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Smooth or Rough, but Hot by Jon Pareles New York Times, Feb. 9 2003 The debonair music that the violinist Stéphane Grapelli and the guitarist Django Reinhardt forged at the Hot Club of France in the 1930's became a paragon of jazz that challenges musicians while delighting audiences. Two trios - uptown and down-home - brought their own sequels to that music to Manhattan last week. Jazz at Lincoln Center presented the violinist Mark O'Connor and his Hot Swing Trio at Alice Tully Hall on Tuesday night, while the Hot Club of Cowtown, from Austin, Tex., performed on Thursday night at the Rodeo Bar. Both revived the Grappelli-Reinhardt chemistry of insouciant violin improvisations and guitar playing with brisk chords and bright, staccato leads. But their jobs were different. ... The Hot Club of Cowtown stayed earthier, in a set that mixed old songs and its own cleverly old-fashioned ones, usually about romance. Elana Fremerman's throaty violin solos arrived in terse, epigrammatic phrases with a sprint, every so often, into chromatic harmony. She also sang in a breathy, un-self-conscious voice that made every double-entendre seductive. Whit Smith played concise, snappy guitar solos and sang with the avuncular tone of Willie Nelson, as Jake Erwin slapped backbeats on his bass. The Hot Club of Cowtown didn't set out to be as exquisite as the Hot Swing Trio, but it knew how to swing, and it kept listeners smiling. |