David Adler
August 2001

New York @ Night
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By David R. Adler

"We Are Destroyed"

At Joe’s Pub on July 29, Howard Fishman and his quartet performed an ambitious musical theater piece developed in conjunction with the Joseph Papp Public Theater. Titled "We Are Destroyed," the project tells the disturbing story of the Donner Party, a group of California-bound pioneers who set out from Illinois in 1846, only to become stranded while attempting to cross the Sierras. Half of them perished in the elements, and some of the survivors resorted to cannibalism before they were finally rescued. The story came to symbolize the perils of westward expansion, sounding a sour note in an otherwise triumphalist narrative of American nation-building. (It is incredible to think that merely 150 years ago or so, travel to California was a life-threatening proposition.)

Fishman, a diligent student of the theater and of American roots music, employed the unique musical language he’s developed with his quartet to bring this harrowing historical episode to life. He wrote a suite of new songs and a spoken-word text, presenting the story as a dramatic reading, set to music, combining apocalyptic poetry, psychodrama, and philosophical reflection. The main speaking roles fell on Lethia Nall and Rinne Groff, the two non-instrumentalists. But violinist Russell Farhang played the role of George Donner, the leader of the ill-fated party, while trumpeter Erik Jekabson and bassist Jonathan Flaugher were also given bit parts, often providing welcome bits of comic relief. Music and text, musicians doubling as actors of a sort — you get the idea. This is unconventional stuff that could easily fall apart under its own weight. But well-crafted songs, compelling subject matter, and novel presentation kept the show afloat. Fishman broke character and paused the production about halfway through to greet the audience with a good-natured quasi-apology, explaining that what they were witnessing was a work in progress. The show will likely go through several more incarnations in the hope of moving next door, to a full production under the auspices of the Public Theater.

Two Altos, One Night

Our first stop on the evening of July 26 was the Jazz Gallery, to check out altoist Miguel Zenon and his acoustic quartet. Zenon has recently worked with Either/Orchestra, David Sanchez, and Jack Bruce; he makes some arresting contributions to bassist Stephan Crump’s new Accurate release, Tuckahoe. In performance, he comes across as soft-spoken, but his alto playing is aggressive and hard-edged, as is his writing. He’s also not shy about his politics, as the "Paz Para Vieques" patch on his baseball cap makes clear. Joining him at the Gallery were Aaron Goldberg on piano, Reid Anderson on bass, and Dan Weiss on drums — three advanced, expressive players who gave the music an open-ended, modern edge. Zenon can burn, but he can also pull back and play lyrically on a traditional Latin tune like "Alma Con Alma."

Hopping over to the Vanguard, we caught alto/soprano man Steve Wilson during his first run as a leader at New York’s most prestigious club. On hand were Bruce Barth on piano, along with the two luminaries who graced Wilson’s 1998 Stretch release, Generations: bassist Ray Drummond and drummer Ben Riley. Wilson set up a couple of the tunes with strong unaccompanied intros; highlights included the mellow "Ms. Angelou" and Drummond’s "I-95" (there’s a good version of the latter on Joe Locke’s Beauty Burning). Catching the crowd off-guard, Wilson then introduced special guest Wynton Marsalis, who approached the bandstand and helped wrap up the set with burning renditions of "Hot House" and "Bag’s Groove." Barth’s comping under Wynton was one of the set’s greatest pleasures — jazz dialogue at its most refined.

Then something extraordinary happened. On "Bag’s Groove," when Ben Riley set Barth’s solo in motion with an exquisite ride cymbal glide, a look of pained reverence and emotion came over Wynton — and remained for a good while. Love Marsalis or hate him, when you strip away all the bluster and belligerence, this is what he’s really about. In this intimate room, far removed from TV cameras, his love for jazz was written on his face. Here, at a distance from all the polemics of the past decade or so, one could see into Marsalis’s heart and understand what makes him tick. Somehow, labels like "neoconservative" seemed entirely inadequate, at least for a moment.

Wilson steered all this raw inspiration with aplomb, remaining firmly in the leader’s role throughout. Admirers turned out all week long to help celebrate his Vanguard debut: Russell Malone, Victor Goines, Kenny Barron, Max Roach, and Benny Powell, to name a few.

