Joining Tank on stage will be Don Thompson on piano, Terry Clarke
on drums and Dave Young on bass.
“I would call it kind of a super band,” Tank said. “I thought
this was a good combination. Don is harmonically very deep, but Dave Young is
in a way his opposite. He likes
simplicity, and swinging is the most important part of the music for him to get
the groove happening.”
Young played with the Oscar Peterson Trio for 25 years, and is a
member of the Order of Canada .
Young is well known to local jazz fans and last played with Tank at show in Waterloo last
December. Thompson is an Officer of the
Order of Canada ,
and winner of three Juno Awards. Clarke won a Juno Award a few years ago for a
collection of live recordings.
“It is almost like going
to a jam session with a bunch of charts, and saying: ‘Okay, let’s play a Dexter
Gordon tune,’ and then you play a Dexter Gordon tune,” Tank said.
“I didn’t re-arrange them at all.
They are all basically right out of the book, standard lead sheets that
I use. Most of the music is so perfect.
There is really not a lot you can add to it,” Tank said.
The lineup includes Lester
Young’s Tickle Toe, Joe Henderson’s Black Narcissus, Benny Golson’s Whisper Not, Hank Mobley’s This I Dig of You, Sonny Rollins’ Airegin, Dexter Gordon’s Fried Bananas, John Coltrane’s Naima (named after Coltrane’s wife), and
Spiral, Charles Lloyd’s Forest Flower, Wayne Shorter’s Infant Eyes and Footprints, and Eddie Harris’ Freedom
Jazz Dance.
When Golson wrote Whisper
No, he was part of a group that included Art Farmer and McCoy Tyner and
Curtis Fuller on trombone.
“It was sort of pre-Art
Blakey and The Jazz Messengers,” Tank said. “Then Art Blakey took over the Jazz
Messengers and Benny Golson played with him in that group.”
The Dexter Gordon tune Fried
Bananas is based on a song called This
Could Happen to You.
“And I might do another one of his. I might do Cheese Cake,” Tank said.
No celebration of great tenor saxophone music would be complete
with Coleman Hawkins’ Body and Soul,
which Tank included on the set list.
“I chose the tunes based
on their most famous songs,” Tank said. “Wayne Shorter has so many famous
songs, but Footprints is probably the
most popular. It is kind of a blues. It is probably his most covered tune.”
“I also picked tunes that I felt would be good for this band to
play,” Tank said.
It was 40 years ago this month that Tank moved to New York City to make his
living playing jazz. He has lived in the same apartment building on 4th
Street in East Village ever since, and regularly plays at Fat Cat in the West
Village and elsewhere.
John Tank Group: Giants of the Tenor Sax.
Where: The Registry Theatre, 122 Frederick St .
When: Friday, May 30th.
Showtime: 8 p.m.
Tickets: $25.
Available at Centre in the Square box office, or call
519-578-1570.
