Kyle Eastwood Quintet

May 21, 2015

Kyle EastwodIn his recent show at Blue Note, Kyle Eastwood proved that when it comes to instrumental jazz, paternity and osmosis can provide a solid foundation for adventurism and variety, as well as tradition. The eldest child of Clint Eastwood, Kyle literally learned the genre from his father, and went on to work for him as a film score composer (Mystic River, Million Dollar Baby), conductor and arranger, as well as a bass player. Kyle also learned from his mother, a jazz pianist and jazz fan; both parents took him to several Monterey Jazz Festivals before he was ten. As if to establish this very early parental influence, the Kyle Eastwood Quintet offered an instrumental version of “Big Noise from Winnetka” (Bob Haggart, Ray Bauduc, Bob Crosby, Gil Rodin). In it, Eastwood not only replicated composer Haggart’s bass playing on the original Bob Crosby orchestra version, recorded in 1938, he closely mirrored Haggart’s opening train whistles. The quintet’s drummer, Joe Strasser, also paid tribute to co-composer Bauduc’s percussion on that record. Eastwood explained that he had first heard the song “when I was a young kid, on a scratchy 78 my father had.” This version neatly morphed into his own hard-driving be-bop “Bullet Train.”

This mashup served to introduce the remaining members of Eastwood’s American touring combo: trumpeter Alex Norris, saxophonist Jason Rigby, and pianist Richard Germanson), solid soloists all, who interact beautifully. (Eastwood, who lives in Paris, has a different, British-based foursome beside him on European tours and in the recording studio, but sometimes it’s hard to tell his two ensembles apart.) Norris’s trumpet stood out, not surprisingly, on Eastwood’s engaging “Song for Trumpet,” and on a lickety-split “Blowin’ the Blues Away” (Horace Silver). The latter paid tribute to Silver, the composer and pianist who died last year, and whose hard bop style heavily influenced Eastwood. A second number from the hard-bop era was the slightly calmer “Dolphin Dance” (Herbie Hancock), on which pianist Germanson came into his own.

No vocals emerged in this set, and none was needed. Eastwood, who played the double bass and electric bass in about equal measure, sat down with both instruments for the entire hour-long set. Perhaps this was to better lead and coordinate with his fellow musicians on the somewhat cramped Blue Note Stage, and to insure the standing-room-only crowd less cluttered sightlines. Kyle’s own compositions in this set included the slightly moody “Marrakech,” which reflected his fascination with North Africa, and for which he opted for electric bass. Here Strasser and his drums—and bells and cymbals—held sway, with Rigby’s saxophone standing in as snake charmer. From his movie work, Eastwood showcased a scaled-down, one-note-at-a time, possibly zen piece from his Letters from Iwo Jima score (co-written with Michael Stevens), featuring only piano and electric bass. These last two numbers were as close as the group ever got to a ballad.

Blue Note  –  April 3-5

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About the Author

Robert Windeler is the author of 18 books, including biographies of Mary Pickford, Julie Andrews, Shirley Temple, and Burt Lancaster. As a West Coast correspondent for The New York Times and Time magazine, he covered movies, television and music, and he was an arts and entertainment critic for National Public Radio. He has contributed to a variety of other publications, including TV Guide, Architectural Digest, The Sondheim Review, and People, for which he wrote 35 cover stories. He is a graduate of Duke University in English literature and holds a masters in journalism from Columbia, where he studied critical writing with Judith Crist. He has been a theatre critic for Back Stage since 1999, writes reviews for BistroAwards.com, and is a member of The Players and the American Theatre Critics Association.