At the top of this show, a famous quote is echoed. “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture.” This is a fair assessment. However, the talking in The Count Meets the Duke: The Andersons Play Basie and Ellington only augments this homage to the full lives and eminent careers of Count Basie and Duke Ellington. At 59E59 Theaters, playing against a backdrop of Al Hirshfeld caricatures, twin brothers Will (alto saxophone, clarinet and flute) and Peter (tenor saxophone and clarinet), backed by Jeb Patton on piano, Clovis Nicolas on bass and Phil Stewart on drums, share an infectious energy that sets the rhythm and tone for this well-crafted 90-minute show. Spirited renditions performed in sinuous continuity are interspersed with impressively researched anecdotes, juxtaposed with background projections of the two musical giants. The latter’s parallel careers, mutual admiration and album collaboration First Time! The Count Meets the Duke are presented in a way that brings to life an era and musical movement that prevails in most modern music genres.
The set-list, split into two biographical halves, showcases in the Basie corner, "Blues in Hoss' Flat," "Cute," "L'il Darlin," "Corner Pocket" and "Midgets" and in the Ellington corner, "Main Stem," "Blood Count," "Ad Lib on Nippon" and "Single Petal of a Rose" to name but a few. Rich, warm piano tones and bracing percussion underscore the Anderson twins’ back-and-forth improvisations very naturally. "Battle Royal" from Basie and Anderson’s joint album manifests the flair of its composition by virtue of these five accomplished musicians.
Between numbers, chronological stories involving brothel gigs, competing jazz band baseball teams, the Queen of England-inspired Ellington piece "Queen’s Suite," collaborative work with Freddie Green, Neal Hefti, Billy Strayhorn and many more are kept light and yet concise. Projected clips of the Count and the Duke’s television and film cameos and performances include appearances in Blazing Saddles and What’s My Line? as well as a finger-snapping head-nodding lesson from Ellington on how to appear cool.
The career arc of Basie and Ellington brought them up through the touring ranks of Kansas City, Chicago and New York to stardom and then legend within their own lifetime. Despite the genre’s slip from its original subversive countercultural stance to - in this case - a sit-down deferential audience, the Andersons, Patton, Nicolas and Stewart do a tremendous job of reviving and preserving two great 20th-century legacies.
