Piano women

Earthwise Productions is a labor of love run by local Palo Alto impresario Mark Weiss. Mr. Weiss has fantastic connections in the jazz and indie music world, but rather limited marketing skills. Or maybe there is not an audience for first-rate, sometimes edgy improvisers in sleepy, tech-y Palo Alto. 

Last Friday's show at the Mitchell Park Community Center was a case in point. An audience of– generously– 20 listened to two sets: Marta Sanchez on solo prepared piano, and the piano-clarinet duo of Myra Melford and Ben Goldberg.

Sanchez was performing a multi-day mini-residency with Earthwise, apparently preparing for a recording of the pieces she was performing. I knew of Sanchez as the pianist in David Murray's current quartet. Murray is the best jazz musician alive (sez me!), and he has very good taste in pianists (e.g., the late great Don Pullen), so I was definitely looking forward to Sanchez. Well, she is clearly talented, but the solo pieces came off a bit noodly, and the prepared piano was not really prepared enough: the hardware under the hood seemed mostly to have the effect of distorting the tuning of a few notes toward the middle of the keyboard, and adding some weak buzzes up top. I was not sure what the point of it was, really. 

Myra Melford I have heard many times, and she is simply one of the great jazz pianists of her generation. The set with Goldberg, who is an excellent player but a bit reserved for my tastes, was fine, but over-composed. Need I say that my favorite piece of the evening allowed Myra to stretch out, banging and whipping at the keyboard with the knuckled glissando that she learned, I believe, from none other than the aforementioned Don Pullen?

Keep up the good work, Mark; and all you Palo Altans, get your asses out to support live music!