Special to The SunBreak by Rick Price.
With his first notes of “Harlequin” Wednesday night, guitarist Lee Ritenour had me wiping away tears. Ritenour and Dave Grusin are performing at Dimitriou’s Jazz Alley through August 28 (tickets: $28.50).
Good music hits you where you live, but be prepared: This show is an emotional ride. Ritenour invites you into a warm, intimate place, then blows your head off with high-energy funk.
At 59, Ritenour has been around: His first session work–for The Mamas and The Papas–was in 1968, when he was 16. His resume is one of the few places you’ll see “Pink Floyd” and “Frank Sinatra” on one list!
The rest of the band? Equally accomplished. If you don’t know Dave Grusin’s keyboard work from albums like Nightlines and Mountain Dance, you’ve likely heard his compositions in one of more than five dozen films, including Tootsie and On Golden Pond. On Bill Evans’ “Turn out the Stars” and “Waltz for Debbie”, he had me misting up again.
Bassist/singer Melvin Davis and drummer Dave Weckl are a fluid and powerful rhythm section. Ritenour and Davis elegantly handled the one glitch of the night, when Davis’s microphone was too quiet early in the set. In midsong, without breaking stride, they let the engineer know, and he fixed it.
The evening is fun, but also intense. Ritenour told us he’d played Bob Marley’s “Get Up, Stand Up” in Norway, right after terrorist attacks killed 77 people there, and the audience belted out the chorus as one. “Stand up for your rights!” moved him, moved us.
These guys have been playing for a long time, and they still enjoy it. If there were tears, there was also much laughter. These are masters at the top of their game, and they let us in on the fun!
