It’s shows like these that should make you contact the Jazz Bakery and make a donation to speed up the construction of the new site, as only Ruth Price could get together a show so intimate, so wondrous and so penetratingly cutting to the marrow of jazz. Titled “The Roots of the Blues” after their recent release on Sunnyside Records, the 90 minute show delivered by legendary pianist Randy Weston and tenor saxist Billy Harper went to the very beginnings of America’s classical music, 
which, as it is said in our Constitution, “Nature, and Nature’s God.” As MC Bubba Jackson stated as he introduced the artists, “the only difference between blues and gospel is that one says “baby,” and the other says “God.” This evening the artists mixed the two, with, as the song says “an emphasis on the latter.”
The opening material set the tone, as Weston’s basketball-palming hands toyed with the piano ivories on the thundering “Blues to Africa” while Harper’s tenor cried into the night like a howling coyote. Weston’s classic “Hi Fly” was taken inside and out like the flutter of wings during the explorative intro before Harper bounced back the melody like a chirping raven claiming its territory.
Harper then went solo and reached back into the world of field hollers with low sub-tones that reached into and grabbed your viscera on a riveting “If One Could Only See,” followed by Weston delivering a history of jazz solo piano from stride to swing to bop and beyond with his encyclopedic hands on “Little Niles.” Rumbling piano notes that gurgled like the La Brea Tar pits served as a foundation for Harper’s aching long note on “Berkshire Blues” before “Blue Horses” created a mysterious sunrise and sunset of colors, shadows and sounds. By the time of the encore with the closing “Mystery Cove,” Weston demonstrated what he had mentioned at the beginning of the concert, that “we can’t touch music, but it touches us.” There wasn’t an affected soul in the house on the astonishingly beautiful night.
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