BY ROBERT HAM
Ron Weinstein, Jazz Before Hours
Self-released, November 2023
Keyboardist Ron Weinstein is the surest bet one can make in the Northwest jazz community. Whether he’s playing the unclassifiable sounds of his project Crack Sabbath, or sitting in with funk outfit REPOSADO, or jamming with one of the dozens of players in his unique orbit, the 76-year-old is guaranteed to dazzle and delight and challenge.
Take, for one small example, the rendition of “Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?” that Weinstein and his stalwart rhythmic partners, bassist Geoff Harper and drummer D’Vonne Lewis, recorded for their most recent album Jazz Before Hours. This is ground that has been well-trod by jazz players since the song’s arrival in the late ‘40s. But in Weinstein’s expert hands, the familiar melody feels renewed — playful and bright even within the trio’s measured, bluesy interpretation.
So it goes with material both old and new on Jazz Before Hours. Monk’s “‘Round Midnight” is set in a new rhythmic light, led by Weinstein’s loose right hand, that brings new angles and textures to the surface. The pianist shape shifts through a vampy run of “You’ve Changed,” embodying the spirit of Erroll Garner and McCoy Tyner before finishing the solo turn with a punch and wink that are unmistakably his own. And closing out the album, he and Harper put some swing and shadows into Bob Dylan’s otherwise elegiac “I Shall Be Released” with the spotlight on Weinstein’s craggy, knowing vocals. It moves the song closer to a poetic expression of taking one’s final breath than its origins as a powerful statement on spiritual redemption.
It’s the original material on the album that allows us to tap into Weinstein at his purest. True to his mercurial form as a player and composer, the tunes don’t hew to one style or mood. Where “Powerfreak” has an ebullient, Looney Tunes-like energy capped off nicely by some of Lewis’s forceful solo turns, “Bar Slut” (a title previously used to name a 2004 Crack Sabbath album) is wily funk in the mode of Medeski Martin & Wood that, appropriately, finds Weinstein dropping in some chords from a particularly nasty sounding Hammond organ. Even within the short confines of “Chuckin’,” the trio dance between bop, dub, and slinky R&B — all in the span of 90 seconds.
If there’s a single thread that winds through every twist and turn of Jazz Before Hours, it’s how inviting the music is. The 12 tracks on this album are intelligent without being isolating or obtuse, welcoming listeners in to bask in the warm camaraderie of these three fantastic musicians.
