It was about half past nine in the evening at the Nashville Jazz Workshop, and trombonist Roland Barber had just started talking about his new song “Beauty Up Ahead.” Suddenly, saxophonist Rahsaan Barber interrupted him. “You sound just like me,” said the young saxophonist, who almost seemed startled at the realization that he shared more than just a passing resemblance to his twin brother.
The Barber Brothers don’t always play together, but when these Nashville natives do you can usually count on them to generate a lot of excitement. That was the case on Friday night at the Nashville Jazz Workshop’s glorious and intimate performance space, the Jazz Cave, where the Barbers held forth with an all-too-short two-hour, two-set concert. All told, the brothers played eight songs, several of which came from Rahsaan Barber’s terrific new album Everyday Magic, recently released on his new label Jazz Music City. The Barbers and their band – pianist Bruce Dudley, bassist Alana Rocklin and drummer Chester Thompson – played each song with energy and emotion.
Despite their shared birth, the 31-year-old Barbers boast distinctive personalities. Rahsaan Barber wears his hair in shoulder-length dreadlocks and is an extremely extroverted, virtuosic player. He played the climatic solo of his song “Manhattan Grace,” from Everyday Magic, with the feverish intensity of a Baptist preacher who had just seen the light and received the spirit.
Roland Barber, in contrast, sports close-cropped hair and comes across in concert as a soulful, mellifluous player. That’s not to say he lacks chops. Indeed, the guy seemed to be a human bellows, and his over-the-top tribute to Aretha Franklin (called simply “Aretha”) left me wondering whether he even needed to breathe – his playing often featured a steady stream of cascading notes. Still, it was the sheer sensuousness of his playing – rather than the speed – that lingered in my ear. Just before launching into his song “Chocolate,” Roland Barber noted that he had never previously thought of his music as being sexy. That would be like Marilyn Monroe suddenly discovering she had sex appeal.
For all of their differences, the Barbers function in concert as a perfectly synchronized unit. They are like a musical tag team, with each stepping in at just the right second to take over a solo. In their opening number, “Song for Stanley T,” Rahsaan Barber announced the catchy theme with robust playing, and then Roland Barber stepped in, expanding the melody, subjecting it to a seemingly endless variety of permutations.
Roland Barber’s gift for creating vivid sonic images came to the fore in the next song, “Sun and the Sea.” Near the end of the song, he traded in his trombone for a large conch shell, which he used to produce a windswept sound that suggested pure sonic sea salt. Rahsaan Barber provided breezy accompaniment playing just his mouthpiece.
The Barbers’ rhythm section shined in every selection. Especially memorable was Thompson’s extended drum solo – accompanied by Rocklin’s throbbing bass ostinato – in Rahsaan Barber funk-infused “Memphis Soul.” Dudley, for his part, provided colorful, almost impressionist sounding support in “Beauty Up Ahead.”
The only disappointment Friday was the length of the second set – the Barbers only had time to play three songs. Still, the sold out crowd wasn’t going to let these virtuosos leave without at least one encore. The Barbers obliged with a medley that included Roland Barber’s surprisingly expressive treatment of “Chopsticks” along with Rahsaan Barber’s “Why So Blue?”
After the show, the audience left the Jazz Cave feeling anything but blue. One suspects that Nashville’s subterranean jazz scene won’t remain underground much longer. Not with the Barber Brothers around.
*Second photo by Scott Hammacker
