Continuing to write monthly about my livemusic adventures…
ICYMI: all my FY2024 writing
ICYMI: October 2024: Special Moments
ICYMI: November/December 2024: That Time Then
ICYMI: January 2025: In the Subtext at the Bowl
February of 2025 was one fucked up month. Seriously fucked. Don’t even want to get into it, except to say that I think I redoubled my efforts to livemusic as much as possible, my safe space, so to speak. When things are this fucked, you can find solace in music and, in particular, you might be drawn to especially loud, in-your-face music as a release from the fuckedupedness. Alternatively, one might retreat to quieter music. A peaceful place, a sonic sanctuary. Looking over the shows I saw last month, there were some from column A and some from column B and some that, like most concerts, balance heavy and light, loud and quiet, fast and slow, finding strength in the dynamics. That being said, and the fulcrum of the month’s livemusic being 3 earplugs-in Widespread Panic shows notwithstanding, I’m going to be concentrating on the quiet this time around, and will reserve the right to go loud in the future, maybe next month.
There were plenty of lovely quiet moments over the course of my February showgoing, but a few shows standout in terms of their softness. Let’s start with the Jakob Bro & Joe Lovano show at the Village Vanguard. The Danish guitarist and legendary saxophonist fronted a rather massive band at the VV for their midmonth residency. The ensemble featured two drummers (Jorge Rossy & Eric Harland) and three (3!!!) bassists (Thomas Morgan, Larry Grenadier, & Anders Christensen). How does such a overstuffed monstrosity make it into an essay about quiet music? That’s Jakob Bro for you, the ultimate musical pacifist. My go-to move at the Vanguard is to sit in the back, close my eyes and zone out to the music, preferably for the late set. It feels like I’m in my own world back there. On this night I closed my eyes and for a good 45 minutes I was floating on the music, which was miraculously light as a feather. Yes, the music was like a feather floating down through the sky, tilting and lilting back and forth, rising and falling on the unseen thermal vorticies above. What magic found in that tranquility! The perfect balm for the chafing of current events.
A couple days later I was in the midst of a rather packed house at Knockdown Center. The space is cavernous and on this Friday night was filled with kids ready to dance to a set by Floating Points, the electronic musician. Again, might be hard to see where the quiet fits in here, but that’s because it was in the opening act, which was the main reason I was there. No one soothes my soul quite like harpist Mary Lattimore and while I was plenty happy to dance some cares away as well, it was that lush, peaceful harp that was the food my soul needed. For this set she was paired with Julianna Barwick and together they hushed the crowd, the harp and electronic whirrs like a cool breeze through a hot summer’s day. Mary’s brand of quiet is its own thing: pure, twinkling, in a strange way holy. When I see her play or listen to her recordings there’s a part of me that wants to listen to nothing but. I have found no better way to tune out the loudness of living.
The following night I was in St Ann’s Church in Brooklyn Heights, a gorgeous gothic sanctuary that occasionally hosts music (e.g. the Brooklyn Folk Fest in the fall). The show was part of the Reflections series which is a spinoff of Ambient Church. For the unfamiliar, these shows put ambient musicians in a church (obvs!) accompanied by phantasmic projections on the interior’s architectural features. It’s a wonder to experience, I do my best not to miss them when they’re put on in town. Last month’s version featured the legendary Daniel Lanois who put on a stunning set of music, playing pedal steel, keyboards, and other electronic wizardry. It was as if painting a landscape with quiet itself, different shades of peaceful and tranquil and silence mixed and dabbed carefully on the canvas of the church’s interior. While I have seen better visuals in this series in the past and I could have taken an entire set of pedal steel ambience, it was still something magical.
