Jeff Berlin Trio with Dennis Chambers on the drums and Jorge Vera (jazz viruoso from Chile) on the piano. Amazing jazz venue “Porgy & Bess Jazz & Music Club” on 06 September, 2024.
Photos later used by Mr. Jeff Berlin as promotional materials for the tour and for social media use, with permission.
What do you even write when Jeff Berlin asks you to write a review of his show — besides “it was UNBELIEVABLY AMAZING”?.. Well, you still write the review and try not to overuse superlatives. So here we go, Jeff Berlin Trio, live at “Porgy & Bess Jazz & Music Club” on a hot night of September 06, 2024 — a long personal review.
I’ve been following Jeff Berlin’s music career and online educational posts for years and I went to Vienna from Hamburg specifically to see and photograph the show. My first time seeing him play live. I’ve already seen Dennis Chambers live twice — both times with Mike Stern — and I had no idea what to expect of Jorge Vera, a Chilean virtuoso jazz pianist.
After one particularly loud fusion show I once attended (Guthrie Govan, I’m looking at you!), I don’t even leave my house without a pair of earplugs. Especially when I’m photographing a show. This time, my earplugs stayed in my back pocket as the sound at “Porgy & Bess” was a perfectly balanced mix with no instruments overpowering the others even though (when I was not roaming the venue looking for a different vantage point), I was sitting next to the drum kit. The old joke for keyboard players “Stay off those left-side keys, we’ve got a bass player!” did not apply.
In Mr. Berlin’s own words, he’s been practicing for 18 months for this tour. I’d say, the more accurate number here is “whole life and the last 18 months in particular” because as a bass player myself, I saw the insanely intricate lines and harmonic ideas delivered so smoothly and flowingly like it was a piece of cake to play those runs (and trust me, it is NOT a piece of cake at all!).
That’s the thing — when someone has spent so much time practicing his craft, what you see and hear seems to be so easy to do and replicate. And maybe that’s the beauty of it — you get back to practice thinking “Jeff Berlin made this thing look pretty straightforward! Let me try to replicate it!” — and probably that’s how the spark of inspiration is carried forward, as you then keep trying and failing, trying and failing, and then finally getting to some semblance of the trick you saw played, that satisfies your inner critic for a moment.
By the way, there were not many flashy “tricks” at this show but more subtle “if you know — you know” ones — some insanely intricate parts and harmonic resolutions that you cannot just pull off on the spot randomly — it takes a lifetime to get to THAT level. I’m still absolutely floored. This actually applies to the whole band — with all three musicians being virtuosos of the highest level imaginable, no one tried to outdo the others or stick out. A perfect balance here, too.
The setlist featured some completely new as well as some old tunes – for instance, a moving tribute to Chick Corea’s “Desert Air” and a mind-blowing rendition of Liszt’s reduction of the 3rd movement of Beethoven’s 3rd symphony – I swear, I was stunned by that rendition, I did not take a single photo during that piece because it felt like the click of the shutter would be a sacrilegious noise to emit while real magic was happening before my eyes and ears. Mr. Jorge Vera tackled an overwhelming task of adapting the piece to the context of a jazz piano within a jazz/fusion trio!
Speaking of the setlist — I could not keep my mouth shut when I heard the rhetorical “What should we play next?” and shouted “Freebird!”. Yes, yes, I know I’m a moron but that seemed like a fun thing to do at the moment, and, as it turned out, no one has ever requested “Freebird” in Europe before.
More sophisticated jokes did have their place during the show — having seen Mr. Chambers play before, I was waiting for a moment he’d spice it up somehow, and my patience was rewarded. In a shuffle-based piece, he suddenly started alternating between a straight disco beat and a shuffle, sometimes doing both in the same measure. Jeff Berlin and Jorge Vera would just continue to play without skipping a beat as if nothing funky was going on in the drum part. At one point, when Jeff Berlin decided to take the disco beat cue after all and switched up for a second, Dennis Chambers instantly went back to playing shuffle, ha!
This was a perfect show and I’m very happy I decided to fly to Vienna to see and hear it.
And to photograph it, too.
P.S. After the show, I asked Mr. Berlin to sign my print-out of the circle of fifth I use as a guide for my scale practice. Now I’m getting it laminated and just looking at it would remind me that practice DOES make you perfect.
#KRNPIX 