The hearty fans that braved the 10 degree weather and packed The Dakota Saturday night got musically rewarded with Victor Wooten and his team of Bob DeFranceschini/sax and Joe Collins/dr emitting enough musical heat to warm up the most frigid fingers and mood.
Best known for his work with Bela Fleck and Mike Stern, Wooten used the flexibility of the jazz trio to be able to mix bop lines, funk pulses and mind expanding solos with material from his upcoming album. The opening song mixed frenetic themes with unison lines between Franceschini’s thick toned sax and Wooten’s slippery 6 string bass while Chambers supplied more accents than a Shakespeare sonnet. The second piece carried a Caribbean groove as Wooten’s calypso’d solo conversed back and forth with Franceschini’s free form sax screeched through the rhythmic wave like a long boarder.
A Hitchcockian “The 13th Floor” featured a breathy and bluesy tenor intro while Wooten did some pedal pushing with his bass mixing sounds ranging from a Hammond B3 to a slinky and sinewy synthesizer. The sound effects continued with mysterious sax effects and bass electronic musings on “Zenergy” snapped the theme along as Chambers’ drums delivered a rousing climax that changed dynamics at the flick of a wrist.
The evening highlight was Wooten’s rousing workshop of a bass solo that combined looped bass lines and pulses with “hand is quicker than the eye” experimentations. Never displaying chops and technique for their own sake, Wooten cleared the courtroom with a flame throwing display of melody creativity and tightrope walking without a net, gradually inviting Chambers into the foray as they rumbled to an avalanche of a finale.
The concert ended with Wooten thumb slapping out a Famous Flame funk riff that would have had James Brown boogying at the microphone.
The encore had the group display their other side of the prism, as they freely improvised into a spacey and mystical read of “Footprints” that coalesced deep rhythmic rivulets with soprano sax loops and subliminal messages. For the packed house at The Dakota, Wooten and company put the “POW” back in “Power Trio.”
Upcoming shows at the acoustically adroit Dakota include Gary Burton & Makoto Ozone/03/15, David Sanborn 04/28, John Pizzarelli 04/09 and Lizz Wright 04/20