For those who made it to the Nectar Lounge last night, there was a stellar night of music on hand. Seaprog was proud to have had a part in presenting this great show.
The show was opened in lovely fashion by two locals who are no stranger to Seaprog stages. Dennis Rea and James DeJoie are both members of chamber-rock favorites Moraine, but they also do a lot more. For this special event, they performed as a duo of acoustic guitar and flute. This is a far cry from the intense and complex music of Moraine, featuring gentle and jazzy takes on a variety of material drawn from many sources.
It probably goes without saying that many of the attendees were drawn by the presence of bass legend Tony Levin. His work in King Crimson, Stick Men, and with Peter Gabriel (and hundreds of others) has cemented his status as one of the all-time great bassist, but for this outing he was in pure jazz mode.
This was an augmented version of the Levin Brothers band featuring Tony on bass and his brother Pete on keyboards. They’ve got several albums out, but this time they were combined with the LaBarbera brothers Joe (drums) and Pat (woodwinds). They drew their setlist from the jazz repertoire as well as from creative arrangements of tunes associated with Tony’s other work. All of these guys have extensive careers that have touched on many of the giants of jazz, and they all have fascinating stories to tell, so it wasn’t just an evening of outstanding playing.