Dan Weiss Quartet At Bop Stop

Dan Weiss Quartet
Bop Stop at the Music Settlement
Cleveland, OH
June 6, 2025

In his liner notes to Phillip Golub's Abiding Memory (Endectomorph Music, 2024), Vijay Iyer coined a name for the kind of music made by a set of mostly young, genre-agnostic musicians in New York, "New Brooklyn Complexity," and named some of its more notable practitioners. Four of them were on stage at Cleveland's Bop Stop under the leadership of Dan Weiss to play the eight compositions from the drummer's excellent Pi Recordings album Unclassified Ambitions on the day of its release.

Complex music is often received with incomprehension or even hostility, and to be sure, Weiss' music has all the hallmarks of the NBC school: formal audaciousness, extended techniques and math-y rhythms.

Still, though Iyer's clever label is likely to stick, complexity was far from the only attribute on offer as Weiss, vibraphonist Patricia Brennan, trumpeter Peter Evans and guitarist Miles Okazaki presented music of bracing originality that offered multiple entryways to enjoyment.

Rhythm and groove were among them. "Holotype" proposed third-order bebop with a jittery trumpet prodded by snare cracks in a test of reflexes that any bebop fan could recognize. Philly Joe Jones and Clifford Jarvis came to mind.

Weiss immersion in Indian rhythmic systems powered "Plusgood," which began and ended with the drummer tapping out a tala on his kit. When Afro-Caribbean rhythmic elements were added to pot, it came to a boil with Evans howling through his close-miked horn.

So there was virtuosity, too, but it wasn't exactly show-offy. Evans' astounding facility and speed in a punishingly high register, Brennan simultaneously playing melody and accompaniment like a pianist and Weiss' sovereign precision frequently astounded. But like bebop, or even early jazz-rock fusion, the music's complexity demanded nothing less (Okazaki functioned largely as an ensemble player, though his opening statement on "Mansions of Madness" was typically thoughtful).

There was also volume. Chamber music is in the NBC source code, but the Bop Stop mix was confrontational from the opening volley of "Existence Ticket," where loud and soft passages alternated in the head.

Was this intentional? Weiss is a fan of metal, an affection he articulates in the dark viscosity of his Starebaby band. He has called playing Bach on piano one of his most satisfying musical experiences. The two come together on "Unclassified Ambitions," which begins with a descending, chaconne-like figure that Pearl Jam might envy.

Call it New Brooklyn Accessibility.