My goal for 2019 is to write at least a little something about every show I see, preferably by the next day, we’ll see how it goes. I will compile weekly and post here as-is.
So, in that spirit, this is the second of hopefully 52 posts…
7jan19
First stop:
Spencer Zahn @ Nublu 151
(actually, first stop was at Jazz Gallery, tried to get into the free Berne/King/Mitchell show there, but the sign on the door said “At Capacity” and the doors were locked… too bad)
This was Spencer Zahn (bass and assorted electronics) backed by Dave Harrington (guitar/electronics), Jeremy Gustin (drums) and Jacob Bergson (keys), playing music from his recent release and one or two from a forthcoming release. The bulk of this set could best be described as weightless, just airy, ambient, light-as-a-feather stuff, a heady meeting of analog and electronic. Zahn played upright bass for much of the set, leaving only to play around on some synth-pad thing. I tend to find music made my bassists to be some of the more thoughtful and interesting and Zahn’s set was certainly fascinating.
After Spencer was Ben Goldberg’s Unfold Ordinary Mind. My plan was to stick around for 15–30 minutes of this. The band includes a ho-hum, another-night-in-NYC Nels Cline, Ches Smith, John Ellis and Donny McCaslin, but, as Goldberg stated, was put together to feature the contra alto clarinet, which was a gnarly looking horn that provided a rather futuristic low end. The music was pretty great, at least what I caught, dense composition characterized largely by the two saxophones and then moments of freeform improv that was, at its best, a glorious sort of swarm-of-bees sound, soooo much sound, so much to pick out, little patterns and big patterns, fractals of sound.
Definitely dug it but had to jet across town and thought I did a perfect job sneaking out, getting my car, jetting across town, finding an awesome parking spot at the corner of Thompson & Bleecker, walking into Le Poisson Rouge at exactly the moment the last band was to start… I mean I killed it, only to find out from the guy at the door that everything was running 20 minutes late (“20 minutes”) and the second band was still on. Caught the last song of Terence Blanchard et al’s set (some groove, some too-smooth) lamented my decision not to stick around at Nublu for at least a song or two more. Ah well, can’t win ’em all.
The Bad Plus @ Le Poisson Rouge
Actually, still winning. The room was barely half full and one of my favorite bands of the 21st century, possibly my absolute favorite band of at least the 2000–2010 decade (what do we call this?), the Bad Plus was about to play. They ended up starting at 10:40, so a good 40 minutes after they were “supposed” to, but… it was worth it. I saw the original Bad Plus 50 times, I mean, I saw them a shitload, and loved ’em to death, but in my second time seeing Orrin Evans take Ethan Iverson’s role on piano, I’m almost sold on the new version being as good, if not better than the old. The switch is like going from a single malt whisky to a really fine red wine. Evans’s playing is more fragrant and gives a softer buzz than the stiff, oaky playing of Iverson. Evans just feels right at this stage in the Bad Plus’s arc. They played almost exclusively new songs last night and since the new record isn’t on Spotify for some reason, I’m not 100% familiar with them… still totally blown away. Dave King is really rising to one-of-the-best-drummers-on-the-planet status, he’s played in a lot of different groups the last couple years (including with Julian Lage) and I think the diversity and heavy gigging (and giggling, for that matter), has pushed him to the next level. Reid Anderson is growing into a sort of genius-at-middle-age thing, as brilliant as ever. They played a song, “Seams,” I think it was called, that was like the binding link between his awe-inspiring diptych “Love is the Answer” and “Silence Is the Question,” a build-from-silence kind of thing that only he can do, just bowl-you-over intense and amazing. Wow!
The Bad Plus live “schtick” has also changed. When you see them a lot, you know the rhythm of their show. Play two songs, introduce the two songs, introduce the next song, make a weird deadpan joke, rinse/repeat, etc. Anderson introduced the first two songs last night and that was it for any talk to the audience. A major component of the TBP shows completely gone. Not only that, he didn’t say whose songs they were… used to be “this is a Dave King song,” “this is a song I wrote,” … now, he just said “a song of ours” for one tune and that was it. For a longtime observer, I found this to be verrrrry interesting. Just part and parcel for the we’re-a-real-trio feel I got from the whole show. When Ethan announced he was leaving, the strains that were there under the surface became very apparent, but now, these are three guys who really love playing with each other and it shows. I even remarked to myself how Evans wears a t-shirt and jeans and sneakers on stage whereas Ethan used to be the only member who wore a suit… although Orrin is bald and glasses, so there’s at least one similarity.
