David Adler
August 2002

New York @ Night
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By David R. Adler

NY@Night Turns One

How time flies! With this edition, "NY@Night" enters its second year. Feel free to send me champagne.

Summer Tonic

The July heat was relentless, but so was the great music. The air-conditioned clubs were a relief in more ways than one.

Drummer Jim Black and his dormant group Human Feel assembled for a special reunion set at Tonic, their first performance in six years. All the charter members were on hand: Andrew D'Angelo on alto sax, bass clarinet, and computer; Chris Speed on tenor sax and clarinet; and Kurt Rosenwinkel on guitar, who is now playing a thinline D'Angelico New Yorker reissue (sweet). This is a bassless band, not unlike Ohad Talmor's Other Quartet or Oscar Noriega's Play Party. Its sound is unconventional and wide open, with Rosenwinkel's echoey, ethereal lines and pseudo-bass riffs balancing out the aggressive skronk of the horns. Like Rosenwinkel, Jim Black has one of the most identifiable sounds on his instrument -- a dry thwack that gives even the most abstract adventures a down-to-earth quality. His music for this band rocks, shrieks, and sometimes lyrically sings, calling for a degree of precision amid all the wild play.

Chris Speed returned the following night as part of Dave Douglas's electronics-oriented ensemble, featuring Jamie Saft on Wurli and synth, DJ Olive on turntables, Brad Jones on bass, Michael Sarin on drums, and Ikue Mori on laptop. This band has been evolving for about a year, and it has become dangerous. The music blended Douglas's free sensibilities with the hip, electric-jazz aesthetic of his new quintet. The leader's trumpet was ferocious, his stage demeanor fired-up; he was clearly thrilled by the band's mind-blowing energy. The live electronics imbued this set -- like they do every set -- with an aura of the entirely unexpected. During one stop-time interchange, Olive seized an opening and unleashed a vocal sample that leapt hilariously out of the speakers. Even the stone-faced Mori cracked a smile. For her part, Mori, with uncanny timing, conjured sounds that spoke with an almost acoustic purity, putting to rest the notion that electronics are necessarily inorganic and unfeeling.

Some two weeks later, Douglas played an uplifting set of free music at CB's Lounge, with fellow trumpeter Roy Campbell, vibraphonist Bryan Carrott, bassist Hill Greene, and drummer Susie Ibarra. For roughly 50 minutes the band explored, without breaks, traveling over cacophonous peaks and through hushed, reflective valleys. Douglas and Campbell complemented one another beautifully, the latter riveting the audience with a particularly effective, harmon-muted meditation. Carrott brought an incredible rhythmic and harmonic facility to the group -- you could really hear the influence of the Ralph Peterson Fo'tet in there at times. Somehow it all turned into "Bemsha Swing" as the set drew toward a swaggering close. Carrott took an incredible solo, quoting at least five other Monk tunes as well as "Let's Fall in Love."

Gary Giddins, in a recent JazzTimes column, spoke of the "tinkerer/builder" aspect of the jazz guitar tradition. Marc Ribot's solo show at Tonic brought it again to mind. Playing nothing but an old Gibson acoustic, Ribot tinkered with an E-bow, with paper clips, with the headstock, with a mysterious array of balloons at his feet (maybe those were for the second set). Ribot's playing is deliciously coarse, and altogether musical. Despite his unorthodoxy, he has a strong affinity for the Songbook; this set included "Everything Happens to Me," "Body and Soul," "I'm Confessin'," "Somewhere," and "Don't Blame Me." Amid the pick-scraping and wet-finger-squeaking and wild string-bending were crystal-clear harmonic and rhythmic insights and dynamic contrasts. There are moments on Ribot's marvelous solo disc Saints when you'd swear he's not playing a guitar. Seeing him live solves the riddle to some extent.

Tonic also hosted a month-long series of afternoon workshops and night performances by Steve Coleman and Five Elements. The band's lineup fluctuated from week to week; July 25's show featured Jonathan Finlayson on trumpet, Gregoire Maret on harmonica, Anthony Tidd on electric bass, Dafnis Prieto on drums, and Marivaldo dos Santos on percussion. Coleman's polyrhythmic funk has reached a stratospheric level of difficulty at this point. Tidd made it look easy, and Prieto made it look fun, grinning as he dominated one rhythmic obstacle after another. Coleman and Finlayson improvised with a stunning command, and Maret turned in some of his very best playing. There's something about the flow of Coleman's music that gets Maret going. His instrument may be awkward to play fast lines on, and also difficult to amplify, but he rose above both problems completely.

