Julian Lage at Club Hancher

Julian Lage Trio
Club Hancher at Hancher Auditorium
Iowa City, IA
September 15, 2024

The gorgeous new Hancher Auditorium, rebuilt in 2016 following severe flood damage to the original building in 2008, is situated on the campus of The University of Iowa. While the large Hadley Stage auditorium seats 1,800 and is home to Broadway shows, multimedia events, and orchestra concerts, the smaller Strauss Hall magically converts into Club Hancher, a hip jazz and comedy venue, over a dozen times a year. This year's season began with a bang with master guitarist Julian Lage.

Lage, on tour to promote his album Speak To Me (Blue Note, 2024), brought with him Peruvian bassist and composer Jorge Roeder and the inimitable drummer Dave King, anchor of The Bad Plus and Happy Apple. A capacity crowd enthusiastically welcomed the trio to the stage for their first of two separately-seated sets as Lage began "Hymnal," Speak To Me's evocative introductory track. Here, however, the orchestral swell led not into the album's "Northern Shuffle," but into a long and spirited jam on Charles Lloyd's "Island Blues," first recorded during the sessions for his 1965 album Of Course, Of Course (Columbia). As always, drummer King amazes with what might be called "stunt drumming": rising from his stool in emphasis, he hits every part of his small, perfectly-tuned jazz 4-piece kit, coaxing polyrhythms out of cymbal edges, hardware stands, and even the lugs around the outside of his snare drum. The guitarist's delight in his stickman is palpable, with a constant grin on his face and exclamations of joy at the powerful grooves and unison explosions. Greeting the crowd after the tune, Lage apologized to those stage right for having his back turned to them: "but," he said, "I just gotta watch Dave!"

The set continued with "Tributary," a wistful, bluesy tune with a straight-four feel that serves as the lead-off track from 2022's View With A Room (Blue Note), followed by new tune "Storyville." This featured some expressive playing by bassist Roeder, who combines a rock-solid folk-jazz feel with a beefy tone reminiscent of Dave Holland and an ability to freely alternate between aggression and lyricism in his solos. Lage then traded his Telecaster for a Collings acoustic guitar, beautifully mic'ed (the sound quality of the show overall was simply superb, with nothing out of balance and the instruments' acoustic tone intact), for a lovely performance of the traditional Mexican folk song "La Paloma Azul (The Blue Dove)," popularized in jazz by Dave Brubeck among others and shown to Lage by the late Jim Hall . During this tune, Roeder dropped out and a tender guitar/drum duet held the audience spellbound. After sticking with the acoustic for "Nothing Happens Here" from Speak To Me, Lage ended the set with the loping "Day and Age" from Squint (Blue Note, 2021), featuring King's skittering fills.

This is an extraordinarily talented trio with an original sound, well worth hearing both on the string of records mentioned and on the road. Several more shows are planned throughout the mountain west and California, followed by a long residency at The Village Vanguard before Lage and his partners head overseas to Japan, the U.K, and Europe.