Obligatory end of year listicle

Well jeez. The year 2024 sure turned out to be a year of negative surprises, with Trump and his gang of billionaires, nutballs, and sycophants poised to dismantle the federal government and roll back a century of social progress, not to mention shitting all over the environment and anyone who's not obscenely wealthy. (I've had at least one friend tell me "No more politics or current events, please," to which I say, "Well damn. I guess we have nothing to talk about then.") It almost seems irrelevant to say that in terms of music I dig, both live (the best way) and recorded, it's been an uncommonly good year. But I will say it, because I still think art (along with action) is the best remedy for despair. So there. 

In no particular order, records first:

1) Producer David Breskin is my favorite record maker. No one else does a better job of fostering and presenting creativity, or has better taste. This year brought four stellar examples of his handiwork: violinist Modney's Ascending Primes, guitarist Miles Okazaki's Miniature America, percussionist Ches Smith's Laugh Ash, and vibraphonist Patricia Brennan's Breaking Stretch. What these four disparate albums have in common: intriguing compositional strategies, unique confluences of influences, and supporting casts of superb players.

2) I was late to the party on altoist-composer Darius Jones and his Man'ish Boy cycle, but this year's Legend of e'Boi (The Hypervigilant Eye), the seventh of nine installments, got my attention in a big way. It's a trio with bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Gerald Cleaver, and it's a masterpiece of focus and intention, deeply resonant and thought provoking.

3) Pianist Kris Davis's label Pyroclastic has become one of my favorite imprints, and they've had a few outstanding releases this year, including the aforementioned Ascending Primes, Laugh Ash, and Breaking Stretch. Davis's own Run the Gauntlet is the debut of a new trio with bassist Robert Hurst (best known for his work with Branford and Wynton Marsalis) and drummer Johnathan Blake (a Blue Note leader in his own right). While her work to date has leaned toward the avant-garde, here she inhabits bebop-adjacent territory, perhaps influenced by the months she spent touring with bassist Dave Holland's new quartet. 

4) Hearing Wendy Eisenberg play guitar was one of the highlights of last year's Molten Plains Fest. To date, her records -- the best of which are built around her musically complex and deeply personal songs -- felt intimate, but on her new album, Viewfinder, she inhabits a larger canvas. On this song cycle, inspired by the Lasik surgery she underwent a couple of years ago, we get to hear other improvisers (a septet, including two horns) interpret her compositions on record for the first time. Her writing, singing, and playing remain incandescent as always. Eisenberg also released a small gem of a song-based duo recording, Accept When, with saxophonist-electronic musician-vocalist Caroline Davis on Astral Spirits. (Davis performed a version of the title track at this year's Molten Plains Fest.)

5) The prolific and highly individuated pianist Matthew Shipp had a banner year, with three outstanding releases: the mammoth solo recital The Data for French label RogueArt, New Concepts in Piano Trio Jazz for ESP-Disk with his long-standing unit with bassist Michael Bisio and drummer Newman Taylor Baker, and Magical Incantation for Soul City Sounds with his perennial duo partner, saxophonist Ivo Perelman. In each context, Shipp weaves complex webs of melodic and harmonic invention. If at times he sounds more like a classical composer than a jazz pianist, it's worthwhile to remember that Bach and Mozart were also improvisers. 

6) New York guitarist-composer-programmer Nick Didkovsky's creativity is expansive enough to include forays into metal, hard rock, computer generated music, and membership in both Fred Frith's Guitar Quartet and Vomit Fist, a black metal band with his drummer son Leo. Having spent four albums investigating the recesses of extreme electric guitar sound with the duo CHORD, on Profane Riddles, he takes a different tack: dark, moody overdubbed soundscapes on mostly clean-toned electric guitars. The short film he made to accompany the album was recently screened at NYC's Psychedelic Film and Music Festival.

