Ben Ratliff praises Marcus Belgrave and his band in a New York Times review.
Mr. Belgrave is 78, and since the 1970s has been equally important as a teacher and as a performer. He’s done most of that teaching in Detroit, after stretches in the late ’50s and early ’60s playing with Ray Charles and the Motown studio crew. Because he’s not famous to the average person and tends to stay local, we in New York might not hear much about his impact except through interviews with the musicians he’s guided, including Geri Allen, Regina Carter and Kenny Garrett.
But Tuesday’s set at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola — the first of a two-night stand from a musician worth hearing whenever he’s in town — was an example of the kind of thing that doesn’t get headlines: jazz played with a beautiful sense of proportion, modesty, refinement; using the full range of his instrument but free of aggression, anxiety, overplaying. He let the essence of the songs manifest themselves. It’s the result, maybe, of understanding something and then rendering it so that it coheres and can be passed on intact.
Ratliff went out his way to note the play of two young Detroit musicians:
The tenor saxophonist Marcus Elliott and the pianist Ian Finkelstein, convincing and confident, evolved in touch and tone, the kind of musicians New York would be lucky to have. But they were practicing restraint, too, playing in service to the song, and the bandleader.
