Bergonzi, Jerry
Jerry On Red
Bergonzi inherited playing the saxophone with a pianistic mentality directly from the NEC, where for a long time he had as a colleague Jaki Byard (assigned by Schuller himself), at whose school not only Fred Hersch or Jason Moran were trained, but also a classy flautist like Jamie Baum. Byard's idea that blues and gospel were the logical basis for improvising on open structures circulates densely in Jerry on Red through the reinterpretations of Monk's Pannonica, but above all in You're My Everything, which begins as a ballad in the manner of the Miles Davis Quintet and ends with a breathtaking doubling, or in Dodo's Waltz, whose interpretation can be summed up as the "art of arpeggio" skillfully tempered by blues acciaccaturas and triplet-feel à la Bird.