Avant Icons

Butch Morris and his large ensemble Skyscraper played a month of Tuesdays at the new Bowery Poetry Club, a roomy space with a good layout but less-than-ideal acoustics. The July 23 hit featured special guest Elliot Sharp, who put those acoustics to the test with his ultra-edgy guitar. With baton in hand, Morris guided the group -- which included Vijay Iyer and Anthony Coleman on keyboards, Tyshawn Sorey on drums, and many others -- through a "conduction," a group improvisation shaped by Morris's non-verbal, real-time instructions. Several months ago I wrote about Greg Tate's band Burnt Sugar, which operates along the same lines, although Tate would be the first to agree that Morris is the real article. It's hard to tell with Morris facing away from the audience, but there are times when his body language seems to register frustration. To get a large group of independent-minded players to capture his abstruse visions must be exceedingly difficult. The beauty lies in the challenge, and the countless repeated attempts.

To the list of Iridium's more adventurous bookings, add Henry Threadgill's Zooid, with its highly unconventional instrumentation -- Liberty Ellman on acoustic guitar, Tarik Benbrahim on oud, Dana Leong on cello, Jose D'Avila on tuba, and Elliot Humberto Kavee taking over for Dafnis Prieto on drums. Threadgill summons a craggy but funky sound from this group. The awkward but appealing flow of the grooves tends to give him the dancing bug -- he often shimmies in place when he's not making pointed declarations on flute and alto sax. Ellman plays his acoustic through a Fender amp and adds volume pedal swells to the mix; his plucky, quasi-electrified sound blends well with Benbrahim's oud, which can often be heard doubling melodies with the leader. D'Avila supplies a kind of low-end perpetual motion -- not quite a bass function, but something like it -- while Leong moves between pizzicato and arco and Kavee holds it together with his impeccable time and melodic sense. When Kavee solos, the centrality of percussion in this music is truly revealed. Put another way, everyone in this band, in some sense, approaches his instrument like a drummer.

Biddies4ever

"Image" doesn't have to entail phony calculation, despite what the anti-pop-culture police tell us. The best bands don't try too hard, however. They just are who they are; that's image enough. Take The Lascivious Biddies. This irrepressible, drummerless, all-female foursome is Deidre Rodman on piano and melodica, Amanda Monaco on guitar, Saskia Sunshine Lane on double bass, and Lee Ann Westover on vocals. What a show! (And I disdain exclamation points.) You might hear everything from Cole Porter to Lesley Gore to the Go-Gos. There's a high tongue-in-cheek quotient, to be sure -- dig their semi-psycho, minor-key polka treatment of "It's Only a Paper Moon" -- but the playing is strong and snappy, like the Nat Cole Trio running on girl power. Westover fronts the band with her terrific pipes and becomes one with the audience; some of the cleverest songs are hers, including the Biddy "Anthem." There's something else, though, and that something is Deidre Rodman. The pianist/composer made her debut on Sunnyside last year with Sun Is Us, a must-hear featuring Tony Malaby and other fine players. Rodman's Biddy songs are mesmerizing; they reveal a different side of her and give the group a dimension of melancholy and transcendence.

The Bad Minus One, Plus Two

When a musician starts reciting the lyrics to the standard tunes he plays, you know he's been spending a lot of time around pianist Ethan Iverson. Such is the case with tenor saxophonist Bill McHenry, who, at Cornelia Street, co-led a quartet with Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, and drummer Jeff Williams. Iverson, however, doesn't just recite a lyric. He performs it; on occasion he even sings it. McHenry is more casual, announcing a song title and then almost reluctantly continuing with the first lines, as if he can't quite stop himself. Anyway, the quartet doesn't play out often, but last year they put out a nice Fresh Sound CD, Live at Smalls. This is a standards band, playing everything from "As Time Goes By" to "Night In Tunisia" with a kind of nonchalant, left-of-center abandon. They're not as wild as The Bad Plus, Iverson's loud, roguish trio with Anderson and drummer David King. But they do put a cheeky if understated spin on these old chestnuts, with Williams's loose, chattering traps and Anderson's unpredictable bass lines buttressing McHenry's smooth but outward-leaning tenor and Iverson's leaping, clanging ivories.

