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Joe Lovano Quartet

Winston Churchill and Dr. Martin Luther King have spoken at beautiful Sanders Theatre at Harvard University. Ladysmith Black Mambazo has sung there -- just one memorable show among many, many concerts. Sanders is a space for lofty sounds, for voices and musicians from all over the world.

This time on JazzSet, we are at Sanders with the Joe Lovano Quartet, with a brief cutaway to sample Brazilian vocalist Luciana Souza and Romero Lubambo, who share the bill. On a future JazzSet, we'll turn the tables and feature Luciana with a cutaway from Joe.

GQ called Lovano a "burly dude," and yes, he is that. There's the hat, the goatee, the horn, and the amazing music he pours through it. All the practicing and gigging that Joe did in Cleveland with his father, saxophonist Tony Lovano, and Joe's years with the Woody Herman Orchestra and Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra in the 1970s and 80s are paying off now. His output on the Blue Note label is one fully imagined setting after another -- jazz compositions by Tadd Dameron arranged for ten musicians; a tribute to Italian tenor Enrico Caruso; duets with Hank Jones, the complete pianist now in his late 80s; and Joe's current collaboration with composer Gunther Schuller, on Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool" music. That CD came out in mid 2006, and it's called Streams of Expression.

In the show at Sanders, Joe's quartet features two young Boston musicians -- bassist Esmeralda Spalding and drummer (from Cuba) Francisco Mela. Joe's regular pianist James Weidman also makes the date. Every selection comes from a new perspective, an interesting angle.