Also this issue: Downbeat The Mellon Jazz Festival has a new focus -- and not everyone is pleased. By Nate Chinen -Nate Chinen Go Out! -Nate Chinen

June 20-26, 2002

cover story

Street Crossings

Joe Lovano and Enrico Caruso: Two for the road.

By Nate Chinen

On a recent weeknight in midtown Manhattan, Joe Lovano picked up a horn and, without pomp or preamble, began to play. The sound of his tenor saxophone, a cappella, was somehow both gruff and gentle, imploring and resolute. Then the six-piece ensemble behind him joined in, describing a minor-key theme that, after a few moments of shapelessness, bloomed into a springlike jazz waltz. Lovano overlaid this canvas with feathery splashes of color. The song, originally a frenetic folk exercise called “Tarantella Sincera,” had been transmuted into something intimate and luminous — less “Tarantella” and more “Sincera,” if you will.

Lovano was debuting his Street Band, and the new album that bears its interpretive stamp. Viva Caruso (Blue Note), as its title suggests, is a tribute to Enrico Caruso, the great Italian tenor of the early 20th century. Lovano, one of the great Italian tenors of the 21st, approaches the Caruso legacy with deep reverence but no anxieties of influence; his salute seems less like a repertory project than a modern appreciation. As on his 1996 album Celebrating Sinatra (Blue Note), Lovano employs a range of instrumental groupings and a host of inventive arrangements, effectively recasting a familiar repertoire into something new. This was as true at the Iridium Jazz Club, during the second night of a weeklong engagement, as it is on disc.

Relaxing in a dressing room after the evening’s first set, Lovano spoke in a manner strongly evocative of his playing: eloquently, in cadences of varying length and with a warm, animated tone of voice. “He lived in Times Square,” the tenor saxophonist said of his operatic precursor, gesturing in the direction of Broadway as if the singer might still be loitering outside. “All my grandparents came from Sicily, and they came to the States at the same time: around 1906, 1912 to 1913. Caruso was their idol. I mean, he came from their country. And he was really the first major superstar in music internationally, the first real recording artist that everybody heard. And [he] was a real passionate, amazing character. Not only a great singer -- just his personality as an actor, his stage presence, his whole life was something else. He was 48 when he died, in 1921. So he was a young cat. And he lived in New York almost 20 years. So just knowing that, learning that -- man, that turned me on to a whole thing, with my imagination.”

What Lovano ended up imagining was an almost cinematic odyssey through Caruso’s era -- focusing not on the operatic arias that brought him fame, but rather the melodies that endeared him to the hearts of the public. This was a conscious decision, Lovano explained: “As a saxophone player, my whole life has been about interpretation of songs. I didn’t learn from a book of patterns, I started out learning songs. So every melody that I play, or try to learn and memorize and internalize -- especially ones that you love -- they vibrate in your body, you know. And to play, like, ‘Vesti La Giubba’ or some of these songs that we’re playing, the melodies are so beautiful and exotic that they have a life of their own.” He added: “Now, for you to play with interpretation and shape and then put your personality in on that, from where you’ve been -- in my case, playing with all kinds of bands, growing up with soul music and blues and bebop -- the combination of those things, you could put anything together. It’s all there.”

Lovano’s curriculum vitae does resemble a melting pot of settings and styles; the Cleveland-bred saxophonist has served apprenticeships with groove merchants (Jack McDuff and Lonnie Smith), big bands (led by Woody Herman and Mel Lewis) and elder statesmen (Elvin Jones and Bob Brookmeyer, among others). He has worked just as memorably with his peers (fellow Berklee alums John Scofield, Kenny Werner and Bill Frisell) and as his own man (there are no clinkers among his 13 Blue Note albums, and a few of them are nearly classic). But as regards the Street Band, Lovano cites two specific and formative influences.

“I was in Carla Bley’s band in 1983,” he recalled backstage. “There were two saxophones, a trombone, two trumpets, a tuba, a French horn. And we played all kinds of wild music, man, Carla’s music. Some amazing things. Real folk-sounding music. We sounded like a street band with horns -- the Salvation Army band or something. And I also played in Charlie Haden Liberation Orchestra with Don Cherry and Dewey Redman and Paul Motian.… So doing a project like this, I wanted to really tap into where I’ve been and the cats that have influenced me, and some of the bands I’ve been in.” He shrugs. “I’m going to deal with Caruso? Shit, how am I going to do that? Well, I did it by really trying to get to the street, organic, free place with it all.”

At the Iridium, the Street Band bore out this point, its unusual instrumentation (drums, two basses, tenor, clarinet, accordion and voice) maintaining a rollicking pulse. Viva Caruso sounds, at times, much more polished. But there’s a gritty quality to several of the tracks -- most obviously, the original composition “Il Carnivale di Pulcinella,” which opens as a percussive folk dance, briefly dwells in ruminative melancholy and culminates in orgiastic cacophony. In concert, the vibe was loose and improvisational, as Lovano -- looking the part of Rodolfo in La Bohème -- conducted through his horn. His subtly heartrending “I Pagliacci” hung in the air like a whisper, spoken, before fading into silence and rapt applause.

Sun., June 23, 7 and 9 p.m., $25, Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St., 215-925-9914.