On working with a broad range of acts atYoshi’s…
“Since Yoshi’s is fairly top shelf for clubs, we don’treally sweat anything there. Whatever you need, we have. It’s very rarethat the P.A. needs any augmentation at this point in time…Withour current booking agent, I don’t see us delving into the pop marketas much as previous booking agents have done, but we definitely do moreof the smooth jazz, especially when the San Francisco Jazz Festival isfired up in the spring and the fall; we tend to diversify our program alittle bit, we go a little more for the Hiroshimas, the CraigChaquicos, but we still try and stay in the jazz vein.
On McCoy Tyner rehearsals…
“They’ve all worked together over the years, so it more or lessbecomes a catching up session,” says Pettit. “It’s very interesting towatch them sit around like a bunch of Jedis and go okay, this is whatwe’re going to do, okay, on to the next tune. They’ve all beendoing it 40, 50 years, so it’s really second nature to them at thispoint. A lot of the songs are standards that they’ve used toplaying for decades.”
On the differences between the two ensembles and the twoweeks…
“Because this particular residency was a kind of a tale of two cities,so to speak, the first week was very inconsistent, sonically speaking.As the week progressed Jack DeJohnette got more comfortable and washitting the drums harder, and Bobby Hutcherson was hitting the vibesharder, and they were going more for the showmanship, and basicallyevery set was different.” Pettit’s mixing goal the first week was tokeep the piano heard, yet still sounding acoustic. The second week,however, was more set-and-forget, adjusting per musician’srequests. “Dynamically speaking, the trio was just very consistent,whereas the week before, one guy would just go off and start wailing ona song while another guy was just tucking back and play quieter.”