7) My "record of the year" is definitely Max Kutner's Partial Custody, a document of the Brooklyn-based guitarist's trio with Ben Stapp on tuba and James Paul Nadien on drums. Kutner's compositions are complex and knotty, his collaborators are top flight interpreters and improvisers, and his playing is stunning. This trio played one of the best shows I saw this year at The Wild Detectives, on a bill with Trio Glossia (my favorite band of the moment, whose excellent debut album will be out next year). Sadly, since then, Kutner has taken a hiatus from all his projects, although he continues to teach and play with others. The Wild Detectives also played host to two other "best shows" of my year: Meridian Brothers' blend of tropical Latin rhythms with experimental electronica -- the best party I attended all year -- and the shadowy costumed duo Ak'chamel, whose music and physical presence has to be experienced to be believed. 

8) The first time I heard the Dennis Gonzalez Legacy Band back in 2023, it brought tears to my eyes to hear the late trumpeter-composer's music with a full array of horns, something he hadn't had on his records since the late '80s. When they reconvened in January of this year, the addition of Rob Mazurek on trumpet and especially Joshua Canate (Trio Glossia) on drums and tenor added a joyful energy that elevated the music. (I'd never thought of "Namesake" or "Hymn for Julius Hemphill" as dance tunes, but rendered with the proper spirit, this group proved they could be.) Astral Spirits just released Live at the Texas Theatre, the first document of that performance, and it's every bit as celebratory as the performance in my memory. (The recent release show for the album took things even deeper.) My friend Dennis would be proud of the music his progeny are making now. Bassist Aaron Gonzalez is recovered from his back surgery and playing in a variety of contexts, while drummer-vibraphonist Stefan Gonzalez, besides leading the Legacy Band and Trio Glossia, has released new music with the transcontinental band The Young Mothers, and curated a jazz series at Dallas' Bath House Cultural Center. Together, the siblings have new music out with the Dallas-Lisbon outfit Humanization 4tet, and in the new year, they will record the debut album of Firelife Trio, which teams them with Houston multi-reedist Danny Kamins (who's also in the Legacy Band).

9) Dallasite Gregg Prickett is one of my five favorite guitarists on Earth, but I hadn't heard him play since the eve of the pandemic, so it was a particular treat this year to hear him on five separate occasions: with his classical-improv unit Trio du Sang (alongside violinist Andrew May and percussionist Bobby Fajardo) at The Wild Detectives; in a duo with Austin guitarist extraordinaire Jonathan F. Horne at Full City Rooster, a congenial coffee joint in Dallas' oldest neighborhood, The Cedars, where Gregg has been pulling decent sized crowds on the regular; with Sawtooth Dolls (his duo with guitarist Paul Quigg) at Full City, playing live soundtracks to silent films; in a duo with Australian percussionist Will Guthrie at The Wild Detectives; and best of all, at "Groglodyte Progglebot's Birthday Conundrum," a Full City extravaganza that showcased Gregg in several contexts, including Trio du Sang, Sawtooth Dolls, and Monks of Saturnalia, the infrequently-heard vehicle for his Mingus/Ayler-inspired compositions, sounding better than ever with the addition of drummer Alan Green.

10) Sounds Modern, the adventurous contemporary music series helmed by flutist Elizabeth McNutt at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, had a couple of outstanding performances this year. Julius Eastman's Stay On It -- a composed piece which drew from improvising traditions -- was painstakingly reconstructed from a lost score, and Sounds Modern's interpretation also used an original recording and video for reference. The result was a cavalcade of multiple ongoing events over a clave beat, and still one of the most memorable things I've witnessed this year. Pamela Z's Twenty Answers, a bit of Cage-ian indeterminacy in which eight musicians have 20 events, the order and content of which are determined by consulting a Magic 8 Ball fortune telling toy, had the energy of a Zorn game piece.

11) The crown jewel in this embarrassment of riches is Molten Plains, the monthly series and annual festival co-curated by vocalist-improviser-radio producer-Denton scene champion Sarah Ruth Alexander and Venezuelan expat Ernesto Monteil, who also books music for The Wild Detectives and whose Peter Brotzmann show there back in 2019 heralded the start of the current golden moment for creative music in North Texas. This year's fest brought top touring talents like gabby fluke-mogul, Tom Carter, Emily Rach Beisel, Lisa Cameron, Laura Ortman, and Zachary James Watkins to Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios for a memorable night. Month to month, there's also a core group of local talents including Rachel Weaver, Randall Minick, Sarah Jay, Kourtney Newton, Miguel Espinel, Kory Reeder, Michael Meadows, Kristina Smith, Will Frenkel, and Sarah Gamblin who have maintained a high standard of performance in a range of scenarios. Aubrey Seaton has performed ably on sound and lights. Stephen Lucas and Larry Hill have provided audio and video documentation, and Ernesto in his Sonido Tumbarrancho deejay guise has contributed the house music mix. All in all, it's been a confluence of like minded folks I couldn't imagine even five years ago. The history of music is made up of moments like this, and we need to appreciate and value them while we're living in them.

