one in the giraffe
is eight inches long. The animal also
has oversize lungs to compensate for
all of the dead air space in that long
throat.
:Wft26

4

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