Oak Cliff, 12.7.2023

The pre-festival concert for the second Molten Plains Fest took place at The Wild Detectives in Oak Cliff. The Tennessee tenor sax phenomenon Zoh Amba made her Texas debut in a trio with Oak Cliff's own "Free Jazz Is Thrash, Asshole" siblings, Aaron and Stefan Gonzalez. 

Since she hit New York a couple of years ago, Amba has played with a veritable Who's Who of "out" jazz eminences -- John Zorn, William Parker, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, and Tyshawn Sorey, to name but a few. She recently concluded a tour with drummer Chris Corsano by cutting a record in San Francisco with guitarist Bill Orcutt. Tonight, she'll duet with Joe McPhee, a treasured elder and touchstone of the music who has the living memory of Ayler, Coleman, and Coltrane, and was in the house scoping out Zoh's set.

Getting a late start, Amba exploded out of the gate with the glossolalia of a backwoods preacher, moving a big column of air with a wide vibrato that recalled  Ayler's soul cry and the explosiveness of Pharaoh Sanders on Trane's "Meditations." The rhythm section matched her fire, Stefan inhabiting a world of sprung rhythm with the same force with which he used to swing Yells At Eels. Aaron appeared to be recovering well from back surgery, matching his sibling's fury with pizzicato flurries and slides, responding to Amba's more ruminative moments with arco harmonics. The dialogue between the three ebbed and flowed, riding an omnipresent undercurrent of volcanic energy. It was a stirring exorcism with a strong spiritual feeling.

Opening set featured a guitar duo of Brooklyn-based Sandy Ewen, a specialist in extended techniques, and Jonathan F. Horne, Stefan's bandmate in The Young Mothers and Texas Butt Biters. Ewen employs a collection of found objects -- mostly metal items of various textures -- on her semihollow electric through a bi-amp system (Acoustic and Roland Jazz Chorus) regulated with a pedal. This kind of performance is best appreciated in person, when you can observe the players' physicality. 

The sounds Ewen produced were like seismic events -- tectonic plates shifting, glaciers fragmenting. Horne responded with nervous energy, tapping on the neck, bowing the strings, riding his pedals and the volume controls on his Mosrite (Nokie Edwards and Fred "Sonic" Smith's signature axe). At one point, Ewen coaxed long sustaining tones -- by friction or harmonic feedback, I couldn't tell -- from her instrument while Horne manipulated a miniature kalimba and a wind-up music box against his strings. Ewen will perform in a trio with Sarah Ruth Alexander and Wendy Eisenberg on Saturday.

The fest, at Rubber Gloves in Denton, will feature five sets tonight and eight Saturday (including a second performance by McPhee, with vocalist Carmina Escobar and trombonist Dave Dove, as well as the second performance ever by Stefan Gonzalez's new outfit, Trio Glossia). But after Thursday night, this weekend is already the crown jewel in my listening year.