Cafe Concert Critique

On Thursday September 19th I attended a traditional live Jazz music concert at Cafe Stritch. Cafe Stritch was a medium sized cafe that features different styles of musical performers including garage, psych, soul and of course jazz. The interior of the cafe gave of an unmistakably urban-hipster vibe comparable to one of a San Franciscan music club in the Urban area of the city. There was upstairs seating as well a downstairs and bar-seating. The walls were constructed out of urban-brick and decorated with large paintings and photographs of Jazz Performers. The performers that night were the Aaron Germain Quartet which featured Aaron Germain on the Bass, Jeff Massanari on Guitar, Matt Clark on piano and Deszon Claiborne and drums. The show was supposed to start at 8:30 but it was postponed until approximately 8:54 pm. In order to take a full advantage of the jazz-cafe experience I order a chocolate torte, grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup in order to maximize the experience. The first song performed was a rendition of Herbie Hancock’s Tell Me a Bedtime Story. In this particular song, Matt Clark played a upright piano and Aaron Germain played a guitar. I would describe Tell me a Bedtime Story as a low, slow, snazzy tune. The drums were played softly. Tell me a bedtime story was the longest piece of the section.

For this song Aaron Germain swapped his guitar out for an upright bass and Matt Clark switched from the upright piano to the grand piano. Runaway Blues was slower that the Tell me a Bedtime story. It was full of passionate due to the fact that the tempo was slower. The bass was the most noticeable instrument in the song. Matt Clark seemed very into his piece even though the sound of the piano playing was overpowered by the other instruments. The drummer seemed very into the piece. Jeff Mansari took a rest during part of the song. The song ended rather