New World Ensemble and the Jump Ensemble at Couth Buzzard Books & Community

New World Ensemble / Jump Ensemble
Couth Buzzard Books & Community
Seattle, WA
March 1, 2024

For a number of years now, some of the most creative and interesting music in Seattle has been coming out of the fairly unassuming Couth Buzzard bookstore on north Greenwood the first Friday of every month. This evening always first features Kenny Mandell's ever novel New World Ensemble followed by an ever changing range of groups. On the first of March, the New World Ensemble was unfortunately missing their usual gifted saxophonist, Mike Connors, who instead was replaced by veteran bassist Danny O'Brien who, before the music began, regaled us early attendees with tales of a number of his encounters with jazz legends. (And, in perhaps his only instruction before they started, Mandell told O'Brien that "their only form is for the songs to be short pieces, about five to six minutes each.")

Mandell began things on his uniquely buzzing thumb piano, while percussionist Gabe Skoog enthralled with merely a rattle, and O'Brien scraped away at his bass strings. This led to some stick scratch kitchen bowl calisthenics: there are no percussionists so subtle as Skoog or so content to create a mood or underpinning rhythm without ever showing off—though, at some point in order to do so, he may stand up on one leg like a stork: Jack LaLane's got nothing on him! These three were already conjuring up Whitney Baillet's perfect description of jazz as 'the sound of surprise' and I bet some of their decisions in what to play were even startling each other. Before the next tune, Mandell asked: "OK, Gabe: where are we going?" and then found new sonorities on his congas, while Skoog subtly tapped a tambourine and Dan didn't so much walk as saunter on bass. Then the group journeyed to somewhere in the Middle East on dumbeg, curved soprano and abrupt bass plucks. Kenny M (not G!) began by creating pastoral sounds but then soon veered off into more atonal extreme realms.

Now, Mandell called out: "Take us to the Promised Land, Danny!": whereupon Mr. O'Brien set up a Dave Holland kind of line: catchy and complicated while Mandell got Newk-ish on his tenor and Skoog began to abrade his West African agogo bells. Thence to Morocco—Gabe, after all, is an actual Fulbright scholar of this region's music—while Mandell sang through a couple of different flutes from North and South America: a djinni feverish hashish dream... {"I dream of genie with a light brown... where?"} Next Skoog pulled out a folk guitar but didn't do anything so prosaic as to hold it in his lap: he laid it flat on the floor and began to tap on the strings with a couple of simple toothbrushes, conjuring up nothing so much as a Persian santoor! O'Brien set up some pedal tones on bass and now it was Mandell's turn to knock upon his darbuka. "What key should we play in? The key of free!" No passport is needed for these aural trips at the Couth and despite all the distance traveled acoustically, no chance of jetlag either!

But next—to quote Monty Python—and now for something completely different: the Jump Ensemble were the second and final act at the Couth this night; a solid quintet that has been playing together since way back in the 1990s. So of course they were tight as can be: mining a fine selection of hard bop tunes a la The Jazz Crusaders, say. Was it damning with faint praise to say there was no muss, no fuss: they were tasty and ever in the pocket? Led by Greg Robinson on electric keyboards, the group features James Peters on trumpet & flugelhorn and Ed Spangenberg on trombone, along with Marty Hasegawa on electric bass and Mark Filler on drums and percussion. James was soon channeling Clifford Brown, Spangenberg as fleet as J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding and Robinson managed to cook up some heat even as his white keyboard rocked about a tad precariously. Marty needed no music stand or sheet music, having seemingly memorized every possible tune they would play; and Filler throwing in cowbell surprises even as he faithfully accented every beat.

They tackled some unusual Brubeck, with Filler evoking shades of Joe Morello in his subtle brushing. The group gravitated towards a sumptuous rhapsodic "Infant Eyes" with plangent plunger from Spangenberg making us all miss composer Wayne Shorter's comparatively recent passing all the more. Isn't such variety one of the most attractive aspects of this music called "jazz" that so much may fall under this nearly all-encompassing umbrella?! And don't forget to visit the humble Couth Buzzard, where you may get to hear many kinds of jazz, as well as old timey string bands, Brazilian choro jams, the most eclectic of open mikes, as well as Spanish conversation meetups, French lessons, current affairs discussions, creative writing groups and so much more.

Comments