There were two distinct parts to the Allen Toussaint concert tonight at the Flynn Center. Toussaint (a so-so vocalist but marvelous pianist) and his excellent band (especially sax player Brian Cayolle) played a host of Toussaint’s songs that lots of people know, they just might not know they’re his – “Soul Sister,” “Sneakin’ Sally Through the Alley” (a Phish favorite), “A Certain Girl,” “Mother In Law,” “Working In the Coalmine” and “Southern Nights” among them, all of which he played fully or in medley tonight. But in the middle of the show he and the band started focusing on the material Toussaint recorded on his recent album “The Bright Mississippi,” paying tribute to a host of musicians who preceded him in his jazz-rich hometown of New Orleans. Toussaint’s compositions juxtaposed against those of early jazz masters such as Sidney Bechet didn’t reveal that he and they have a lot in common: The songs from “The Bright Mississippi” tended to capture that beautiful languor of sitting on a porch in New Orleans on a humid afternoon, while Toussaint’s songs are generally bouncy, bluesy and fun. But he became the royalty of New Orleans’ next generation of songwriters by having the same quality his musical forefathers had – ear-catching melodies with eternal lifespans.
He was joined by clarinet master Don Byron, who shined all night in conjunction with Cayolle, especially on that gorgeous “Bright Mississippi” material. Toussaint was dapper as always, clad in a royal-blue suit, and charming on stage. He has a dry sense of humor that he displayed earlier today at his “Meet the Artist” session and continued on stage, especially when he reminisced about Tom Jones doing a version of “Working in the Coalmine” on his long-ago TV show which featured dancing women in bikinis wielding pickaxes. “I hadn’t looked at it in that way,” he said of one of his most famous and most manly songs.
The Vermont-based Michael Chorney Sextet opened the show with some lovely music and a lack of mathematical precision – the sextet was really a septet with trombone player Andy Moroz joining in, not to mention a guest appearance by vocalist Miriam Bernardo. Chorney, a guitarist known for his work with Anais Mitchell and his old group Viperhouse, led the sextet-plus through his own material and covers of tunes by Sun Ra and Kurt Weill. It’s not easy pinning down the sound of the Chorney Sextet, but folk-jazz comes close. Nice stuff.
