Love and marriage. Frank Sinatra cutely sang about it, but the real thing was on display this past Tuesday when the husband and wife team of saxophonist Jeff Lederer and vocalist Mary LaRose were the guest performers at the Northampton Jazz Workshop, the popular showcase held weekly inside Spare Time Northampton’s City Sports Grille.
Lederer and LaRose were celebrating their 25th anniversary that night (and it was the day after Lederer’s birthday), so merriment abounded during the six-song, one-hour set.
About 70 people filled the room, and the couple was backed by the unflappable and awesome house band, the Green Street Trio — pianist Paul Arslanian, bassist George Kaye and drummer Jon Fisher — who’d basically met the two guest musicians for the first time that night, and hadn’t seen the charts for the music until the evening’s show. You’d never know from the threesome’s ace backing.
The night began with an original composition by Lederer, “Albert’s Sun,” the lead-off track from his 2011 album, “Sunwatcher.” Over gorgeous McCoy Tyner-esque chords from Arslanian, Lederer gripped his tenor sax and took his first solo of the show, leaning so far back that it was as if he was laying down while standing up.
He lifted his instrument toward the ceiling, eyes shut, letting loose punctuation-free torrents of notes. At one point he hit what would seem to be the highest note possible, and then launched into a squealing tone so much higher that it sounded like an angry tea kettle. It took me right back to the first time my ears met such a whistle-shriek (Jackie McLean’s swinging 1962 song “Omega”).
The bluesy Duke Pearson tune “Cristo Redentor” followed. Lederer played the opening theme with long, held notes on his tenor, but went wild and busy for his solo. Drummer Fisher expertly locked in with him on the accents, then got loose and playful. LaRose, relaxing in a booth by the bandstand, peeked around the edge of her seat to get a better look at his creative improvising and smiled approvingly. Near the end of the tune, as the house trio vamped behind Lederer, he put down his instrument and spoke some words from abolitionist and activist Sojourner Truth.
During the between-song banter, Lederer shared that his 22-year-old daughter, Maya (also in the house, sharing the booth with mom), had just taken him to Brattleboro, Vermont, for his birthday present — his first-ever tattoo. He chose to get his forearm emblazoned with a small letter “i” (a concept in Shaker philosophy) cradled between parentheses, which is also the logo of his own Brooklyn-based record company, Little (i) Music.
Lederer switched to soprano sax and brought LaRose onto the bandstand for a cheeky choice of a tune on their silver anniversary, the Frank Loesser standard “Never Will I Marry.” I smiled at the joke, but also because I’ve loved the song ever since hearing it on the “Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley” album. (After the tune, Lederer mentioned how that album was one of the first he and LaRose agreed they both loved.)
LaRose was a theatrical performer, adding her own kind of visual ring-a-ding-ding while singing, sometimes twisting her head and the microphone away from each other, or moving her head and the microphone in opposing circular motions.
The band played a unique version of Charles Mingus’ “Reincarnation of a Lovebird,” for which LaRose had written an original lyric. The piece is found on her 2013 CD, “Reincarnation,” where LaRose applied that same technique to a non-typical repertoire of songs by Eric Dolphy, Ornette Coleman and Mingus, backed by the string quartet Brooklyn Rider.
“Yes Sir, That’s My Baby,” a Walter Donaldson & Gus Kahn standard from way back in 1925, was next on the program, and the song included a fun Lederer and Fisher sax and drum duet, which ended with Lederer crouching way down, making breathy and guttural duck barks with his sax.
After LaRose sang the lyrics, Lederer took the microphone and, as the band played on, recited something he’d just written that morning, silly lyrics dedicated to his wife (“Yes sir, that’s my Mary / no, sir, she’s not that scary”). “You’ll have to indulge me, folks, it’s my anniversary,” he interjected between stanzas with a grin. During Arslanian’s piano solo, Lederer walked over and tried to dance with LaRose, who shut down the idea pretty quickly. Momentary awkwardness ensued. Lederer sheepishly shuffled back toward the piano, nodding his head to the jazzy licks. “Wooo,” he said.
The group ended its set with Oliver Nelson’s “Teenie’s Blues,” taken from LaRose’s 1995 debut CD, “Cutting the Chord,” with vocal and sax playing the angular melody in unison. Arslanian slipped a great Thelonious Monk musical quotation into his solo. Late in the song, as the band bubbled along underneath, a smiling Lederer spoke to the crowd, sharing a little secret about what had happened onstage at the top of the tune: “Anatomy of a marriage — Mary leaned into me after the first time through [the song’s main theme] and said, ‘Could you play some of those notes right?’ ”
Ken Maiuri can be reached at clublandcolumn@gmail.com