Fort Worth/Denton 12.14.2024

The capper to an uncommonly good year for live music I dig wound up being a marathon day, starting with Sounds Modern at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth and continuing with the third annual Molten Plains Fest at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios. A cavalcade of impressions I'm hoping to set down here, on too little sleep, before they blur and fade. 

We haven't had a chance to take in the Modern's Diaries of Home exhibition yet, but the seven pieces by women and non-binary composers featured in Sounds of Home: music to celebrate Diaries of Home all dealt with the meaning and emotions evoked by the idea of "home." Jessica Meyer's Getting Home, inspired by an anxious homeward bound airplane flight, consisted of successive layers of melodic fragments, played and looped by violinist Mia Detwiler and mixed by Sounds Modern assistant director Andrew May, that coalesced to form a complex and emotive structure. (A recurring theme of this day was the ways in which contemporary classical musicians are finding ways to incorporate technology into their work.)

Linda Kernohan's When In Dreams I'm Thwarted, performed by a trio that included cellist Kourtney Newton, pianist Willem Van Schalkwyk, and flutist/Sounds Modern director Elizabeth McNutt, built an air of unease with melodic lines that stopped and started nervously, creating a complexity that my wife compared to a Jacques Tati film. Russian composer Sofia Gubaidulina's and he returned to his house found Detwiler and Newton blending their instruments in a dance of overtones. A wide-vibrato'ed phrase Newton played near the end had an almost Chinese sound. Then, on Asha Srinivsan's Dviraag, Newton and McNutt dived headlong into a web of Carnatic scales from southern India. 

After a pause to reset the stage, the program resumed with Bitches Set Traps (a feminist improvising trio of McNutt, Newton, and Sarah Ruth Alexander) performing a holiday version of Bitchin' in the Kitchen, a work they first performed virtually during the pandemic (viewable on YouTube), prefaced by a seasonal take on Fluxus composer Alison Knowles' Piece for Any Number of Vocalists. Attired for the occasion in antique aprons and festooned with festive lights, the three improvisers performed on small instruments (including kitchen implements), read from texts that included Martha Stewart and a '50s "guide to pleasing your husband," played snatches of seasonal song, and moved through the audience (Alexander distributed "stocking stuffers" to a couple of lucky audients). During the performance, an older lady sitting with her husband near us was heard to remark, "When they started the movement, they should have burned aprons instead of bras. That would have made sense."

Marti Epstein's Oil & Sugar was inspired by a video made by the artist Kader Attia in which crude oil is poured over sugar cubes, causing them to crumble -- a metaphor for conflict or entropy, but as performed by a quartet of Van Schalkwyk, Detwiler, McNutt, and clarinetist Kimberly Cole Luevano, it had a pastoral feel more evocative of an organic process. 

After that, we had to dash so I could catch my ride to Denton, but I viewed the YouTube video of the event this morning, so I could hear Pamela Z's Twenty Answers. In this piece of Cage-ian indeterminacy, eight musicians (with Alexander on voice and electronics, violist Kathleen Crabtree, and bassoonist Victoria Donaldson joining the ensemble) are each given 20 events, the order and content of which are determined by consulting a fortune telling toy. The net effect, while not as frantic as, say, a Zorn game piece, is episodic, with intervals of silence and space in between the melodic fragments and vocal interjections and the visual of performers shaking their Magic 8 Balls before receiving their next instruction. But don't take my word for it: The entire concert is archived and viewable on YouTube.

