On April 19, when Terence Blanchard played the movie music of Spike Lee at the Kimmel Center, Michael Pedicin conducted the orchestra. The evening’s best-kept secret was that Pedicin, 60, is a fine tenor saxophonist with seven albums to his credit.<\/div>\n
At Chris’ Jazz Cafe on Saturday, Pedicin took his turn in the spotlight, fronting a quintet and playing material from a new album, his eighth, Everything Starts Now.<\/p>\n
All the music was original, but interestingly, it was not Pedicin’s. Guitarist Johnny Valentino wrote almost the entire album, and he played his modern compositions with a clean, pointed articulation, strongly influenced by Pat Martino, but with an ethereal drift more reminiscent of John Abercrombie.<\/p>\n
Pedicin, a practicing psychologist, is a muscular player in the post-Coltrane vein, with something of Joe Henderson’s warm timbre and an ability to turn packed phrases into clear thoughts. He began with the marvelously haunting, out-of-tempo “Everything Starts Now,” a risky step in a noisy club but just the thing to draw in sensitive listeners.<\/p>\n
There were two poles to the quintet’s language: stately themes and evocative harmony on the opener, “Another Day” and “Pelican”; and a freer, more fragmented, rhythmic approach on “L.A. to Philly,” “Concatenation,” and “Later.” Pianist Mick Rossi was more than capable of bridging these worlds, excelling most of all on a sparse, darkly lit ballad solo.<\/p>\n
In the rhythm section were two players not heard on the album: bassist Kermit Driscoll, a solid presence; and drummer Gerry Hemingway, an exceptional avant-garde artist in his own right, who lacked Michael Sarin’s finesse on the walking tempos. The very essence of “L.A. to Philly” is a rolling, slippery swing feel that harks back to the great Elvin Jones, but that was not in Hemingway’s comfort zone.<\/p>\n
With Valentino’s unaccompanied passage during “Later,” and the country-funk vamp that ended “Concatenation,” the band discarded the rule book altogether. But the calmer, picturesque numbers featured Pedicin and his cohorts in the best light.<\/p>\n
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