If you’re looking for a house-rocking, soul-drenched, exuberantly emotional concert, the place to be is Collinsville’s Bridge Street Live on Thursday, December 18, as blues master James Montgomeryand his super blues band jam with the skyrocketing, young jazz saxophonist Grace Kelly in a funk-filled funfest.
At first glimpse, the Montgomery/Kelly alliance might seem rather unlikely, an unfortunate mismatch of a musical odd couple separated by a yawning age gap of four decades and by their passionate devotion to their individual genres that have brought them much-merited fame and critical acclaim.
James Montgomery and Grace Kelly bring it on home with their rocking, hard-core blues.
Montgomery, a premier 65-year-old blues harp (harmonica) player and singer/songwriter, learned his craft directly from such god-like blues legends as James Cotton. In dramatic contrast, Kelly, who’s only 22, has been tutored by such venerated modern jazz gurus and high-priest purists as the iconic alto saxophonists Lee Konitz and Phil Woods.
Don’t think for a minute, however, that anything as inconsequential as the so-called “generation gap” or Kelly’s conversion from a true believer in jazz to a blues disciple that night will make any difference to maestro Montgomery, his high-energy band, and Kelly as they take the stage at 7:00 pm and bring it on home with their rocking, hard-core blues. Kelly, whose first love as a child prodigy was the silken, voluptuous sound of Stan Getz’s tenor saxophone, is right at home getting down and dirty with the nitty-gritty blues, Montgomery said by phone from his home in Newport, Rhode Island.
“When Grace is soloing with the band grooving behind her, she’s all intensity and concentration. She gets down, bending into this little ball on stage, crouching over as she digs into the blues with such deep feeling, playing this soulful stuff while the audience is going crazy,” Montgomery said of how a Kelly chorus unfolds with passionate drama over the traditional blues chord changes.
“Whenever we do the blues show with Grace,” Montgomery said, “we generally get three or four and in some cases more full-house, standing ovations by the middle of the set. What I mean to suggest is that when Grace plays, she really reaches deep, and is improvising in a whole different style from her jazz playing. When you’re playing jazz,there’s a different kind of feel and vibe from when you’re jamming the blues. I think it’s fun for her to just play this kind of music that we do because there’s nothing fancy or complicated about it. You just go out there and spill your guts.”
"I thought, 'Wow, she plays, she sings. What could be better than this?'"
James Montgomery
Montgomery not only collaborates periodically with the globe-trotting Kelly, but, even aside from his role as her personal blues guru, has also opened the door for her to perform with a variety of top-shelf blues players and other pop music luminaries as well, including Huey Lewis.
The veteran blues man and noted bandleader, who has performed and/or recorded with a legion of celebrated artists from the Allman Brothers to Johnny Winter, first heard of Kelly when she was 12. He didn’t begin presenting the jazz prodigy on the blues circuit until she reached the ripe old age of 14. A lawyer friend, who was raving one day about a then unknown, 12-year-old saxophonist from Brookline, Massachusetts, urged Montgomery to check out Kelly’s appearance that night at Scullers, a premier jazz club in Boston.
“I had two seats that night right in front of the stage in the best jazz room in New England, and this charismatic 12-year-old is playing a song, and I’m thinking Stan Getz. She’s 12, but she sounds like a seasoned, 50-year-old jazz musician. ‘What could be better than this?’ I thought to myself,” Montgomery said. “Then Grace sings ‘Fly Me to the Moon,’ and sounds like she’s somewhere, in terms of experience, between Joe Williams and Tony Bennett. Every note was right where it should be. Again, I thought, ‘Wow, she plays, she sings. What could be better than this?’ And then this 12-year-old said, ‘Here’s something I wrote.’ Then she sits down at the piano and sings and plays an original song that blows me away.”
By the time Kelly was 13 or 14 and already making waves in the jazz world as a wunderkind saxophonist, Montgomery said, someone suggested to her that she also extend her wings into the blues, the longtime, fundamental building block in American popular music, including jazz. One of the greatest, soul-shattering, celebratory blues players of the 20th century was Charlie “Bird” Parker, one of Kelly’s inspirations for both jazz and blues. Although Bird was the fabled king of bebop and a modern jazz giant, his alto saxophone solos, for all their signature modernism, could sear with the deepest blues passions of ecstatic joy or keening woe.
When Kelly turned 14 -- and with the seal of approval from his band members who were impressed by the teenage girl’s already impressive blues bona fides -- Montgomery began presenting his new blues protégé in concert with his band. At the same time, he opened the door for collaborations with other blues royalty.
With all his recording and performing creds and numerous influential blues and pop music pals, ranging from Steven Tyler of Aerosmith to James Belushi of The Blues Brothers Band, Montgomery was a natural guru, even by temperament, which includes a good sense of humor and complete and devout commitment to the music.
Perhaps the Detroit native was even more empathetic than most since he himself had many excellent older teachers and role models right from the beginning when, as a young man, he’d jam with such blues patriarchs as Cotton, John Lee Hooker and Junior Wells. Another early inspiration for Montgomery, a self-taught blues harpist, was the great Paul Butterfield, who also gave the aspiring bluesman encouragement early on.
Along with his increasing success as a performer, bandleader and songwriter, Montgomery, in a natural seeming progression, has also assumed the role of effective mentor. Among other apprentices, he’s mentored such then young, rising talents as Susan Tedeschi, beginning when she was 14, and Norah Jones, who started singing with him when she was 17.
Kelly, who’s played everywhere from Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in London to Carnegie Hall in Manhattan, is constantly touring, including a gig later this month with the celebrated folk singer/songwriter Tom Rush with the Boston Pops Orchestra at Boston’s Symphony Hall.
