Dafnis Prieto: FlynnSpace, Burlington, VT 10/29/09

On course to attain a position comparable to the great drummer/bandleaders in jazz history, Dafnis Prieto and his band played an imaginative single set at FlynnSpace October 29th. The six musicians were able to display their individual and collective talent through the astute guidance of their precocious leader.

The Cuban born Prieto highlighted Burlington’s 2008 Discover Jazz Festival and this latest appearance fulfilled expectations of those who had seen him, likewise stirring all who attended this show purely out of curiosity. The music was as driving as it was graceful right from the very start, the unusually creative orientation of the room serving to highlight how tight was the band: with the three horns upfront and the trio of  rhythm players behind, their alignment was a metaphor for the way drums bass and piano buttressed the woodwinds on "Sooner or Later." .

Roiling percussion beneath lyrical melody lines in the early going gave way to varied arrangements when the horn players came and went from stage front. Prieto’s playing sounded more like a percussion section than the work of a single instrumentalist, so he really didn’t need solos to call attention to himself; the ones he did take however, were less showboating that personal expression: his intervals were as seamless as his original material. Introduced as were many of the tunes with witty repartee, Prieto’s unusual turn on vocals might’ve been mistaken for an excerpt from an Indian raga had he not accompanied himself on claves.

If only to hear the lyricism so prevalent in a tune like "Taking The Soul for A Walk" one more time,  the increasingly rhythm-oriented latter third of this approximately hour long set-might’ve been capped by one more full band number. And there might’ve been an encore given the prolonged deserved adulation from the capacity crowd after the band bowed one final time.  But such observations can’t deny that, this late autumn evening in Vermont, Dafnis Prieto provided ample evidence how and why he is ascending to the upper echelons of contemporary jazz.

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