LIVE: Keith Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble @ The Cock ‘n Bull, 07/26/2022

Before the plague, before the Van Dyck was sold, the first Tuesday of the month there belonged to Keith Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble – the loudest, biggest, most soulful, and hard-swinging sound in town.

Although nearly everything has changed, this past Tuesday belonged to the Keith Pray Big Soul Ensemble in another town but with many of the same players making that brash and brassy beautiful big sound.

The Cock ’n Bull in Galway, where Pray plays with smaller bands (see below), recently expanded its outdoor band shed. All 17 Big Soul Ensemble players packed in there together on a beautiful Tuesday evening. Even after years more or less apart, their sound was as tight as the seating. 

And I mean that both on the packed bandstand, and in the dining, drinking, listening crowd, which filled the paved patio on the same level as the musicians and spilled down across a lawn-chairs-and-picnic-table-studded grassy slope into the woods.

Everybody was pretty damn happy – partly due to terrific weather, but mainly to play in and to hear this bursting-with-energy, bracingly modernist big band.

OK, but “modernist” doesn’t mean completely turning their backs on the past. Any complex, big tune is fair game, from anywhere/anytime in jazz history. Pray and other Big Soul Ensemble players both compose new works for the band and rearrange classic tunes freely, fluently, and sometimes ferociously.

Reaching back, for example, they opened with a brawling bust-out of Frank Foster’s “Blues in Hoss’ Flat” from the Count Basie book. They stayed right up there with Pray’s own “West Hill Shout,” then “Elements” by the band’s original keyboardist and one of its main composer/arrangers, Yuko Kishimoto, now residing back in Japan. Trumpeter Dylan Canterbury led in his own fresh, creative original “Quiet Revolution.”

Reaching back again, they did the big soul thing on “I Can’t Stop Loving You,” a longtime Ray Charles barn-burner and a fave with fans and this band, acing Quincy Jones’s bustling arrangement.

Charles Mingus’ angry, ferocious “Fables of Faubus” trashed that segregationist Arkansas governor in effigy, crying freedom. They sped up from a slow groove into frantic screams punctuated by solos from Canterbury and tenor saxophonist Nate Giroux. Take that, gov.

Then they jumped forward to the 90s with Mr. Bungle’s (that’s a band, not a person) “Retrovertigo” – a rock song jazzed up and over the moon.

Gigi Gryce’s “Reunion” massed the saxes to menacing effect, then eased into mellower tones through Pray’s alto solo and cool piano by Jon LeRoy. Stalwart bassist Lou Smaldone also got a tasty solo here before everybody jumped back in, right back on it.

A longtime fan of the late, great Sam Rivers, Pray paid tribute in his original “Sam’s Tune.” Springing from Bob Halek’s fatback drums into a soft simmer of saxes, it built big, featuring sizzling solos by Sousaphonist Dave Depau and trombonist Ben O’Shea. Sitting right in front of O’Shea in those tight quarters, baritone saxophonist Kaitlyn Fay (see below) covered her ears, but grinning, until the tune closed with massed trumpets.

Pray also took the lead, composer/arranger-wise, in Horace Silver’s “Sister Sadie,” introduced by the rhythm section, then sweeping into alternating blasts by sax and trumpet sections, Giroux’s tenor break icing the cake.

Next, the band’s great goof-ball number: Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” – maybe a jokey selection, but they swung it on the serious. It unfolded like a comic monolog, though – ethereal saxes soothing and sighing. Then it gathered momentum like a runaway truck, pushed by Depau’s Sousaphone. Dylan Canterbury had big fun on trumpet, there was some brisk sax commentary along the way, then it all simmered into mid-air.

They closed with the tenor duel of “Blues for PG” (Duke Ellington’s top tenor sax-man Paul Gonsalves), a thriller in many Van Dyck first-Tuesday sessions and a killer Tuesday at the Cock ’N’ Bull.

In this and other tunes, Pray would cue in whole sections under the soloists, challenging them and pushing them to go harder. It always worked; they always rose to the occasion.

I had missed that, and the band’s adventurous yet welcoming approach. 

That was remarkably consistent, even after a hiatus nobody wanted and some thought might never end; and even with substitutes at some positions, versus the 2019 lineup.

They included Jon LeRoy, piano; Katie Pray and Nate Giroux, saxophones; Sousaphonist Dave Depau; trumpeters Jon Bronk and Sam Veglia – and likely others I didn’t recognize. 

What has emphatically not changed is the always-in-the-pocket beat of bassist Lou Smaldone and drummer Bob Halek; and fiery solo work of trumpeters Dylan Canterbury and Chris Pasin, and trombonist Ben O’Shea. Like a no-look pass by Steph Curry, Smaldone and Halek play with telepathic precision.

As his players packed up their gear and headed into the restaurant for a late dinner, Pray said he’d sometimes thought, during the worst of the pandemic, that the Big Soul Ensemble might not play again. And in that hiatus, another area big band has formed: the Brucker-Weisse-Canterbury Jazz Orchestra. And, yes, Dylan Canterbury isn’t the only virtuoso who plays in both. But I digress.

Hearing Keith Pray’s Big Soul Ensemble roaring away again Tuesday at the Cock ’N’ Bull brought a big delighted sense of renewal, of possibility – seriously good for the soul.

Future file: Baritone saxophonist Kaitlyn Fay sings at Jazz on Jay Thursday in a quartet: Brad Monkell, bass; Cliff Brucker, drums; and Wayne Hawkins, piano. Noon. Free. 

AND Pray returns to the Cock ’N’ Bull Friday in a trio, playing saxophone with pianist Dave Payette and bassist Pat Perkinson. 6 p.m. No cover.

Photo Gallery by Rudy Lu