Randy Weston, the imposing, 75-year-old jazz pianist from Brooklyn, has been a world musician for at least 40 years. But this fine player and educator's practical and anthropological fascination with improvised music from other cultures, particularly north Africa, has perhaps been a significant reason why his formidable contribution to orthodox jazz composition hasn't had its due.
Living in Morocco on and off between 1968 and the early 1990s, Weston was out of the media loop. But he reminded his audience at this Barbican Jazz performance that when it comes to the musical loop, he's as firmly in residence as ever.
Saxophonist Pharoah Sanders, an occasional guest on Weston projects, was scheduled for the concert but didn't appear - an absence that perhaps subtracted some drama and tonal variety from the evening's possibilities. However, this was comfortably compensated for by the energies of the leader's African Rhythms band and a diverting assortment of traditional Gnawa musicians from Tangier and Marrakech.
The remarkable double-bassist Alex Blake was unexpectedly compelling; he ignited the quintet's bold departures from regular jazz phrasing and dramatic use of dynamics and texture. Although a young man, Blake sat down to play, for reasons that became apparent in his soloing - he treated the instrument as a drum and a guitar, not a fiddle. Leaning the double bass into his body at a Tower of Pisa slant and concentrating on the middle register, Blake unleashed variations that were as much dependent on thick, resonant chords as a series of deft and lustrous runs. His strumming and hand-drum playing on the soundbox, coupled with ecstatic cries, at times suggested a momentum that could render him airborne.
Two groups of Gnawa musicians, deploying animated traditional song forms of simple, repeating motifs set against clattering, trance-like metal-castanet percussion, presented versions of the region's music from Tangiers and Marrakech. The first was stately and ceremonial, the second wilder and more improvisatory, given extra surreal spice by one member's ability to keep the tassle on his hat ceaselessly whirling like a garden sprinkler.
Weston himself moved between unaccompanied piano improvisations, mingling light and playful melody lines with long, seamless, rolling-thunder chords and angular, Thelonious Monkish participation. The sharp ensemble, in its talkative trombone lines and soulfully insistent motifs, often suggested a cut-down Charles Mingus group. It was a wide cultural and musical span for an evening's work, but with not a hint of musical tourism.