Electric Bebop

Paul Motian's Electric Bebop Band pulled into Birdland for three nights, with Jerome Harris on bass, Ben Monder and Steve Cardenas on guitars, and Tony Malaby and Chris Cheek on saxes. At 71, Motian pilots the EBB with keen vision and tremendous power, paying no heed whatsoever to genre boundaries. The late set, first night, included Bud Powell's "Celia," Monk's "Introspection," and Herbie Nichols's "2300 Skidoo," as well as the ballad "It Never Entered My Mind," which Malaby embraced with full-bodied vigor. For solos Motian likes to play off the guitar and sax pairs in varied ways. First Malaby and Cheek might trade fours or eights, then blow simultaneously; Monder and Cardenas then repeat the process, creating a dance of whispy but pointed lines. But when the band takes it out -- as they did on at least two occasions -- all patterns are abandoned, as jagged sonic shards collide and evolve. Motian initiates thunderstorms of tom-toms and cymbals but always leaves space, allowing the sun to peek through.

Turntable Sessions

Billy Martin of Medeski, Martin & Wood (aka "illy B") kicked off a weekly turntable series at the Bowery Poetry Club, which will feature different DJs and jazz improvisers every week. The July 31 show belonged to DJ Olive, with Matt Moran on vibes, Marty Ehrlich on tenor, alto, flute, and alto flute, and illy B on drums and miscellaneous percussion. Not only did the set merge electronic and acoustic sounds; it also bridged improvisational worlds. The music was highly experimental and very out -- whispery and atmospheric at times, screamingly intense at others. But there was a remarkable amount of listening going on, as Olive paired off with the instrumentalists one by one, with the others joining intuitively as the situation evolved. Hip-hop beats and scratching played a role, but not a major one -- Olive's aesthetic is unpredictable like that. An interesting aside: the audience was almost entirely white, male, ages 25-35. It was as if I'd walked through a cloning machine on my way in.

Buster Serves Us Well

July witnessed the Village Vanguard debuts of pianist George Colligan and drummer Matt Wilson, both of whom enlivened the Buster Williams quartet, with alto/soprano saxophonist Steve Wilson out in front. The week's penultimate set, which was jam-packed, began with "Song for Sensei," a bracing romp through 9/8 and 6/4 time. Other highlights included a smoothly burning "All of You," a scintillating piano/bass duet on "Little Girl Blue," and a funky breakdown reading of "I Didn't Know What Time It Was." Williams also offered his beautiful ballad "Christina" and his lively "Magic Samba," the lyrics of which he recited at the end of the set (fittingly, Ethan Iverson was there). Just before the house lights went up, the quartet played one -- and only one -- lilting chorus of "Body and Soul," offering a short, teasing glimpse before sending us home. What a contrast from Marc Ribot's version (not to mention Anthony Braxton's a couple of months ago). "We trust that we've served you well," said Buster before signing off. Never better.

Snapshots

Jeremy Pelt, fronting a sextet, played the Jazz Standard in support of his Fresh Sound/New Talent debut, Profile. The young trumpeter had a fierce frontline in Myron Walden and Wayne Escoffery, playing alto and tenor respectively. Pianist Rick Germanson ("Ricky G"), bassist Vicente Archer, and powerhouse drummer Ralph Peterson, Jr. completed the strong lineup This was a one-nighter, and the late set cooked. Pelt focused mainly on his well-crafted, swinging originals, one of which found Germanson playing a Wurlitzer. Of the three horn players, Pelt sounded the least sure of himself on this particular set, oddly enough. But he played some beautiful fluegelhorn on "I Wish You Love" and closed with a dance-in-the-aisles reworking of "Oh When the Saints." Peterson really got off on the latter, doing stick twirls and the whole nine yards.

Myron Walden also played in trumpeter David Weiss's sextet, which unfortunately had to combat the crowd noise and apathy of Kavehaz late on a Friday. Marcus and E.J. Strickland were on hand, along with pianist Xavier Davis and bassist Dwayne Burno. Weiss's challenging music gave the players plenty to chew on -- particularly Walden, who has a way of playing across the changes and telling a larger story. Standing close to the stage, one is practically blown backwards by his power. Soon after the band started, the wait staff decided that the band had to be told to "turn down" (easier said than done when the instruments are all acoustic). When word reached E.J. Strickland, he nodded politely and took his drumming down a notch. Now that's professionalism. You've got to choose your battles.