The last two songs were the only “old” songs they played, “Big Eater” and “Wolf Out,” and as I had been feeling all night, these are more or less “dance songs.” It’s fun to see jazz in a club without seats, it reminds me that jazz was originally dance music and, especially when played by The Bad Plus, it still can be. Dave King is essentially a rock drummer and these two songs especially, but many of them, really groove. Just a great energy in the room last night. Bummed I missed out on some more Ordinary Mind, but not that I went to the LPR, not in the least. Looking forward to their next NYC run.
Rev Vince Anderson & the Love Choir @ Union Pool
I love a good residency and there are few better than Rev Vince Monday nights @ Union Pool. I was not even close to ready to go home, and Union Pool is very much not-NOT-on-my-way-home, so I stopped in. I’ve only see Anderson’s early sets, but I got there as the break was ending and the room was rather empty (usually been packed the other times I’ve been there). Maybe 30–40 people total, scattered around. Binky Griptite was on guitar, I know he plays with them, but never seen, so that was already a good sign. I’m not sure if it was because Binky was in the and or it was the late set or it was empty, but the 40 minutes I saw was some of the grooviest, out-there, dare-I-say-jammy Love Choir I’ve ever seen. They opened the set with a song that stretched to over 15 minutes, with a very long funk jam intro, just the bass/drums/guitar/keys going, and it was pretty damn great. There were some ramshackle points in between, but the whole thing was very loose and Binky definitely made his presence felt. I also never heard Vince play so well, he’s a damn good keyboard player in addition to that soulful can’t-put-my-finger-on-it shit he exudes like few others. They did another crazy long funk jam/number about 30 minutes into the set and as the clock got close to 1am, I didn’t want to leave, but I figured I should leave… so I left, begrudgingly…
9jan19 Medeski Martin & Wood and Alarm Will Sound at Brooklyn Steel
Loved it!
My review is up at JamBase here.
10jan19
Birthday jammin’!
Soule Monde @ Symphony Space Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater
OK, where to even begin. The rumors were true! But that doesn’t begin to cover it.
The Thalia Theater is a small performance space downstairs from the main Symphony Space auditorium. It’s the kind of room you might see your friend’s actually-it-wasn’t-horrible play in. It seats less than 150. When we arrived the music had just started, the room was about 4/5 full, still some seats, a very small number of people dancing in the aisle along the sides and more or less everyone else sitting. After almost grabbing an open seat, a couple of us just crept down the side aisle until we were pretty much standing at the end of the front row. Unimpeded view of the stage from a few inconsequential feet away.
