The music is, to many people, easily described as meandering and tuneless, and the players often dismissed as joyless, pretentious noodlers, who spend 24 hours a day practising their soulless wibble. Fortunately, the audience last night at the Hub we
re a little more open minded.
Lee Ritenour has a 32-year-old back catalogue, and he began his career even before that, at the age of 16. Now 56 and, despite an armful of awards and honours to his name, he's still relatively unknown in this country. That might be due to the fact that last night was his first ever appearance in Scotland.
No doubt he could have managed a dazzling gig on his own, judging by the few times he played entirely solo, but on this occasion, he chose to surround himself with three other legendary musicians.
Wielding a massive seven-stringed bass guitar, or as Ritenour put it, "a tree", was the mighty Melvin Davis. Not content with simply playing it, Will Kennedy beat the living daylights out of his beefy drum kit. Completing the band was a keyboard player and vocalist Ritenour fans will recognise from his 1976 debut album, Patrice Rushen. If not virtuosos, then surely all are masters of their respective craft.
One of the first tunes in the set couldn't have been more appropriately named. Party Time more or less summed up the mood on stage as the quartet teased and laughed their way through almost two hours of fun and jazz funk.
Jazzers are taught to look at one another when they're playing. There comes a point though, when they barely need to open their eyes, instead feeling their way through the changes. So it was with the Ritenour ensemble as they telepathically stormed their way through a blinding performance.
A tribute to Wes Montgomery, Wes Bound, preceded one of the master's own tunes, Four In Six. Forget Me Not, a vocal piece by Rushen, often used on film soundtracks over the years, had the enraptured audience clapping along to her soulful voice.
All of the tunes featured breathtaking keyboard solos, terrifying bass playing and thunderous fatback percussion, but when the opportunity arose, each one of them demonstrated their enormous dynamic range, playing delicately and pin-drop quietly.
Ritenour himself had an uncanny command of the guitar. Making use of every tonal possibility, regardless of which guitar he used, his vocabulary and ability to respond to the others' highly nuanced performances seemed limitless. Not for nothing have his skills been required for over 3000 session for other projects.
The gig overran, mostly because the band seemed to be having too much fun to want to stop. During the extended intro to the final tune, the title track from his new CD, Smoke N Mirrors, Ritenour could be heard yelling to the other players, "We'd better start playing the tune now" with the grin of a six-year-old boy on his face.
Having had such a great time, neither the guitarist, nor his loudly appreciative audience is likely to want to wait very long for a return visit.
