Sartorially
dressed he is not.
Montreal
saxophonist Chet Doxas mounted L'Astral's
stage wearing a straight, no chaser shirt (think Kramer from Seinfeld),
throwback Army & Navy styled pants and Brylcreem flattened
hair. If the audience was doubtful over the retrograde 1950's
look, there was no doubt about his very serious and revelatory
playing and composing that draw their inspiration from one of
the two major currents of jazz that characterized that fervent
period. The conservative camp featured, among many, Dexter Gordon,
Ben Webster and Stan Getz, who, despite the temptations of bebop
– its madness and freedom – didn’t waver in
their belief that the single note can emote as effectively as
a cluster, and that the space between notes is of no less importance
than the ones played -- and finally, speed ‘can’ kill.
And while Doxas’s often haunting musical excursions are
very much a product of the early 21st century, he owes much of
his rich tone and considerate voicing to the names mentioned above.
For the
occasion of his 2010
Montreal
International Jazz Festival concert,
which featured most of the tracks from his new CD, The Sea,
Chet Doxas made it apparent from the outset that unlike many of
the young guns out there he is not interested in challenging the
laws of physics: how fast can you take the corner before losing
control? For Doxas and his bolt-tight quartet, music is not a
feat but a telling, which tells he has already arrived at an understanding
of his art that belies his age: he only just turned 30.
Nonetheless,
and for all the wrong reasons of which some are related to his
low profile, Doxas is an acquired taste since it requires several
listenings to fully appreciate the moods and spaces his music
articulates. As we journey through the playlist, the music can
be alternately moody, probing, ominous and even dark: sometimes
a sudden increase or decrease in the weight and clash of the notes
makes you feel like you're on a collision course with a stranger
you're not quite sure of. In this respect, Doxas’s music
faithfully depicts the hazards of finding one’s way in worlds
spun out on constant change, and the sense of not belonging that
perpetual change engenders. If there’s a temptation to compare
Doxas to David Binney -- much admired by the band -- the analogy
doesn’t take you far because Binney’s frenzied soloing
aims at transcendence and grace, while Doxas wants to expose the
world in all its hurting and contradiction – and leave you
there. His music is a wake-up call whose endgame is the here and
now that for bliss-bound Binney is only the beginning. It’s
almost beside the point whether you like it or not because you
will have already been affected by the spell it has cast, much
of which is owed to his fellow musicians, most with whom he’s
been playing since his high school days.
When
it comes to suddenly investing music with unexpected depth and
dimension, there’s no one who does it as naturally as his
drummer Jim
Doxas who, with five over-the-top taps on a closed
high-hat or a spray of bullet shots on the rim of his snare, makes
you aware of the tension, stretch and verticality of compositions
that might otherwise stay the common course. As for the quartet’s
guitarist, Ben
Charest, he is not a game changer, a dimension
divulger, especially on the CD where he plays subdued electric
in the background, filling in well if not inventively. But for
the live concert his soloing was more expansive, authoritative
and impressively directional; and when on those occasions he matched
the sax note for note the effects were indeed gratifying. Rounding
out the quartet is the granite-solid play of Zach
Lober and the unassuming telepathic interplay between
him and the other musicians. Be as it may that his sound is very
conventional – the familiar muted acoustic produced by the
upright -- his sense of melody, superb punctuation and timely
harmonizing with the sax significantly contribute to the many
swerves and turns the music features.
Chet
Doxas is all about mood and tilt; he opens up unfamiliar worlds
that linger long after the last note has sounded. In his soloing,
deceptively unspectacular, he exhibits an uncanny ability to develop
and sustain an idea. He can be both tenacious and agile in wending
his way around and through musical terrain that is often foreboding.
He refuses the many shortcuts jazz offers – those grammarless
outbursts vouchsafed by free-form or abstraction that are the
stock and trade of musicians who, having nothing to say, try to
say it all.
Compositionally,
most of the tracks are based on a primary harmonic that doesn’t
vary. Occasionally, the mood short circuits like a dry twig snapped
off a branch and major catch-up is required, but for the most
part, through his use of texturing and rhythmic variation, Doxas
takes what’s there and turns it into a seductive voyage
that leaves us wiser if a bit unsettled.
Especially
in jazz, there is often a disappointing gap between live performance
and the CD. The Sea falls significantly short of the
live performance, the former resembling a domesticated creature,
the latter that same creature thriving in its natural habitat
– the concert venue. At L'Astral, the track “Blumen”
was turned into an engaging, uplifting work that benefited from
an invigorating Bad Plus feel. It was significantly superior to
the studio version which the group didn’t know how to end,
so they resorted to the cheap trick of volume fade out, which
in my book constitutes dereliction of compositional duty. It is
my fondest hope and prediction that Doxas will never do that again.
That
being said, there is no need to consult the Oracle of Delphi to
predict that big and better things are going to happen to Chet
Doxas, and if his name doesn’t yet ring a loud bell outside
the city of Montreal, it’s only because there is a necessary
lag, especially in unsexy jazz, between the mature product and
the painstaking cultivation of appreciative audiences.
With
The Sea, Chet Doxas, who also composes classical music,
announces his deserved candidature for a rendezvous at the International
Dateline.
Photo©Marcel
Dubois
