Orville Hammond concert delights audience

Michael Reckord, Gleaner Writer

Internationally acclaimed Jamaican jazzman Orville Hammond was introduced to an audience at the Edna Manley College School of Music on Sunday as "an extremely good music teacher".

The introducer, School of Music Director Roger Williams, went on to promise that the evening's concert, titled 'One plus Two' would be "quite a treat".

The promise was fulfilled. Hammond on piano, with the assistance of his bassist, Rolando Brown, and percussionist, Obed Davis, thoroughly entertained the jazz enthusiasts in the school's Vera Moody Concert Hall for two hours (including intermission) and, judging from the applause and post-concert comments, the audience left the venue satisfied.

Many left knowing Hammond to be not only a good teacher, but also an excellent pianist and composer, as several of the dozen or so pieces making up the programme were original Hammond compositions. Curious as to which activity he preferred, The Gleaner asked the musician after the concert.

He was at the time in the centre of a group of people, including his parents, who were congratulating him on his performance. All waited as he pondered the question for a moment then said, "If I had to choose, I would choose performing."

Fortunately, he does not have to choose; which is just as well, since he also revealed that he needed to continue adding to his repertoire of original work in order to get his doctorate.

Greeting his audience with a nod and a smile, Hammond began the concert with the lively It Could Happen to You. He identified it as "one of the great jazz standards," before going on to play a contrasting piece, his own slower, meditative number Around Noon.

Hammond suggested that the third piece, Sugarloaf at Twilight, was "reminiscent of Rio". The name refers to the famous Sugarloaf Mountain, a peak situated in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the mouth of Guanabara Bay on a peninsula sticking out into the Atlantic Ocean; and the serene melody of the piece, atop the bossa nova beat, certainly evoked the mood of twilight.

Though he admitted that he did not listen to the music of The Beatles when he was growing up, Hammond seems to have developed a liking for their music, for he twinned a Beatles song, Here There and Everywhere, with one of Bob Marley's most popular pieces, Redemption Song, in a well-received medley.

After the lightning-fast Thelonious Monk tune Well You Needn't, Hammond closed the first half of the programme with another well-known standard, All The Things You Are. Teasing the audience, Hammond began the piece with an extended improvisation and did not begin to play the melody until close to the end. Laughter rippled through the patrons when they recognised the tune.

Compositions

The second part of the evening began with Hammond's Caribbean Suite, a composition in three movements, One, North Coast Sojourn and Jamboree. The first tune has a lively mento rhythm, the second is gentle and brings to mind a drive through a quiet countryside (and in fact was inspired, said Hammond, by his frequent trips from Kingston to the north coast). As the name suggests, Jamboree is a lively, dance-inciting tune.

Hammond's next original work, Cerasee, was, he laughingly told his audience, based on the popular song Tea for Two. He added, "But I hope it doesn't sound like it." In fact Cerasee does not, though its melody is equally catchy.

Another original, Evening Shores, a samba written right after Hammond returned from a tour of Brazil, brought the concert to an end in an upbeat mood - and with a standing ovation.