The third annual Molten Plains Fest was reduced to a single day by diminished resources (the end of federal pandemic recovery funds having reduced the city of Denton's support), but it was still a stacked bill -- "eight sets, featuring 20 artists from ten different cities," as Molten Plains co-curator Ernesto Monteil said. 

The previous night, I watched a bit of the live stream from NYC's Roulette Intermedium of a William Parker world premiere performance and was surprised to see violinist gabby fluke-mogul, whom I knew was performing at Molten Plains fest. I was mightily impressed by their recorded collaboration with drummer Lily Finnegan, so I was stoked to see that fluke-mogul was playing the opening set, in a trio with bassist Aaron Gonzalez (now fully recovered from back surgery and playing at the top of his game) and Houston-based guitarist Tom Carter (Charalambides). fluke-mogul is an aggressively dynamic performer, running their violin through guitar pedals and bowing with a slashing attack, strumming pizzicato chords, beating on the instrument's body, and sliding spit-moistened fingers against its back. Gonzalez and Carter joined the conversation, which unfolded episodically with a sublimely balanced flow.

Second set teamed Chicago-based bass clarinet specialist Emily Rach Beisel with Austin improv mainstay Lisa Cameron, on this occasion playing lap steel (purchased in Denton in 1977!) as well as percussion and electronics. Beisel plays a low C instrument, which allows access to the lowest as well as the highest notes in the clarinet range, and runs it through an array of guitar pedals to provide an extreme close up view of every breath and key press. Besides operating an array of electronics, Cameron used a Nakatani bow on cymbals and strings and employed percussion sleight of hand, damping a held cymbal on her leg so it sounded like a tape edit. After awhile it became difficult to distinguish who was playing what, although at one point, Cameron somehow managed to play the same tone that Beisel was playing on piccolo. When I encounter something I don't understand, but I know it's real, I call it magic. They'll be at Chess Club in Austin tonight and Lawndale Arts Center in Houston Monday. 

Next up was the trio of Andrew Weathers on lap steel, Ryan Seward on electronics, and Kory Reeder on cello -- who released Two Ballads from the High Plains on Editions Glomar back in May but somehow never got around to performing together in Denton until this night. Owing to the way I listen to music at home now (at a volume similar to when I lived with my parents), Two Ballads can seem almost ambient, but live, this combination is a lot more immersive and enveloping. The electronic drones combine with bowed bass and lap steel scrapings to form a total sonic environment, especially when Reeder plays with acoustic feedback from his amplified cello, producing juddering oscillation which took me back to the time Graves at Sea opened the last-ever Yeti show, 20 years ago. (My innards are still vibrating.)

I was familiar with Brooklyn-based Caroline Davis from her Astral Spirits release Accept When, a collaboration with Wendy Eisenberg that was released back in April. As a solo performer, she features her electronics more prominently, sampling, treating, and looping alto sax lines which she then extemporizes over. At one point, she sang lyrics I remembered hearing on the record. It was a satisfying performance, after which I rushed out to the food truck to grab some sustenance, having not eaten in nine hours. 

After timely pause, the room was reset with chairs in a circle, within which two dancers -- Molten Plains veteran/Texas Women's University professor Sarah Gamblin and Dallasite Carla Weaver -- improvised a ten minute set. I used to accompany modern dancers and was always amazed to observe the myriad ways in which the human body can move through space. Without accompaniment (except from an occasional squeaky chair), Gamblin and Weaver inhabited the circle, orbiting, reaching, striving, intertwining their bodies with infinite tenderness and trust. It was a good head cleaner and preparation for the two most intense sets of the evening.

Laura Ortman, a White Mountain Apache from Arizona, currently based in Brooklyn, played what can only be called a rock and roll set. If gabby fluke-mogul plays aggressively, Ortman does that and tops it off with layers of volume and whirlwind energy. The first sound she made onstage was like a thunderclap, and during her solo performance, you could feel tectonic plates shifting under your feet. Her entire set was a dance of fierce joy as she moved between her pedals, pausing with a grin to show off her silver boots when Ernesto Monteil's daughter approached the stage, playing up the proverbial storm, pausing briefly to sing lyrics that reverberated in your head as she played on ferociously. Then fluke-mogul joined her -- Ernesto said both musicians had insisted on it -- and the audience was confronted with the spectacle of two silver-booted violinists going at it like gunslinging guitarists. A cathartic soul rinsing we surely needed.

