Max Perkoff

His tone and facility are of the first order, and he deserves a place among the trombone elite.

It was a direct route to cool when The Max Perkoff Band stepped into Saturday night’s Sanchez Concert Hall and paid their respects to jazz. They played some numbers from their recently released CD: “Infinite Search.” They tossed in Bebop, Latin jazz, blues, smart bounce and glide with such tunes as: “Basin Street Blues,” “Amazing Grace” and among other tunes by Perkoff: “Memories Of Lady Day,” “New Life,” “One Dollar Dance,” “Blues For Dr. King,” “Cooking For Twenty” and “Sunset In Sienna.” The members of the band each walked out their talent with plenty of personal expression and collective seasoning. Band members are: Perkoff on trombone and piano, Randy Vincent on guitar, Sam Bevan on stand up and electric bass and Paul van Wageningen on drums. All kinds of complex but subtle mastery flowing from van Wageningen on drums and Mr. Bevan on bass swung fine and well-dressed through a broad range of tones. Vincent on guitar was fretboard hypnotic but it was Perkoff’s trombone that claimed center stage – hot and informed and full of expression. Jazz tells a story that falls differently on different ears but this was sophisticated storytelling for people who like to dream.

"A fine trombonist with a warm tone, Max Perkoff also doubles on piano. On Infinite Search he is mostly heard on trombone with a group also including guitarist Randy Vincent, bassist Sam Bevan and drummer Paul Van Wageningen. Singer Cari Thompson guests on “Waiting.”

The music, which consists exclusively of Perkoff’s originals, is mostly laidback and quiet, even when taken at faster tempos. The sparse rhythm section does a beautiful job of blending in with the fluent trombonist and there are occasional guitar and bass solos. Perkoff, who is based in the San Francisco Bay area, is influenced by J.J. Johnson and is a chordal-based bop soloist at heart, but his improvisations are unpredictable and are free of clichés. He held his own with Roswell Rudd in his previous record Monk’s Bones, and he excels with his modern mainstream quartet.

Infinite Search, which is available from maxperkoff.com, should result in Max Perkoff
becoming better known and rated high among modern jazz
trombonists."

In January 2007 Max Perkoff heralded a change by dropping the words “jazz ensemble” and replacing them with “band” for his group. The idea behind it was to free them from categorization and to bring in greater freedom. The Max Perkoff Band features Perkoff on trombone and piano, Randy Vincent on guitar, Sam Bevan on bass, and Paul van Wageningen on drums. Singer Cami Thompson, the sixth element, showcases her talent on one track here.
The Max Perkoff Band is a tight outfit. They lean into each other, read emotion and movement, and come up with a cohesive musicality that evolves in several styles. At the outset they find their reckoning in a bop beat in “New Life.” Perkoff brings his warm tone on the trombone, changing the pulse from a quick friskiness into a hardier testament. Vincent is the one who gets to pick up the thread from Perkoff and he brings in a rich lore of ideas, urged on by Bevan and van Wageningen. The tune is enough to make one salivate for more and the band does not disappoint. Thompson fills “Waiting” with a yearning that magnifies the lyric and as her voice soars, dives, and floats on gossamer—wings capturing every little nuance. Bevan adds the soft shade with the brushes while Perkoff shows his lyrical side on the piano as well, his notes flowing with gentle, rippling passion.

Perkoff takes different tangents on tributes to Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Billie Holiday. “Blues For Dr. King” has a buoyant undercurrent, “Flowers For Rosa” is a lilting tune with Perkoff on piano and “Memories of Lady Day” is a blues ballad, a show stopper that captures the bittersweet life of Holiday.

Perkoff and his band may have gone on an infinite search at the outset, but on this recording, they've found and delivered a rich work of music.

(You can hear this review at www.maxperkoff.com.)

"The big jazz record of 2005 was a concert recording by Thelonious Monk, who’d died in 1982. Before his death, few jazz musicians specialized in playing his tunes, although there were exceptions like Steve Lacy and Roswell Rudd. Since Monk passed, bands on several continents have dedicated themselves to playing his music. Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new CD by California’s Monk’s Music Trio, joined by a couple of guests.

The Bay Area pianist Si Perkoff knew Thelonious Monk and knows plenty of his tunes. Five or six years ago drummer Chuck Bernstein invited him to join a trio devoted to playing Monk. That was a good idea. Sometimes the pianist’s son, trombonist Max Perkoff would guest with the trio, and then Bernstein had the idea to pair him up with another slide trombonist, the legendary—make that beloved—Roswell Rudd. That was a very good idea. Rudd has played in a few Monk specialty bands going back to the early 60s, and enjoys romping with other trombones. So he took to this lineup like a duck to plum sauce.

Two trombones—that’ll wake anybody up. Especially when they schmear one note up against one right next to it, the way Monk would on piano. I like the previous albums by Monk’s Music Trio, but “Monk’s Bones” leaves ’em in the dust. Bass player Sam Bevan is new to the band, but everybody knows the repertoire so well, they know just how to stay in or out of each other’s way. And you can always tell trombonists apart when Rudd is one of them—he’s always the bigger extravert. Max Perkoff favors a fairly straightforward tone; the integrity of his lines is what counts. Rudd’s improvising is frowsier, often colored by various mutes, to give a more vocalized sound, as in Duke Ellington’s band.

Monk’s tune “Little Rootie Tootie.” Another reason Roswell Rudd has made some great records, aside from the way he plays, is the way he treats the musicians he works with. Rudd is so warm, enthusiastic and committed, so obviously knocked out by what they’re playing, they can’t help feeling motivated.

Thelonious Monk’s compositions are central to the jazz tradition now, but only a couple of decades ago, many musicians found his pieces hard to play. Typically they’d either imitate Monk and his band, playing not too many notes, or they treated his tunes like any other excuse to run their horns. On the CD “Monk’s Bones” you hear five players who really understand the material and play it their own way—some friendly Monkish piano plinks aside. The quintet get the logic of Monk’s pieces, literally get into the swing of them. In the end that’s way more important than how few or many notes they play."