Dallas, 3.20.2025

The first day of spring in Dallas brought us back to Full City Rooster to see Trio Glossia joined by Austin multi-reedist and jazz/world music savant Joshua Thomson in a first-time collaboration, preparatory to Saturday's big blast at The Wild Detectives, in which Trio Glossia will be joined by guitarist extraordinaire Gregg Prickett, Thomson will appear in THC trio with guitarist Jonathan F. Horne and drummer Lisa Cameron, and the evening will be headlined by Mike Watt's current band MSSV. A likely candidate for my show of the year, but tonight's outing, although sparsely attended (it's Spring Break and lots of folks are out of town), will certainly be hard to beat. 

It's a gas to see how many ways Trio Glossia can reimagine the material from their self-titled debut CD. Their multi-instrumentalism and each player's facility in every facet of their axes lends them seemingly endless flexibility. Even without rehearsal, Thomson -- on alto for this occasion, although occasionally dipping deep into the low end of the horn's range -- was seamlessly integrated into the arrangements, whether providing harmony and counterpoint to Joshua Canate's raging tenor or going head-to-head in full-on fire music fury. You could hear both Middle Eastern melodies and the influence of Ornette Coleman in Thomson's fluid improvs. Leader Stefan Gonzalez opened the set with a thunderous drum solo that led into Canate's "For A Fee," then musicians segued into the always excellent bassist Matthew Frerck's "Arcane's Dance," during which the players shifted smoothly from freely improvised sections into gorgeous unisons, which were even richer than usual with Thomson's added voice.

When Gonzalez moved from the trap set to vibraphone, Canate's drumming was particularly fiery, taking a different approach than usual (cymbals with brushes rather than rimshots with sticks) to the unison tattoo that introduces "Nerdy Dirty Talk." But the evening's high point was achieved during the closing number, "Dream Travelers," when the two Joshuas conducted an extended dialogue, Canate keeping a steady beat using a double kick on the bass drum, with a brush in one hand and a string of bells in the other (his use of small instruments throughout the set broadened the music's textural palette) while Thomson gave a fervid testimony on alto. All in all, a powerful reminder why this is my favorite band of the moment. If you've only heard their record, you owe it to yourself to see them live. Often.