Guitarist Adam Rogers can rock hard when he wants to (just listen to Lost Tribe), but he decided to go straightahead on his long-awaited debut disc, Art of the Invisible (Criss Cross). Leading a quartet with pianist Edward Simon, bassist James Genus (subbing for Scott Colley), and drummer Clarence Penn, Rogers celebrated the record release at the Jazz Gallery, giving the audience a dose of his deadly chops and advanced harmonic sense. The first set started with an uptempo reading of "Long Ago and Far Away." On this and the serpentine original "Absalom," Simon held back a bit; he sprang fully into action on the blues "Bobo," playing inspired games with Penn, stretching rhythmic ideas over barlines and even entire choruses. Rogers gets his iron tone by using both a Fender amp and a Walter Woods bass head. It's a pleasure to hear him as a leader, taking strides toward the top of the heap, where he belongs.

Trumpeter Duane Eubanks also played the Gallery, with the strong, Wayne-like tenor player J.D. Allen sharing the frontline and Orrin Evans, Eric Revis, and Rodney Green in the rhythm section. The band stretched far and wide on the opener, "Two and One," then came back to earth on the mellower "As Is." Evans's tricky "T.C.'s Blues," from the Seed album (Imani), involved unexpected meter and tempo changes, as well as a succession of unaccompanied breaks that allowed each soloist to take the tune in a new direction. Eubanks switched to fluegelhorn for the sultry bossa "Can't Wait Until Dawn," which was followed by an off-the-cuff, heated blues that closed the set. This band communicates on a high level, creating an environment ripe for Eubanks's rich tone and compelling lines.

Bucky Pizzarelli brought his seven-string stylings to the Jazz Standard, playing trio with pianist Bill Charlap and bassist Jay Leonhart. This classic instrumentation gives the music an understated glow, but its effectiveness depends on a perfect mix. Thankfully, that's what the club provided, and so the three meshed beautifully on tunes like "Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me," "You Stepped Out of a Dream," "Nuages," and "Lady Be Good." Charlap's keyboard offerings were pearly and sparse, his facial expression quizzical. Pizzarelli, when not unleashing multiple choruses of dense, Van Eps-style chording, punctuated his single-note lines with playful bends. And Leonhart set the pace with crisp walking tempos and solos that he supplemented with jocular scatting, on mic. Each trio member got a portion of the set to himself: the leader played an unaccompanied Eddie Lang medley, Charlap played a Gershwin prelude (the famous one), and Leonhart sang songs dedicated to Ray Brown and Louie Bellson.

Worlds away from Pizzarelli, guitarist Dom Minasi played CB's Lounge, opening for the Dave Douglas cooperative ensemble mentioned above. With Ken Filiano on bass and Jackson Krall on drums, Minasi presented his free jazz take on such standards as "Satin Doll," "All Blues," "All the Things You Are," and "Well You Needn't." His archtop sound was crisp and woody, even when he was making wild forays up and down the neck, like a six-string Cecil Taylor. Every so often he'd depart on a more sparse, single-note line of thought, displaying inventiveness and a bell-like clarity. Minasi's starkly dissonant parallel voicings, at their best, can open the ears to a melody's inner secrets.

Bob Dorough currently holds the Sunday jazz brunch spot at Iridium, playing trio with bassist Pat O'Leary and guitarist Steve Berger. The ponytailed vocalist and pianist is nearing 80, but he retains a youthful, even child-like enthusiasm for the stage. He kicked off his July 14 set by singing "Have You Met Miss Jones" and "Beginning to See the Light." Then he moved on to standards of his own invention, like "Devil May Care" and "Better Than Anything," along with two choice items from the Schoolhouse Rock menu -- "Conjunction Junction" and "3 Is the Magic Number," both of which entailed a lot of audience participation (not easy to muster at 11:30 am). Dorough's vocal antics remain one of a kind, and his songs have become favorites with a new generation of jazz vocalists, including Diana Krall, Nnenna Freelon, and Diane Hubka.