Live Review: Pete Levin’s Möbius at the Jazz Forum, Tarrytown New York, March 30th 2018
Pete Levin: keyboards; Alex Foster: tenor saxophone; Jeff Ciampa: guitar; Ira Coleman: bass; Nanny Assis: percussion; Lenny White: drums.
Keyboardist Pete Levin has nine releases under his own name, but may be most known for his associations with the late Gil Evans and Jimmy Giuffre among others. If the name Levin is familiar to music fans that's because bassist brother Tony had been a part of such legendary bands like King Crimson and Liquid Tension Experiment. The keyboardist brought a wide range of influences and integrated them into a seamless whole at the Jazz Forum in Tarrytown, New York, Friday March 30th with a well oiled band including tenor saxophonist Alex Foster, trumpeter Chris Pasin, Jeff Ciampa on guitar, bassist Ira Coleman, percussionist Nanny Assis, and Lenny White on drums. The band covered music found on last years debut Möbius and did so with supreme attention to detail especially in the realms of truly being a collective. The Jazz Forum is a quaint, charming intimate 90 seat venue in Tarrytown, that allows the audience to be up close and personal with the musicians in the best way
The set lead off with “Promises”, the first track the album. White's trademark of powerful, unyielding groove underscored the high flying solos of Foster and Pasin. The beautiful ballad “Another Time, Another Place” recalled the nautical mood of Herbie Hancock's “Maiden Voyage” and deftly featured Levin's emulated Rhodes, a bulldozing, passionate Foster, Freddie Hubbard like fluidity from Pasin and White soaring over a vamp at the end. Levin then spoke to the audience announcing this year marks the hundredth anniversary of Thelonious Monk's birth and the importance of the year 1917. This milestone is not significant being the year of the first jazz recording, “The Dixie One Step” by the Original Dixieland Jass Band, but also the births of celebrities, and John F. Kennedy. The group proceeded to play a scorching rendition of the classic “I Mean You” incorporating a tri tone figure Gil Evans used to play, as a hilarious aside recognizable to most as the bridge used in “Well You Needn't”. The whole band was on full tilt modulating between funk and gale force swing courtesy of White's intuitiveness. The set closer, the grooving 12/8 “Kakilambe” found the whole band in fine form.
Pete Levin's Möbius is a wonderful group that is so democratic in nature, each musician brings their own signature to the pot, like spices in a meal, but the overall effect is one of union for a greater whole. Hearing the further adventures of this band will be most welcome, as their first set was an absolute pleasure.
