St. Augustine-raised, St. Augustine-based jazz keyboard master Doug Carn kicked off the nine-concert Jazz Project and Garage Blues series at the Arts Garage in Delray Beach on Saturday night.
And the Florida resident’s quartet delivered an understated performance that combined jazz and blues to raise the venue’s temperature a few degrees on a humid June evening.
Yet any of the 100 or so patrons in the 130-seat facility who thought they knew what to expect were thrown a curve. The 63-year-old Carn is primarily known as an organist who was influenced by Hammond masters like Dr. Lonnie Smith (who appears in this series on June 23), Groove Holmes, Jack McDuff and Jimmy Smith, but on this night, he dazzled only on an acoustic grand piano.
And while former wife Jean Carn was the vocalist who soared on most of the keyboardist’s classic 1970s Black Jazz label recordings, Carn displayed his own deep, expressive singing voice on this night.
A lone instrumental opened each of Carn’s two 50-minute sets. Lee Morgan’s introductory Morgan the Pirate showcased Carn’s classically influenced solos; Jacksonville-based trumpeter Ray Callender’s muscular accompaniment, and a dazzling break by St. Augustine-based drummer Paul Lentz Jr.
Bassist Josh Allen, a University of Miami graduate who now lives in St. Augustine, paced the piece with his anchoring bass line and impressive solo ― all despite having never played with any of his bandmates before.
The pianist started displaying his Joe Williams-influenced vocal chops on Lerner and Loewe’s Almost Like Being in Love. The playful arrangement featured Callender switching to flugelhorn, an animated solo by Allen, and Carn showcasing his entire pianistic range from staccato, Thelonious Monk-like passages to blazing, Art Tatum-inspired runs.
“Wow, I didn’t expect all this,” Carn said afterward to answer the crowd’s zealous applause. “But I certainly hope we’re meeting your expectations.”
Carn then sang a creative interpretation of Hoagy Carmichael’s ballad Skylark. Callender stayed on flugelhorn; Allen soloed by mimicking the vocal melody, and Lentz dropped out late in the piece to allow Carn and Allen to duet.
The keyboardist is also an oboe and multi-reed player, yet he gained most of his notoriety by crafting lyrics to instrumental jazz classics by the likes of John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Bobby Hutcherson, McCoy Tyner and Horace Silver on those 1970s Black Jazz albums. On Hutcherson’s Little B’s Poem, Carn scat-sang during the intro and mimicked notes vocally while he soloed, a la Keith Jarrett. Callender’s trumpet provided conversational counterpoint later on as Carn explained scat-singing in his own terms (“That’s baby talk, but it sounds like jazz to me.”).
For most of the past 30 years, Carn (who studied music at Jacksonville University and Georgia State College during the 1960s) has focused on educating young musicians like the ones he shared the stage with. He took a moment late in the set to explain how much jazz education has changed.
“When I was young, you could get expelled if you got caught even practicing jazz,” Carn said. “Some people think things were good back then, but now you can major in jazz, so I think things have gotten better.”
A bluesy, gospel-tinged version of the standard Bye Bye Blackbird closed the set by featuring Callender’s muted trumpet, Carn’s vocal improvisations (“Delray women are full of jive; show me the way back to 95”), and an accelerando coda.
Most of the crowd stayed for the second set, which opened with an instrumental version of the standard I Hear a Rhapsody that displayed the strengths of the entire quartet. Callender’s intro solo showed why he’s one of North Florida’s rising young trumpeters, and it was more than answered by Carn’s blistering runs. Allen and Lentz then traded eight-bar solos, each one-upping the other before the pair ended the piece by breaking into a quicker Latin-tinged tempo.
Carn played Night and Day to honor a request, and the Cole Porter classic even coaxed a few couples into dancing. Callender and Allen both contributed solos with great dynamics, and Lentz’s brushwork set up Carn’s multiple soloing flourishes.
“I’m going to do another of my quasi-originals,” Carn said to introduce Shorter’s Infant Eyes. “It was my first so-called hit.”
The ballad featured Callender’s expressive flugelhorn once again, plus Lentz impressively switching between brushes, drum sticks and mallets for a dynamic performance that contrasted some of his bombastic moments. Having proven his soloing prowess early, the drummer occasionally seemed to be awaiting his next unaccompanied break as much as playing each tune.
A bluesy version of the Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn gem Satin Doll took the reliable Callender back to trumpet (both muted and unmuted), and again showed Allen’s worth. When Carn plays organ, he often eschews a bassist and holds down the bottom with his own left hand, but this young upright player expertly paced the standard with his walking bass line and contributed a high-register solo that proved a highlight.
The pianist played to the older tourists and Big Apple natives by interpreting Vernon Duke’s ballad Autumn in New York, contributing classical piano passages and a refrain of the modern standard New York, New York before closing with George and Ira Gershwin’s A Foggy Day.
Carn’s vocals and playing transformed the chestnut into a gospel rave-up, complete with Callender’s flugelhorn artistry, Allen’s now-expected brilliance, and the extended solo that Lentz had intermittently seemed to be waiting for.
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The Arts Garage is multidisciplinary arts facility that features a variety of entertainment year-round, and it has improved both its sight lines and sound for its second year. Its large, elevated wooden stage is a distinct visual improvement over a previous makeshift floor stage with movable walls, and the wood also serves to dampen some of the volume in what’s otherwise a very live-sounding room.
The venue’s Garage Blues Series starts on June 16 with a performance by Little Jake Mitchell and the Soul Searchers, followed by Matt “Guitar” Murphy and the Nouveaux Honkies on July 21, and Barrelhouse Chuck with Famous Frank and the Nucklebusters Blues Band on August 18. The Jazz Project Series continues with the Dr. Lonnie Smith Trio on June 23, Oriente
on July 14, Lynne Arriale on July 28, the Duffy Jackson Big Band on August 11, and the Jonathan Kreisberg Quartet on August 25.
Visit www.artsgarage.org for tickets and further information.