Those three shows were just what the doctor ordered for my mind and soul in February, the musical om to clear my head, if only for an hour or two. There were other moments of sublime quiet as well. Back at the Vanguard with Vijay Iyer, Linda May Han Oh, and Tyshawn Sorey, the music took on a life of its own and often would settle into a hushed interplay, three masters knowing that they don’t have to be loud to make an impression. Sam Amidon’s unique take on Appalachian folk finds as much inspiration in the silent empty spaces as it does in the melodies and lyrics. He rarely disappoints and was especially transcendent at Public Records last month. And the Punch Brothers, as part of their occasionally-ridiculous Energy Curfew Music Hour at Minetta Lane Theater, always know how to bring things down, leaning the audience in with their masterful balance of soft and loud. Bill Frisell is the master of power-in-quietude and even playing with a large ensemble at Roulette, he was able to bring the business of the real world to a standstill. Sometimes quiet doesn’t even have to be quiet at all. Natural Information Society closed out the month with a special oversized version (with William Parker, Patricia Brennan, Darius Jones, and more) at the Kitchen, an gallery space overlooking the Hudson River. This unique show coincided with the sunset, an 80 minute meditation as the sun went down over the river, the lights changing in time with the daylight’s waning, a lot of noise, but also peaceful and, yes, quiet in its droning seance.
Finally, I’ll leave you with the best quite moment I experienced in February, perhaps in a long while. It happened at the end of a rather noisy show, in fact, which made it all the more powerful. I’ll just reprint what I wrote shortly after the experience:
The thing I really want to write about was the Tim Berne show on Thursday night at Lowlands Bar, specifically the ending. There were a small number of us there, but I experienced something I don’t know I’ve ever experienced before and it’s worth recounting… I’ll just more-or-less copy and paste what I posted to social media:
Since moments of collective community are more important than ever, here’s something that happened at the Tim Berne show on Thursday. Something I don’t know I’ve ever experienced before. Something kind of deep. The “venue,” as it were, is really just a bar. In fact, before the music I remarked to a friend that it takes a special kind of person to see a space in a bar like this and think it would work as a venue for experimental music. But of course, it’s the people and the musicians that make a space appropriate, not the space itself. So, it’s kind of expected that people in the back might be chatting during the music or ordering drinks or whatever. Plenty of times I’ve been there and a percentage of the “audience” is just there to drink and hang and are often surprised to find music there. Sometimes challenging music!
Anyway, I think I’ve set the scene.
So this WAS at times challenging music. Loud and loose and free. It was also rather glorious and played at an extremely high level. It was maybe as good as I’ve heard Tom Rainey play and Nels Cline was all over the place in the best way possible. They do a “we’ll play one more” and the final piece gets very intensely awesome and then slowly quiets down, a classic “fade to silence” and the band finally reaches the end and stops playing and… band and audience suddenly found themselves in silence. No one was chatting, no one was clinking a glass or coughing or closing the door to the bathroom. It was true silence. And it caught me off guard and I think it caught everyone off guard. Normally a silence like that lasts a few seconds and then someone claps and everyone claps and that’s how shows end. But something about this quiet was profound and everyone clearly felt it. Because no one clapped. No one DARED to break the silence. It was clear that everyone was listening rather deeply to the music. And by “everyone,” I mean everyone. And so it lingered… and lingered… and lingered. It was a deep shared moment. Maybe several moments. I’m not exaggerating when I say it was not many seconds, but multiple minutes and it felt like hours. But it wasn’t an awkward silence. It was the opposite. It was a quiet thing to luxuriate in. I could have sat in that moment forever. Felt like home.
Finally Tim quietly introduced the band — Tom Rainey, Elias Stemeseder, Nels Cline… and that was that. Applause, chit chat, tabs settled, the door opening into the chilly Gowanus night. Chills indeed.
February Roundup:
35 shows in 25 nights of seeing music = $95 donated as part of the #livemusicchallenge to the ACLU.
Five Star Shows seen in February:
! Vijay Iyer/Linda May Han Oh/Tyshawn Sorey @ Village Vanguard
! Sam Amidon @ Public Records
! Bill Frisell @ Roulette
! Widespread Panic @ Hard Rock in Atlantic City (x3)
! Lucy Dacus @ St Ann of the Holy Trinity
! Jakob Bro/Joe Lovano @ Village Vanguard
Reviews (for Bowery Presents) from January:
Father John Misty @ Kings Theatre
Thievery Corporation @ Terminal 5
I have started a new Instagram account solely for recommending new under-the-radar releases including weekly new-music playlists on Spotify, Tidal, and Apple. It can be found here. Check it out!