What did I see? Well, there’s Ray Paczkowski on organ on one side and Russ Lawton on the other, and they sound pretty good. And smack dab in the middle, taking some implicit ownership of the set, there from the absolute beginning, is none other than Trey Anastasio. What did I hear? If you have ever seen or listened to Soule Monde, theirs is a very heavy-duty organ funk, light compositions guide some focused, very danceable grooves. Add Trey to the mix? You’ve got a formidable jamband of the first degree. Trey eased his way into the set, it was a perfect situation for his sit in, he didn’t quite hang back all the way, but he wasn’t overbearing either. Just perfect. As the set went on, and it went the fuck on, the band really gelled. Cyro Baptista came out after a couple songs and all of the sudden there was a I’d-travel-to-see-these-guys-play band on stage. Having a blast, jamming like they were meant to be. Every song was uptempo, each was long enough to have some breathing room for everyone to do their thing, but didn’t dilly dally either. This was primo shit and, about a third into it, this was primo Trey. His solos were concise and focused, but mmmmannnnn, everything you love about Trey was on display throughout the 90 minutes of awesome: wanky groove licks, rapid-fire smile-inducers and even a couple of soaring endorphin releases… yeah, he missed a couple of changes here and there, but no matter, no matter at all. Then they bring out James Casey who played on a few songs and brought some through-the-roof energy to a couple sax solos and everyone in the room was pretty much thinking about how lucky they were to be there with are-you-fucking-kidding-me expressions on their smiling, dancing bodies. Because, of course, the audience pretty much all were on their feet by midway through, but more than that, the crowd was fantastic. Very little annoying that-guy-isms, just everyone getting down and appreciating the experience without being a dick about it. There was this wide chasm between the front row and the stage and I kept waiting for someone to try and fill that space — wouldn’t have been the end of the world — but no one did, everyone was content where they were. I joked near the end and also on Twitter that this band could be Trey’s “Legion of Mary.” Just a straight-ahead funk-and-groove band that had some focus on Trey, but not all the focus. Everyone in the band was critical to the show’s overwhelming success, and if any one of them had not been there, including Trey, it still would’ve been a killer set. I was particularly impressed with Russ Lawton who is a much, much better drummer than I’ve ever given him credit for. He really drove the truck all night with some sweet rhythms and a surprising amount of power and complexity. Cyro Baptista was Cyro — if you’ve see him once you’ve seen him a thousand times, his energy is infectious, his playing is both hilarious and amazing, he is one of those rare musicians that makes everything, and I mean everything he’s in much, much better. Tanen replied a tweet saying how he’s the common factor between Zorn, Anastasio and Paul Simon… is there anyone else who could be that person? Has to be Cyro. His presence last night brought things to another level. And Ray and James were pretty much spot on all night. What a treat to see Trey in a small space, sure, but even if this show had been in a theater with 5000 people, the music coming out of these guys was stellar. This will be a show/experience of the year come December, no doubt. So glad I was there.
Ethan Eubanks @ Rockwood 3 BAR
A group of us hopped in the car and headed downtown, next stop Rockwood. Not Rockwood 1 or 2, and not even Rockwood 3, not really. The bar above Rockwood 3 has a sort of balcony above the bar and they’ve started booking music there. As it so happens, Scott Metzger was sitting in with Ethan Eubanks in an organ trio. They played a bunch of standards/classics up top where you could barely see them, while people socialized and danced and even, at one point, sang along (to “Natural Woman” — great moment!). Scott couldn’t half-ass a gig if he tried, so every solo he took, even if you couldn’t see him or his guitar, was really great. Was a perfect intermezzo and any night you get to hear Metzger play guitar is a winning night.
Wayne Krantz @ 55 Bar
Which isn’t to say that we were walking away after that one. We headed across town to 55 Bar, where the early set was still going? Grabbed a cocktail next door and then returned for the late set. Beyond our party of 8 or 9, the room was rather empty, so the ensuing set of nasty, nasty, nasty Krantz — with Kevin Scott on bass and Josh Dion on drums — felt much like a private party. I love Krantz. You know this. Don’t really matter when or where, it’s going to be amazing. But there’s something I love about a Thursday night that ends at 55 Bar, that late set at 55 Christopher, especially after something else is a thing of NYC magic, perhaps my absolute favorite New York City experience. And then you have a night like last night, when Wayne caps a night like that, a night where you’ve already been blessed with an Anastasio et al. performance for the ages and a sweet and fun dose of Metzger… and that’s when words begin to fail me. Did Wayne live up to it last night? Was he a worthy end to such an evening? uh…. fuck.yeah.he.did. Except for the fact that he started about 40 minutes late, the set was a classic 5-star Krantzing. The relative emptiness of the room only kicked up the energy, with people up out of their seats getting down and whooping and hollering in between songs… and oh, those frickin songs, large-scale, seek-shelter fuck-you-ups, I was Kranzgiggling my ass off. I’ve written at length on these shows, so just know it was great.
All timer night. Good to see and share it with some of you!
