CerritosInk

Reviews of shows from the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts and other local venues published by the Los Cerritos Community News. The writer and paper are in their twentieth year of covering these events.

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Location: Fear City, Ca., United States

"My name is Addison DeWitt. My native habitat is the theater. In it I toil not, neither do I spin. I am a critic and commentator. I am essential to the theatre - as ants to a picnic, as the boll weevil to a cotton field." George Sanders in "All About Eve"

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Norman Brown and Gerald Albright March 15, 2014


Norman Brown and Gerald Albright Fill It Up at Cerritos

               Glen Creason

     A full house in a festive mood greeted two master musicians on Saturday night and it might be a good thing they did not pay the men by the note because there were many, many thousands that ricocheted around the Performing Arts Center. Veterans of many a concert and musical  genre Norman Brown, the guitarist with the 78 rpm fingers and Gerald Albright, the saxophonist with the hurricane-like lungs filled it up while the well-dressed crowd rocked in rhythm all night.  Both men have plenty of soul and depth of musical understanding but the truly amazing part of this concert with the skill mixed with unreal stamina. Albright claimed to be AARP but he must be dipping his horn into the fountain of youth. Norman Brown heats that Eastman guitar up to white hot degrees.
     Norman Brown opened the show with some opening chords from “Shaft” and the concert then went all over the musical map with R&B, Blues, Pop, Jazz and Funk having destinations met in the mixed bag of fevered playing by both gents. He romped through “Love’s Holiday” from Earth Wind and Fire’s repertoire then visited the pretty hot smooth jazz of “After the Storm” with audience scat-participation. In a big 180 he moved through Jimi Hendrix’s “Who Knows” to “Keep It Movin’” with Gerald Albright engaging him in hot traded licks on their respective axes. Couples cuddled to “Any Love” and the first half closed with a brisk “Take a Ride.”
     Albright kept the pulses pounding in the his half especially in the wild “It’s a Man’s World,” which was followed by surprisingly high-octane “Bermuda Nights,” followed by the astoundingly fiery “Close to You” which put some hot sauce on the Carpenters song. In the finishing kick the romantic energy surged with “My My My,” a truly terrific “True Colors,” and with the help of the tireless Norman Brown “Champagne Life” which put the house on its feet where it stayed toward a grander conclusion.


     

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