Trending
Widely acclaimed for their stellar artistry, the husband-and-wife duo Tuck & Patti have performed together for around 35 years.
Mesmerizing audiences with a sublime, refined stylistic approach to pop standards and originals, the magical interplay of Tuck Andress’ elegant guitar and Patti Cathcart’s sensual, soulful vocals prompted Grammy-wining vocalist Bobby McFerrin to hail them as “the best duo on the planet.”
Leading jazz critic Leonard Feather pronounced: “Not since Ella Fitzgerald met Joe Pass on stage has there been so felicitous a mating as Tuck and Patti.” And a Los Angeles Times review raved, “They are, quite simply, one of the most remarkable pairings in pop and jazz history.”
On their most recent album, “I Remember You,” Tuck and Patti focus exclusively on the Great American Songbook, breathing new life into such chestnuts as “The Very Thought of You,” “A Foggy Day,” “It Might as Well Be Spring” and “Old Devil Moon.”
“The results are as wonderful as you’d expect,” noted an AllMusic review, “just wonderful in the standard Tuck and Patti way: technically incredible yet still tasteful, warm and informed by the kind of nearly telepathic musical sympathy that only develops when you combine three decades of successful music-making with three decades of happy marriage.”
“It was just one of those things that was always meant to happen,” says Andress about finally releasing a standards project.
With such a vast array of classic songs available, one wonders how they selected their material.
“As we started to record, the CD took on a shape, and there were some that we rehearsed that just didn’t fit this record,” Cathcart explains. “For us it was definitely, so that’s why everyone who did this made so many songbooks because it’s crazy to choose.”
“One of the first steps was not to be overwhelmed by everything that had happened in the past,” adds Andress. “Finally, in our particular world, we had to say what would be a good way to do the songs.”
One of the world’s leading finger-style guitarists, Oklahoma-born Andress studied piano as a youth and eventually switched to guitar, relocating to the San Francisco Bay Area to study music at Stanford University. Over time, he developed a virtuoso, multilayered playing technique that has thrilled critics and audiences.
A reviewer marveled about his playing on the duo’s “Learning to Fly” album: “The solo on which Andress plays both the lead and the bass-lines simultaneously with no overdubbing re-establishes his right to the position he holds near the top of the guitar-god heap.”
Before he met Cathcart, Andress played briefly with the house band on the Sonny and Cher TV show, and performed with a number of soul and funk outfits including The Gap Band.
“I was already a good guitar player when we got together, but I developed this unusual, personal style playing with Patti,” Andress explains. “It was like starting over again with Patti.”
A San Francisco native, Cathcart is a classically trained vocalist who performed with a number of Bay Area bands, including Kingfish with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir.
“My mother had a big record collection that ranged from Big Band to all the great singers to blues bands and all the great gospel groups of the day,” Cathcart recalls. “One of my first major influences was Sammy Davis Jr. I learned about phrasing and scatting from hearing him sing.”
The Grammy-winning duo describe their 1978 meeting as musical love at first sight. Their first three albums, “Tears of Joy” (1988), “Love Warriors” (1989) and “Dream” (1991), established their glowing international reputation with a winning mix of original songs and striking covers by artists as varied as The Beatles, Santana, Jimmy Cliff and Stevie Wonder.
From the beginning, they made an agreement that their music should have a positive message, “that every song had to speak to and be played from our hearts,” says Cathcart. “We don’t sing or play a single note that doesn’t come from our hearts. We are convinced that this principle is one of our secret weapons.”
Best known for their distinctive interpretations of songs, from Cyndi Lauper’s classic “Time After Time” to the Jimi Hendrix medley “Castles Made of Sand/Little Wing,” the duo’s remakes are distinguished by their superlative musicianship and judicious use of space.
“That’s the thing that’s so beautiful and also addicting about the duo format,” says Cathcart. “There are songs you’ve heard and loved, and then suddenly hearing them in a sparser way, the lyrics are revealed in a way that they weren’t before and nuances in the melody. And we’re not afraid of the silence in between notes, having that beautiful breathing space where it all sinks in.”
Valuing recording live and improvising in concert, the musicians will typically not play a song the same way twice.
“We are improvisers at heart,” Cathcart continues. “The music is never exactly the same way. We have arrangements of various tunes, but it’s always open to how they will be transmitted on a certain day. It would be very difficult for us to do a song exactly the same way. After all this time for it to still be exciting, and have songs that we’ve played thousands of times just feel like it’s the first time is amazing, because we follow the music and have a cool conversation. It’s amazing to both of us that we get on stage and it’s always fresh.”
*****
TONIGHT
Three celebrated island musicians, Grammy-winning slack key guitarist Jeff Peterson, taiko virtuoso Kenny Endo and shakuhachi master Riley Lee, have teamed up to perform as the trio Island Breeze.
Peterson and Lee have collaborated in the past, releasing four duet albums including “Haleakala,” which won a Hoku Award for Instrumental Album of the Year in 2009. They joined forces with Endo in 2012 during a weeklong artists residency in Honolulu.
The unique trio has just released a self-tilted CD that draws from Japanese tradition and Hawaiian influences.
Originally trained as a jazz musician in the Asian-American cultural renaissance of 1970s California, Endo has a career that included time with the renowned San Francisco Taiko Dojo, the first kumi daiko group outside of Japan. He has the honor of being the first non-Japanese national to have received a natori (stage name and masters degree) in hogaku hayashi (classical drumming). His most recent CD, “Convergence,” features a collaboration with flutist Kaoru Watanabe.
Lee began playing the shakuhachi (bamboo flute) in Japan in 1971, studying with Chikuho Sakai until 1980, and has been a student of Katsuya Yokoyama since 1984. He was given the rank of dai shihan (grand master) in 1980.
A resident of Australia, Lee has released more than 50 albums, including “Music for Zen Meditation,” “Postcards from Bundanon” and most recently, “Shakuhachi Water Meditations.”
Well known in Hawaii for his electric repertoire that ranges from Hawaiian to jazz and classical music, Peterson was among the artists featured on the recording “Slack Key Guitar Volume 2,” which won the first-ever Grammy Award for best Hawaiian Album.
The Maui-born musician won a 2014 Hoku Award for Slack Key Album of the Year for his latest CD, “Slack Key Travels.” Among his concerts this year, he performed with Indian slide guitar master Debashish Bhattacharya and classical virtuoso Ben Verdery.
* Island Breeze, featuring Jeff Peterson, Kenny Endo and Riley Lee, present a CD release concert tonight at 7:30 in the McCoy Studio Theater. Tickets are $30 and $40 for premium seating and are available by calling 242-7469, at the MACC box office or online at www.mauiarts.org.
*****
One of the most distinctive voices in American music, Mavis Staples will play the MACC on Sept. 25. As a member of the seminal gospel/soul group The Staple Singers, she was on the front lines of the Civil Rights struggle in the 1960s. In the ’70s, the band scored a number of hits including “I’ll Take You There,” “Respect Yourself” and “Let’s Do It Again.”
A Grammy-winning solo artist, she has recorded with a variety of musicians including Prince, Aretha Franklin, ’70s Willie Nelson and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy. Tickets go on sale to the public Saturday and are available by calling 242-7469, at the MACC box office or online at www.mauiarts.org.