11jan19
Ezra Collective @ Bowery Ballroom
Started the night off at the Bowery for some Winter Jazz Fest. Ezra Collective are a young band out of London… they explained that this was their second gig ever in NYC, their first being… Wednesday night (I think this was at LPR). The band is a pair of brothers on drums/bass who are really the heart and engine of the band and then a sax, trumpet and Rhodes player. I enjoyed the heck out of this set. The music is “jazz” for sure, but it was really dance music: funky with a nice range of influences… some ska, some rock, jazz obviously… I think the music lacked a little spontaneity, they felt more like a well-polished funk band than a jazz band, but their energy was so good, it didn’t really matter in the end. If the drummer (who was good) took 3 solos, it was 3 too many, though… I am not a fan of drums solos, and while he did know how to play a solo, they felt a bit “showing off” which made it worse. This is a small quibble. Perhaps even more than the music, though, their between-song little monologuing was quite heartfelt and, maybe bordering on it’s-too-much, but certainly on this side of that line, made you want to love them even more. Only the brothers spoke and along the way we learned how they met at some youth center with a very look-at-us-now! sense of gratitude and awe, about why they’re called Ezra Collective in a really great intro to a really great groove’d version of Sun Ra’s “Space is the Place”… just a sense that these guys are really thankful to be playing music and cherish every moment. I don’t know anything, but reading between the lines, you get the impression that these guys were probably in a situation where they might not have had a lot of opportunities and music and jazz in particular gave them both something meaningful in their lives and also an outlet for their creativity an passions that might otherwise been wasted. Who knows? That energy definitely pervaded the music thought. Glad I caught this. Also, they made us promise we’d tell everyone about them at the end so they could come back to New York and play again, so this fulfills my contractual obligations on that front.
Rayland Baxter @ Brooklyn Steel
From there, I said my second “how do you do?” of the night to my old, dear friend, the East River and headed to Brooklyn Steel. Got there about 1/3 of the way into opener Margaret Glaspy’s opening set. She played a bunch of new songs and some older ones (not that I know her material all that well), just solo with an electric guitar. It was Friday night and an opening set, so the crowd was understandably a bit chatty, but she did a good job of commanding the room. Her songs are so good, the new ones even better. I really enjoyed this set. No Julian Lage sightings, though. Rayland Baxter came on at exactly 9:45, his band had another guitarist, keys, a drummer and a percussionist. Baxter is just one of those guys that’s easy to love. lovable is the word, I guess. Last night he sounded as good as ever. I mean he literally sounded really good, his voice was strong and clear and confident and the band just felt dialed in. I’ve seen him a couple times and have loved them both, but they had a very ramshackle feel to the shows (lovable!), like a super laid-back take-it-as-it-comes, “who cares!” vibe. Last night felt like a different beast, just driven and focused, you could hear every lyric perfectly and the band just moved as a unit. I guess this might have led to less “jamming” (not really “jams,” but extended MMJ-style rock-outs) than I’d seen him do in the past, but they did have a couple great moments. The focus then, was more on the songs themselves, which is good, because he’s a phenomenal songwriter. He played more or less everything off his (excellent) new album and a few others thrown in. There were some great two-guitar moments, Baxter and his lead kind of meshing together smartly, sometimes back and forth, sometimes on top of each other. The kind of chemistry from lots of touring. The banter was great as well, particularly the multiple times when he clearly was like “whoah! I’m playing a big room right now!” I always love these genuine moments. I can only imagine what it feels like to, as he joked, expect 200 people to show up and then look out at 1000… and then hear them singing along to your songs. He played a song off his first album and told how when that album first came out he’d play in New York and then listed: the Living Room, Rockwood Music Hall (certainly referring to the OG room) and Pete’s Candy Store… small rooms, tiny rooms… rooms that see 3, 4 or 5 musicians a night, each thinking they might have what it takes, many thinking they definitely do have what it takes, and most of them, in the time between Baxter’s first album and now, most of those, what, 100's?, 1000's? of singers and players and hopers, most of them definitely not making a living playing music, many probably letting the dream go out of necessity, and so when you see Rayland Baxter stop and say “WTF!” in a a 3/4-full Brooklyn Steel (or those guys in Ezra Collective at the Bowery), it’s a nice moment. Real nice.
