Winard Harper at Twins 4/24/01

by Alan Greenblatt

Winard Harper wears a Mona Lisa smirk when he gets a good solo. Like so many drummers he builds up to a blur, his hands racing around, whacking on things, inspiring ecstasy in the crowd. What makes his solos interesting are the variations he finds in sounds. His patented move is to tap his largest cymbal with the right hand stick and quickly catch the far end of it with his left hand, stopping its noise. He also will press down on the skins with one stick to bend the sound made by the other, an adaptation of African talking drums.

Harper led an excellent sextet Friday at Twins. Brian Horton on tenor sax played perhaps less than anyone but provided the great melodic highlights, as far as I was concerned, beautifully limning (I love that word, it's so ridiculous) the ballad "Never Let Me Go" and giving a blistering three or four minute solo on his own blues called "Southern Comfort." It was one of those solos that make you think, could I even talk rapidly like that for several minutes without ever releasing a wrong syllable, led alone make the whole thing melodic?

Horton's solo was followed by trumpeter Patrick Rickman. Rickman took the already rapid tempo and made it double time. At first this was exhilarating and impressive but as with all his solos it quickly became just a panoply of notes, lacking in some coherent idea to lend the thing shape.

It was standard 'round-the-bend relays of solos among the guys on most numbers. Nick Rolfe was a good chord-pumping accompanist and percussionistt Kevin Jones helped Harper create a very solid beat. A bass player who was introduced with the unlikely name of Thaddeus Expose boasted a hearty sound.

They played some not so overexposed standards such as "The Good Life" and Nat Adderly's "Work Song" (which, it occurred to me, must have provided the basis for the Simon and Garfunkel song that goes, "we got a groovy thing going, baby"). It was just very solid, big sound stuff in front of a smallish crowd.

This was probably my last visit to the old Twins, a little storefront place on a lonely block of hair cutters and laundromats up off of 16th Street. It's a friendly sort of place that generally doesn't draw the top names. They have been planning a move to U Street for a while and supposedly will make it next month. One of the twin sisters who run the place told me the new spot will be twice the size and it's certainly a better location, Metro-accessible and all. We wish them success.