I was looking forward to hearing Oakland-based Lubbock native Zachary James Watkins (Black Spirituals) in a trio with two thirds of Trio Glossia -- that'd be Stefan Gonzalez and Joshua Canate -- merely for the chance to hear his two bandmates playing drums at the same time. When Watkins picked up his Univox guitar (made in Westbury, Long Island!) without a strap and started to play while Gonzalez joined in on vibraphone and Canate kicked the traps, I thought his volume was a little low, but I was in for Something Entirely Other. Rather than jamming along with the percussionists, Watkins was sampling and treating the signal, to be brought back later at volume. 

When Gonzalez moved to the second drum kit, the net effect was like the cataclysm at the end of Hendrix's Monterey "Wild Thing" alongside Rashied and Elvin's twin erupting volcanoes on Trane's Meditations, and they were just getting started. I kidded Joshua that on this night, he actually accomplished what he'd been trying for at the last Improv Lotto, when he was teamed with Sarah Jay and Paul Slavens -- driving the bus. For the first time in the 22 years I've known him, it seemed to me like Stefan Gonzalez was laying back a little. A second cathartic soul rinsing. How on Earth, I thought, would the closing set ever follow that?

I should have known better. The last set, a collaboration between Molten Plains mainstays -- co-curator Sarah Ruth Alexander and the duos Monte Espina (Ernesto Monteil, Miguel Espinel) and Python Potions (Randall Minick, Rachel Weaver) -- brought the intensity down with a chill dreamscape of a set. You could hear all the individual components -- Alexander's haunting treated vocals and skateboard guitar, Monte Espina's dawn-of-time electro-acoustics, Python Potions' crackling electronics -- in perfect proportions, with no one trying to hog the air. When Minick started taking it to the dance club, I was reminded that in an improv situation, whenever someone introduces a pulse, everyone instinctively follows it, the same way musicians tend to follow a singer. It's something that's ingrained in us from before birth, from our mothers' heartbeat and voice. 

This has been a rotten year for lots of things, but music's not one of 'em, and where I live Molten Plains is a big reason why. Thanks and kudos to all of those responsible, and for that reason alone, I can't wait till next year. So there.

gabby fluke-mogul and Lily Finnegan's "Throw It in the Sink"

I first heard violinist gabby fluke-mogul on their collaboration with saxophonist Ivo Perelman earlier this year. They've also recorded duets with saxophonist Dave Rempis, drummer Nava Dunkelman, and violist Joanna Mattrey, after studying with Fred Frith and Pauline Oliveros at Mills College and landing in NYC just in time for the COVID pandemic in 2020. 

There aren't many violin-drums duos out there, but fluke-mogul's collaboration with Chicago-based drummer Lily Glick Finnegan -- documented on their October release Throw It in the Sink on Sonic Transmissions -- would be unique in any case. Finnegan studied with Kris Davis, Terry Lyne Carrington, and Linda May Han Oh at Berklee's Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice. She plays in Ken Vandemark's ensemble Edition Redux, and co-curates the Option Series at Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio. She's a remarkably mature young player. 

The first-time collaboration of these two musicians, documented on Throw It in the Sink, is an improvised gem. Rather than the explosions of energy that often occur in such meetings, the nine pieces here are cogent, focused, and dynamically varied. There's a surprising amount of blues in fluke-mogul's sound, especially when they vocalize (in the readings of the same text that open and close the album, juxtaposing a recalled intimate moment with militaristic percussion, and especially "On the Fringe," written by a college classmate of fluke-mogul's who committed suicide). At times, their aggressively bowed double-stops and harmonics sound like an electric guitar. Finnegan, whose background is in punk rock, is an attentive and responsive accompanist whose rhythmic creations give the pieces detailed vibrancy. 

One has to go all the way back to William Parker and Hamid Drake's 2001 outing, Piercing the Veil, to find a duo recording this engaging. On December 14, fluke-mogul will appear at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios as part of the third annual Molten Plains Fest, in a trio with guitarist Tom Carter and bassist Aaron Gonzalez.