Joshua Abrams’s Natural Information Society @ Nublu 151
Ducked out of the Rayland show a little bit early to head back over the East River for a 3rd time (“what, you again? you know what time it is, right?” “yup!”) and actually, very surprisingly, found a very good parking spot around the corner from Nublu. Got there right between sets at the Chicago-centric Winter Jazz Fest showcase and was able to set up in a good spot for the set to come. And what a set it was. Joshua Abrams Natural Information Society is a Chicago ensemble who I’ve listened to a bunch and who seems to be a must-see favorite of whatever versions of me live over there. “The shit.” So, of course, had to see what all the buzz was about. I can just say from the start, their set was unreal. Wow! The band is Abrams on gimbri, a sort of 3-string African bass that has a sound that’s both ancient and futuristic. Shanir Blumenkranz plays one in the band Abraxas and “baddest muthafucker you ever heard” doesn’t do justice to what he does with it. But I digress, Abrams is joined by a harmonium player, bass clarinet, electric piano and, last night at least, two drummers. After some introductions they started… Abrams playing a short solo, a kind of light prologue to an epic novel of music about to be unleashed. The band all eased in, found a groove and just cycled, over and over and over and over, this wildly exotic assembly of instruments combining somewhere between the stage and my ears to create a single sound. A unique thing, not a this-kind-of-sounds-like feeling entered my mind the entire time. They continued to play for 45 minutes straight, cycling over and over and over, the music changing one atom, one molecule at a time, so that it shifted, was both static and dynamic, beautiful and haunting. Lest this sound overly esoteric, let me just say that it was groovy as hell, you could dance to it, you could move to it, you could bob your head to it… you could just close your eyes and let it wash over you, a warm bath of percolating sound. The double-drummer set up was, perhaps counterintuitively, not overpowering, both guys painting their artwork with different brushes, one guy occasionally playing a frame drum or other percussion. The six musicians put on a clinic of playing their own thing while also resonating with each other. Occasionally, through statistical anomaly or by design, they would all meet in the same place for a moment, form a shape or signal, convey a message, and then part ways, transmitting their information through some quantum interference. Can you tell I was blown away? If they ever return to NYC, and good lord, I hope I get to see these guys again, you should absolutely go.
…and then back over the river once more for good… until the next time.
12jan19
Vijay Iyer & Craig Taborn @ Le Poisson Rouge
In lieu of my original plan to try and squeeze both more Jazzfest and Greensky Bluegrass into one evening, Saturday night I ultimately decided to go with just the WJF. This was mostly because there were three sets I just really, really wanted to catch and there was no way to do anything else and see those. I think I made the right decision.
First up was the Vijay Iyer/Craig Taborn duo at LPR. After dealing with a line situation, we probably got in about 5–10 minutes after the music started. In this case, this was not a problem at all. The stage was set up with two opposing pianos, Iyer on the left side and Taborn on the right. When I got there, the music was immediately immersive, just two masters of their instrument layered on top of each other, making utterly beautiful music. This wasn’t so much dueling pianos as two pianos dancing with each other. When you hear 100% improvised music, you might have resonance or dissonance, or alternating moments of both. This was an incredibly long dose of purely resonant sound, two musicians sounding more or less like a single human with four hands, playing gorgeous music. After some length of time they stopped, awoken from a dream, and… switched places and started anew. The second half had a few sharper corners to it, but overall, the effect was the same. I’ve been awestruck by several guitar duos in the past couple years, Julian Lage with Gyan Riley or Nels Cline, for example. This set was more or less that level of skill and artistry on two pianos. Kudos to whoever made this pairing happen, serious magic.
Jenny Scheinman & Allison Miller’s Parlour Games @ SubCulture
A few blocks down Bleecker is SubCulture, our second stop. The Winter Jazzfest has spread out almost river-to-river across downtown Manhattan, but it used to be within a couple blocks radius in the West Village, when you could really quite easily hop from venue to venue. The jaunt from LPR to Subculture was reminiscent of the “old days.” This was my first time in this room, which is way too awesome to be used so seldom. I don’t even know really what goes on in that space, but I can comfortably say it is underutilized. It’s got a real exposed-brick vibe and is a kind of rare mid-small-sized seated room. We ended up with seats right on top of the stage to the side, which gave us a good view of three of the four musicians, as well as a support column… hey, you can’t have it all!