Two Pianos, One Stage: Orrin Evans & Aaron Goldberg

Back at the Jazz Gallery the next night, we heard Orrin Evans and Aaron Goldberg make their contribution to the venue’s "Four Hands/88 Keys" series. The "four hands" scenario didn’t interest Evans, however, and so Goldberg brought along a Rhodes. The two switched off between electric and acoustic during their first set, which included fairly abstract readings of "Solar" and "I Mean You," a nice Goldberg original titled "Sea Shanty" (from Unfolding), and Freddie Waits’s "Two Faces of Nasheet," once recorded by Mulgrew Miller. Both were in fine form despite the off-the-cuff nature of the gig; Evans’s highly rhythmic approach worked well in tandem with Goldberg’s technically ornate flights.

Earlier in the week, Evans played a two-night stint at Zinc Bar, a nice place if you don’t mind cramped quarters. The $5 cover is a strong point in its favor. The pianist had Sam Newsome on soprano and Nasheet Waits on drums, along with his fellow Philadelphians Ralph Bowen on tenor and Mike Boone on bass. This quintet raised the roof with some hard-hitting, adventurous music, much of it drawn from Evans’s latest Criss Cross release, Listen to the Band. Evans doesn’t come up from Philly all the time. When he does, he’s worth catching. His Imani label, incidentally, just reissued an early trio date called Déjà Vu, featuring Matthew Parrish on bass and Byron Landham on drums.

Of Birthdays and Social Occasions

Guitarist Liberty Ellman turned 30 on a Tuesday, so he had a ready-made party spot: Ciel Rouge, the stylish little bar in Chelsea where his trio has been headquartered on Tuesdays for the last year and a half. Regular drummer Derrek Phillips was on the road with Greg Osby, so the marvelous Elliot Humberto Kavee sat in. Kavee is one of those drummers who can play with furious intensity and still play quietly. Even in his most heated moments you could hear a pin drop in the room. The trio was especially open and loose, meditating on long, mysterious vamps, with Kavee at times cutting across the rhythm with a hyper-fast drum-n-bass figure — just one example of the polyrhythmic ingenuity of these players. Out to celebrate Ellman’s big night were Vijay Iyer, Aaron Stewart, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Joel Harrison, Henry Threadgill, Tom Terrell, and more.

Vijay Iyer, Ellman’s close compatriot and fellow Bay Area expat, holds the piano chair in Greg Tate’s experimental band Burnt Sugar. Tate made his mark as a hip-hop journalist in the early 90s, writing mainly for the Village Voice. At Tonic on July 19, his 14-piece band was all over the place, in a good way. One got the feeling, however, that it was more fun to be on stage than in the audience. Tate stood up front with his back turned, making hand signals, giving nods, and otherwise directing the freely improvised flow of the music. It’s a process Butch Morris has termed "conduction"; Vijay Iyer likens it to mixing, DJ-style. Some of the material, like Hendrix’s "Castles Made of Sand," is rehearsed. Free-form space rock is about as close as one could get to a description, but whatever you call it, the interaction between Tate and the band is quite riveting at times. Amid a certain amount of noodling, one hears aesthetic choices being made and carried out. "This is my big band gig," Iyer quips. "The group is a kind of community, and every gig is like a social occasion."

The Hip-Hop International

French trumpeter Erik Truffaz (the "z" is silent) has earned a lot of ink for his attempts to marry jazz with underground dance music. He’s not in the U.S. often, but he did come through on July 7 for a one-night stand at Tonic, which was packed to the gills. The music was loud, but the volume in this case served the music well. Essentially this was a hip-hop show; rapper Nya was on hand, contributing freestyle lyrics on every tune and doing a ragamuffin dance that made him seem boneless. Christophe Calpini (on drums) and Fred Hashadourian (on samples) are together known as Mobile In Motion, the duo that contributed a remix of "The Dawn" on Truffaz’s new Blue Note release, Revisité. With them were also Patrice Moret on double bass and Patrick Muller on Fender Rhodes. Everyone in the first two rows was dancing — and the dancing grew particularly vigorous and ecstatic when Nya dug in his heels with his rhyming.

Truffaz’s presence was somewhat aloof; he sat on a stool throughout, his world-weary face betraying little emotion. But the band was fiery, and it fed off the excitement of the audience, making Truffaz’s studio efforts sound tame in comparison.

R.I.P. Internet Café

One of New York’s cheapest and best creative music venues has shut its doors for good, thanks to routine noise complaints and a lack of soundproofing. In terms of the talent it attracted, the Internet Café, a very modest space on East 3rd Street near 1st Avenue, gave the Knitting Factory a run for its money. Tony Malaby, Bill McHenry, Rez Abbasi, and many others gave inspired performances there. Going back a few years, we cling to hazy memories of Tom Rainey’s trio with Chris Potter and Scott Colley, and Matthew Garrison’s trio with Ben Monder and Marlon Browden. The space for creative music in New York just got a little smaller.