A one-woman whirlwind and jazz and blues paladin who has saxophone and will travel, she’s hard to catch up with. But we did connect with her last week after she flew in to Kennedy International from Boise, Idaho, where she had presented a master class and a concert. Her father, Robert Kelly, who also doubles as her manager, picked her up at the airport in Queens and was driving her to her next engagement at the prestigious Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village.
"I always want to know the words to a song. I want to know what I'm playing about. It's a source of inspiration for me."
Grace Kelly
Speaking on her cell phone as her dad does the chauffeuring duties, she raves about her blues experience, about the opportunity it has provided for working with and learning from blues greats and how much that has affected her jazz playing.
“What I love about the blues is that it’s great to be able to kick back and really focus more on the feeling and the rhythm and the dynamics. I think the blues is coming from such a soulful base in one’s spirit that that’s how it connects with me,” Kelly said. “I’m so lucky to have been mentored by both Jameses (Montgomery and Cotton). It’s always so much fun playing, and always just an incredible feeling at the end of the night after I’ve been performing with either one of them or with Huey Lewis. It’s like, oh, my soul feels happy.”
Besides the sheer joy of playing the blues in big league blues company, it’s given Kelly a different perspective on her jazz soloing.
“What I’ve learned from playing blues has been about the pacing of solos. Because you’re playing live, there always has to be an arc to the solo. When you’re with the Jameses, you start soft and build and build and build, while you’re also basically leading the band. I’ve been able to bring that approach to my jazz playing and make my solos so much more interesting and bring more shape to them. It’s kind of like the difference between two-dimensional and three-dimensional,” Kelly said.
Increasingly, Kelly’s musical interests, which were always diverse, span across many genres, including jazz and blues, folk, rhythm and blues, soul, funk and pop-- stylistic transitions that she makes easily and, quite literally, with amazing grace.
“That’s another great thing about the blues: everything came from the blues. The father of all this,” she said of the many genres she embraces, “is blues music.”
Another key element in her approach to soloing, she said, is her awareness of a song’s lyrics, an extra piece of verbal knowledge that, perhaps in an unconscious or emotional way, helps her create solos that tell a story, a catalyst for her improvised narratives accented by pacing, feeling and the personal signature of her creativity.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s blues or jazz,” Kelly said of the bond between the lyrics and the music. “I always want to know the words to a song. I want to know what I’m playing about. It’s a source of inspiration for me,” said Kelly, a word-sensitive musician who writes both the words and the music for her original songs.
Asked about her wide-ranging taste and uncanny ability to play fluently in multiple genres, she points to the advantage of having grown up in a home with a diverse soundtrack that included jazz (her mother especially loved Stan Getz recordings) as well as other genres.
“My ears were naturally soaking up all sorts of stuff. And I like being a chameleon. I like being put in a new situation and being able to stand on my own two feet. I’ve always been interested in listening to a wide variety of musical styles. I enjoy good music, whatever that may be.”
While her career has soared, Kelly’s ego has not swollen, avoiding a not uncommon affliction among young stars who ascend at such dizzying speed while falling madly in love with their glitter. Not so with the modest, level-headed Kelly, as attested to by her father/manager who’s driving her from Kennedy to the Blue Note. In fact, she’s so unaffected, naturally upbeat, gracious, un-divalike and downright courteous that you can’t believe this same person can dig so deep and with such raw feeling and bold, candid expression into the subterranean depths of the blues.
“I’m just grateful that I’ve gotten to do what I love to do and been able to make a career out of it,” Kelly said, modestly reflecting on her success.
“I never stop to think and gloat about what I’ve done. I’m always looking forward because there are so many other things that I want to do, and so many people I want to reach. I feel proud of the things that I’ve done, but also very lucky. I’m always looking ahead to see what’s coming up next.”
The James Montgomery Band and its special guest, Grace Kelly, perform at 7:00 pm on Thursday, December 18, at Bridge Street Live, 41 Bridge Street, Collinsville. Admission: $25.00, $35.00. Information: 41bridgestreet.comand (860) 693-9762.
You Can Go Home Again
Miro Sprague, a rising, young pianist/composer who grew up in Western Massachusetts, leads his trio at 7:30 pm on Friday, December 19, as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares continues its season at the Arts Block Café, 289 Main Street, Greenfield, Massachusetts.
As a high school student, Sprague was already winning Downbeat Magazine’s Student Music Awards and performing throughout New England, signs of things to come for the young talent. After graduating from high school, he took the giant step to New York City to attend Manhattan School of Music where his teachers included Jason Moranand Gary Dial.
A recent graduate of the prestigious Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at UCLA, Sprague has performed with Greg Osby, Matt Wilson and Anat Cohen, among others.
For his return appearance to the Pioneer Valley, Sprague’s trio mates are the sensational young bassist, Linda Oh, and drummer Mark Ferber, who has performed with artists ranging from Lee Konitz to Norah Jones. Tickets: $15.00, available at jazzshares.org and at the door.
Keyboard Crème de la Crème
Jen Allen andNoah Baerman, among the crème de la crème of Connecticut’s consummate keyboardists, celebrate the publication of their co-authored instructional book, Sitting In: Jazz Piano (Alfred Publishing Co.), as they perform with their group, Trio 149, at 3:00 pm on Sunday, December 21, at Middletown’s Buttonwood Tree, 605 Main Street. The trio, which is making its Connecticut debut, features Allen on piano, Baerman on synthesizer and organ, and Jonathan Barber on drums. Suggested donation: $10.00. Information: (860) 347-4957.
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Tess Aaronson contributed to this post.