This band was Parlour Games, a relatively new group that is half friends-making-music-together/half all-star ensemble. Violinist Jenny Scheinman is an old favorite of mine. I’ve seen her dozens of times in almost as many different groups, doing a wide variety of styles, from singer-songwriter, to straight jazz, to backing Ani Difranco, country, to jamming with Bill Frisell… and no matter what, she’s always, always, totally mesmerizing. Allison Miller is a phenomenal drummer, serious chops, power and touch and a pleasure to watch play. Tony Scherr is a classic “underrated” all-star, a phenomenal bassist who brings a funk-rock energy to jazz and vice versa. The newcomer in the group is Carmen Staaf on piano who fits into this group perfectly… I read some article or interview about how she came into the band, I think she was subbing for someone with Allison and they hit it off so well or something like that, I don’t remember all the details, but the long and short of it is, she was meant to be the 4th. I think over all the groups that Jenny has played with and I think my favorite is her “Mischief and Mayhem” band, which is with Nels Cline/Todd Sickafoose/Jim Black… it’s a real “jamming” jazz band, they largely eschew the you-take-a-solo-now-I’ll-take-a-solo thing and just kind of interact with each other in an organic and free-flowing way. This band, Parlour Games, is like that, except on acoustic instruments and with a maybe lighter, softer feel. I have missed this band every time they’ve played NYC so far and I was determined to make this one and goddammit, am I glad I did. They just blew me away with their mindful playing, really reading off each other, listening, augmenting, layering… they really played like 4 friends having a blast and just lighthearted conversing with their music. Scheinman was as good as ever… she really knows how to build a solo, slowly forming themes and then building to a crescendo, playing off her bandmates, somehow leading and following both. She makes them better and lets them make her better all at once. Every single time I see Jenny play, I am struck by how unnatural the violin and the violinist look… like every other instrument is sort of designed to be “at ease” with the human body playing it, a guitar or saxophone slung along the body in a natural way, for example… but the violin is this thing that sticks out perpendicular from the neck, the violinists elbow at weird angles and then a bow adds even more acute-angle-tension to it. I only get this feeling when I see her play it, though, for some reason, because I think somehow that angularity, that tension, that sort of awkwardness, I think she somehow takes all of that and somehow brings it out in her playing. As I said, she totally mesmerizes me. Anyway, this is one helluva band, I don’t think “jazz” quite covers the sound, a wholly easy-to-love, engaged, bright music. I loved this set.
Impressions of Pepper @ Sheen Center
The third of my must-sees for Saturday night was a set titled “Impressions of Pepper.” There is an album out with the same name which has each track played by a different up-and-coming jazz group or musician doing a cover of one of the songs from the Sgt Pepper album. As was announced beforehand, this show would be a “round robin” that was sort of impressions of the impressions. What it was was each song done solo by a different artist, with some very minor overlap in between so that it was more or less one continuous set of music. So, it started with Mark Guiliana doing a drum solo while a sort of remix of the Sgt Pepper’s opening track played while a super-psychedelic animation played. Guiliana is one of those guys who, every time I see him, I think “that’s the best drummer on the planet.” He’s that good. Thought it again last night. That good. From there it was electronics and horns and piano and guitar and straight readings and more impressionistic swatches, jazz and weirdness and each song just about as different and unique as you could imagine. Liberty Ellman did a nice Help From My Friends. I think Brandee Younger was the absolute highlight (personally) doing Mr Kite on the harp, a stunning cover of the your-song-belongs-to-me-now variety. Damn, that was some ethereal, otherworldly, phenomenal shit. I also liked that she wore a Beatles t-shirt to play it. Clark Gayton on trombone was also stellar doing Within You Without You which was just outtasite. Nate Wood did his rather ridiculous Four (he plays drums, bass, “sings” and keys all at “the same time”) version of Lovely Rita. The whole set was kind of gloriously all over the place, but all so great, each musician doing their song justice, each one so different from each other… and just the kind of thing that can only happen at a festival like Winter Jazz Fest.
I considered squeezing in another set somewhere, but those three were so perfect in their own way, I was full… so I called it quits and headed home, happy as could be. Great weekend.
