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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Sunday, July 22, 2001

Concert review
Vocalist's vocalists thrill listeners as jazz festival nears end of run

By Dave Bellino
Special to The Advertiser

The uplifting vocal eloquence of the Four Freshmen opened the third great night of the eighth annual Hawaii International Jazz Festival last night.

Hawaii International Jazz Festival
 •  Parade of Big Bands, 4 p.m. today, McKinley High School auditorium
 •  Tickets: $40, $35, $20. Four-day pass: $120. Call: 591-2211 (Blaisdell), 526-4400 (Ticket Plus) The Advertiser is a sponsor of the jazz festival.
Listening to what the voice can do is joyous. These singers passed chromatically from chord to tightly voiced chord inversions that were spiced sometimes with suspended tones and other times with moving inner voices. Listening to the group, which has been singing in this style for 53 years, many other vocal groups came mind, including The Manhattan Transfer and most of all, the Beach Boys, who were influenced by the Four Freshmen's captivating vocalese.

Several members changed instruments song after song, keeping their sound from becoming static and allowing for instrumental solos to add to the beauty of their work.

Consummate entertainers, they kept the audience attentive throughout. To listeners' amusement, one of the members dedicated a song to his mother. He told how the song reminded him of when she'd tuck him in at night — for his first 27 years — and then launched into "After You've Gone," sung at break-neck speed in all four parts.

These were vocalist's vocalists. And the crowd applauded for them to hana hou.

Next up was The Marvin Stamm Duo, with Marvin Stamm on trumpet/flugelhorn and Bill Mays on keys. In an esoteric set, impression after impression was created. This was especially so in a Mays original called "Jemma's Eyes."

In this piece Mays gracefully skittered across the keyboard. Stamm's solo began softly and chatteringly, gently building and picking up momentum. It was like a conversation between two people out together, each having a full opportunity to express what was in their minds and hearts. There was a trading of ideas as the excitement grew, until they played lines together as if the two characters were discovering each other for the first time — commonalties, hopes, dreams, and desires, and finally, finally falling in love as they rushed up and down arpeggiated chords together. Wonderful!

The San Diego State Big Band lead by Bill Yeager was back for a fourth time. They opened with a world premiere original piece that stayed in the esoteric vein. After the set of Stamm and Mays, however, perhaps a break was needed from the esoteric. The piece was a bit hard to follow, with extreme fortes appearing and disappearing seemingly out of nowhere. Sometimes in this type of music though, one cannot comprehend all the intricacies in the music in one listening. Often in music, there is great joy in knowing what is coming up.

That being said, this was a sophisticated orchestral brass, sax and rhythm section playing jazz. Stamm sat in for a couple of tunes and you could hear the elegance in their charts as the sections traded places playing fills, swelling then pulling back behind the virtuosity of alto sax player Bud Shank.

Shank, an originator of the "West Coast Sound" that was the forerunner of the Cool Jazz that took hold in the '70s, is a player on a par with Gabe Baltazar. Both of them play fluently in a be-bop style. One of the tunes, "Night and Day," was beautifully orchestrated in 6/8 time. They supported Shank in a way that made them both sound like one color-filled unit.

The night started with a free performance on the lawn by the IKS Big Band, playing overseas for their first time out of Frankfurt, Germany. Everyone who was there early loved the band, as the applause lingered long after its last tune.

With only one performance left in the jazz festival, your opportunity to attend is growing short. The next concert is a 4 p.m. matinee today at McKinley High School. More information can be found at www.hawaiijazz.com.

Songwriter and arranger Dave Bellino is working on his first Hawaiian music CD.