How to go
What: Frank Proto and Tim Berens
Where: Fairfield Community Arts Center, 411 Wessel Drive, Fairfield
When: Nov. 2, 8 p.m.
Cost: $12 (adult), $10 (student or senior)
More info: (513) 867-5348, or www.jazzalive.info
It’s not often that a pizza joint gets turned into an impromptu opera house, but award-winning double bassist Frank Proto and renowned regional guitarist Tim Berens managed to do just that once at Spinoza’s, in the Fairfield Commons Mall in Beavercreek (Greene County).
“We played ‘The Miller’s Dance’ (from Manuel de Fallas’s ‘The Three-Cornered Hat’),” Proto said. “It’s a fantastic orchestra piece that we played with just the bass and guitar. The tempo gets faster and faster, and the Spanish guitar goes crazy and we have this fancy ending that’s a disaster if we don’t end together. But we did, and the people went nuts, calling for us to do another one. So we did ‘The Toreador Song’ from ‘Carmen.’ “
Proto and Berens perform together often, and this weekend they will be bringing their unusual arrangements of jazz, blues and classical tunes to the Fairfield Community Arts Center.
“It’s poetic license,” Proto said. “An arranger takes a tune and does what he likes with it. We’ll play a mixture, start with straight-ahead jazz tunes and then start moving out of the audience’s comfort zone. There’s a Django Reinhardt song that he played very fast, but we play it as a ballad, and it’s very beautiful.”
Proto said that even though “jazz critics are among the most conservative people in the world,” their variations are typically well received by audiences, and that indeed some have come to expect it, partially due to the Spinoza’s Incident.
“Ninety percent of the time, we get them,” Proto said. “We start with the jazz set, and once we see people are actually listening, then we’ll start drifting into the more adventurous stuff. The only time we fail typically is at a place where it’s loud and people are constantly talking. We played at a Cincinnati place downtown, and there were these two women sitting three feet from us and they were talking the entire time. When we finished, people started applauding, and then these two women looked up and applauded, and they hadn’t heard a single note we played.”
Proto said that even the sound situation is improvised, not to be settled until they actually get to the venue.
“In a small place with good sound, we might just play acoustically,” he said. “We always bring our stuff, Tim has the amplifier for his guitar, but what we’ll actually use depends on soundcheck. But in the end, all we can control is how we interact with the audience. We’ve been doing this a long time.”
Proto is a prolific double bass composer, having written seven works for orchestra and more than 30 solo and chamber pieces. The legendary musicians and composers he has worked with includes Duke Ellington. Proto described the first time he met Ellington in Cincinnati in the mid-1960s when Proto was 26 years old.
“He called me at my hotel at 7 a.m.,” Proto said. “He said, ‘It’s Duke,’ and I’m like, ‘Duke who?’ There was only one Duke I’d ever heard of, and I figured my friends were playing a joke on me. I met him down at the old Sheraton Gibson Hotel on Fountain Square, and he was a wreck, just in his bathrobe. He told me he needed me to do some arrangements on a tune, and since I was young, he figured I could do the rock and roll stuff. I asked him when he needed it, and he said, ‘1 o’clock.’ “
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