Pianist Hornsby saves his fantastic best for last

CLEARWATER -- Maybe they were expecting the standard, studio version of The Way It Is, Mandolin Rain, Valley Road or one of Bruce Hornsby's other pop hits. Something familiar that they'd heard before. A million times before.

Or maybe they'd been at Coachman Park since the gates opened at 2 p.m., and by 9:30, they'd had too much music and sun and $3 cups of chardonnay.

Whatever the reason, the vast number of people who left before the end of Hornsby's set Saturday night at the Smooth Jazz Concert on the Bay missed what was perhaps the highlight of the two-day event.

It wasn't planned. It just happened. And that was the beauty of it.

Half the crowd of several thousand had folded their lawn chairs and gone home by the time Hornsby had reached the midpoint of his set. Backed by a stellar five-member band, including J.T. Thomas and Bobby Read, he did extended versions of some of his new material, including snippets from Hornsby's yet-to-be-released album Big Swing Face.

His songs had moods and textures not often found on FM radio playlists, and if he felt the need to explore, to see where a tune would take him, off he went.

That's what a jazz concert should be all about. But he risked alienating a large chunk of his audience -- separating the smooth jazz fans from the jazz fans.

And there is, as Hornsby's set showed, a vast difference between the two.

Hornsby cowrote Don Henley's smash The End of the Innocence. When the Grateful Dead's keyboard player died, Hornsby took his place. He has played with Bonnie Raitt and Bob Dylan and has always been willing to explore the other colors in the paintbox. And so he did Saturday, allowing his piano to play a secondary role on several songs.

Very un-Hornsby. But very good.

Toward the end of his set, with maybe 200 people gathered in front of the stage, Hornsby stopped playing and spoke with a man who had been standing in the wings. There was an awkward silence, and some in the audience wondered if the sound system had crashed.

And then the man walked from the wings and sat at a keyboard next to Hornsby's piano.

"Ladies and gentleman, I started playing at 17," said Hornsby, 47. "And one of the musicians I admired most, who was a great inspiration to me, was this man right here."

With that, Chick Corea, one of the world's most noted jazz pianists and a part-time Clearwater resident, smiled and waved.

Unfortunately, with so few people left in the park, it was like the tree falling in the forest with nobody there to hear it.

But there was no doubt about the sound they made. The 20 minutes Corea and Hornsby played together was a jazz lover's dream. The highlight was Spider Fingers, a tune that allowed two of the best piano players on the planet to trade riffs and try to outperform each other.

It was a perfect moment.

"I think most people's musical tastes do not grow," Hornsby told an interviewer recently. "I think they stay very rooted to the music they like through the college years, and that's it. There are lots of great exceptions to that.

"But my thing is different. Music is my life. I'm an avid pursuer of new music. If I made a record that illustrated the range of my taste, it would go from modern classical, very dissonant, to the most simple old folk song. The mass populace would like the simple folk song much more, but I can't always do that."

Thank goodness.

© 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111

Contact the Times | Privacy Policy
Standard of Accuracy | Terms, Conditions & Copyright