Clarence Penn Quintet @ Jazz Standard 3/13/13

It was listed as a quartet, but then there was a percussion station set up.  Sure. I enough, a percussionist joined them on many songs. Just seeing the personnel you know it was fantastic.  Chris played tenor, soprano and bass clarinet.  Adam had many awesome solos.  Ben Street was great.  You know I love a drummer led band, especially with a percussionist.  There were many aha drum moments.


The Listing:
More than two decades ago, Clarence Penn arrived in NYC from his native Detroit to join Betty Carter’s band. Several years of touring and recording with the great jazz diva made him a seasoned first–call sideman, ready to play with groups variously led by Stanley Clarke, Christian McBride, Michael Brecker, Dizzy Gillespie, Luciana Souza, Gary Burton, Joshua Redman, Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Charlie Haden, and Maria Schneider. He released three excellent albums as a leader, beginning with Penn’s Landing (Criss Cross, 1997). Now comes Clarence Penn’s long–awaited new CD, Dali in Cobble Hill – a meditation on how the iconic Surrealist painter Salvador Dali might have digested a stroll through Penn’s Brooklyn neighborhood. The eight originals and two standards incorporate a variety of moods, flavors, and strategies that reflect Penn's extensive activity as a sideman for modern music’s best-and-brightest over the past decades; his ensemble of grandmaster generational contemporaries – Chris Potter on tenor saxophone and bass clarinet, Adam Rogers on guitar, and Ben Street on bass – inhabit the stories, playing with deep imagination and virtuosic craft.

Chris Potter – tenor saxophone, bass clarinet
Adam Rogers – guitar
Ben Street – bass
Clarence Penn – drums