Review: Patricia Barber at Jazz at the Bistro

by Terry Perkins

For my first contribution to St. Louis Jazz Notes, I thought I'd add my thoughts on Patricia Barber's performance at Jazz at the Bistro on March 11. If this doesn't get too long, I might add something about Jamie Cullum's show at the Pageant on March 14.

As a preface, I should add that from 1984 up until 2005, I wrote concert reviews on a weekly basis for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. However, since the sale of the paper (and even before that as the powers-that-be at the Post made ready for the transition), the Post's budget for freelance writers has been trimmed. And since freelancers such as Dan Durchholz and myself wrote most of the reviews, those articles are no longer a point of emphasis at the paper.

In fact, I only wrote two concert reviews for the Post in 2005 - and neither was supposed to happen. I filled in for a staffer and reviewed the Friday night performances at the U.S. Bank Saint Louis Jazz Festival in June. And I reviewed the Big River Benefit concert at the Sheldon in December featuring Peter Martin, Ellis Marsalis, Nicholas Payton and a host of other great musicians only because my former editor at the Post, Cliff Froehlich, was at the show and decided it was so good it had to be covered. (Thanks to Donald Suggs of the St. Louis American, I was also able to review Wayne Shorter's performance at Touhill with David Robertson and members of the Saint Louis Symphony).

Maybe you don't care if concerts are reviewed. But to me, it's an important form of cultural documentation. So at least in a small way, I'm hoping to fill a little of that current void in our city's daily paper with occasional reviews here.

I have to admit that up until last Saturday night, I never totally "got" Patricia Barber. Sure, I'd heard some of her CDs, I was impressed with her songwriting skills and her piano playing, and she had a fine band. But somehow, her music didn't really grab me. Even the live material she released just didn't quite cut through. Friends whose musical opinion I respected told me I had to see Barber live to really appreciate her artistry.

They were right. Barber operates at an artistic level that a lot of musicians wouldn't even dream of attempting. At her second set at the Bistro Saturday she jumped tight into some challenging original material - some of it new and as yet unrecorded. The new songs were from her song cycle based on Ovid's Metamorphoses - and she didn't provide any background for the audience before diving into them. But it wasn't a condescending approach. It was more like, "Here's what I'm doing. If you want to come along for the ride, stretch and make the effort to meet me at least part of the way."

Of course, when you've got Barber's artistic talent - and a long standing band that includes the excellent guitarist Neal Alger, the incredible drummer, Eric Montzka and solid bassist, Michael Arnopol, you can create music that grabs an audience, shakes it and absolutely demands attention. Plus you've just got to admire an artist who concludes a set with a version of Henry Mancini's "Moon River" - then follows that with a burning take on "Black Magic Woman" by Santana.

The audience gave Barber and her band such a prolonged standing ovation that they actually came all the way back from the upstairs dressing room to crank things up again on "Light My Fire." Barber seemed absolutely blown away by the crowd's reaction - and it's a good bet she'll be returning to St. Louis more frequently after this visit.

Don't want to take up too much space… I'll save my review of Cullum for next time.