Jeff Lorber in Dallas

Jeff Lorber was in Dallas last night at the Bishop Arts Theatre in the Oak Cliff neighborhood. This was an awesome concert, at least the second half. The first half was very smooth jazz with a couple of guest artists I did not recognize. They were great musicians but the music was that tedious style of smooth jazz that repeats the same chord progression over and over while solos are bogarted for the most part by the soprano sax.

Everything changed when Lorber took the stage. He sat down, got right down to business and started plucking out some of the funkiest rhythms on electric piano. The energy level was instantly pushed to a stratospheric level and stayed there for the rest of his set. Dr. Funk was in the house and the band instantly kicked into a precise groove with lots of intricate rhythms and melodic lines and plenty of surprises along the way.

One annoyance was that the bass player never seemed to clue in that his level was set too high and he constantly overshadowed the band. This was much less of a problem once Jeff Lorber took the stage as the keyboards were up a bit higher and the dynamic range of the group was much more broad. It was only a problem in the heavier and louder portions of the tunes.

The sound reinforcement was a little weak as well. Maybe this contributed to the overdrive of the bass, but it seemed that most of the problem was coming from the fact that he was amped as well as playing through the PA.

Bishop Arts Theatre is a very small venue and was about 80% full. Promoters must have followed the stealth marketing style for this concert as almost nobody knew about it. I talked to several local musicians later that night and none of them even knew Lorber was anywhere near Dallas, despite the fact that they were huge fans. I happened to run across it in a random "jazz events" search on the Dallas Observer web site a few weeks ago. Otherwise I'd have been ignorant as well.

The venue is a great place to hear live music in an intimate setting. All the people were extremely nice to us. The room is very small with limited seating. This was the last concert of the 2009 jazz series.