Fort Worth, 9.7.2024

 

Fall Gallery Night coincided with the return of moderate temperatures, so we celebrated by visiting the Oakhurst gallery space of our dear friend Jesse Sierra Hernandez, stopped back at the house for some leftovers, then hoofed it to Illuminate Art Space, the studio of Greg Davis Photography and Amy Lynn Jewelry, before continuing to Curly's Custard for dessert. (Make mine Death By Chocolate. It ain't health food, but I don't do this every day.) After stopping to visit with a neighbor, I toddled off to the Grackle Art Gallery to catch an improv set by the duo of Phelps and Progglebot, aka Drew Phelps and Gregg Prickett. ("Groglydyte Progglebot" is a sobriquet bestowed on Gregg by Aaron Gonzalez, in his fashion.)

Drew and Gregg are always a joy to hear improvise together, combining stellar chops with the ability to listen and respond in the moment (rather than just running licks). On this occasion (the second appearance of this duo at Grackle), Drew announced that they were "without a song" (perhaps in honor of Sonny Rollins' birthday?), but would pick up where they left off last time, with "Improvisation #4," which proved to be a nifty slice of electric chamber music, with Gregg's volume pedal swells blending with Drew's arco bass. 

Gregg gets more expressive tonal variety out of his volume and delay pedals than lesser players do from huge pedalboards, with fluidity to match early John Abercrombie's and a color palette to rival Bill Frisell's. His digital facility -- lots of hammer-ons and pull-offs -- had him swarming over the fretboard like Jerry Reed or Albert Lee on steroids to pizzicato counterpoint from Drew on "Improvisation #5." (Drew commented that they'd continue using this method of naming tunes "until we have to write this stuff down.") "Improvisation #6" was a mutant blues featuring slide guitar with delay and more arco bass. They finished with "Improvisation #7 (Bossa Nova)," which Gregg started on electric and finished on acoustic.

Gregg will celebrate his birthday at Full City Rooster in Dallas on September 20 with an array of collaborators including Sawtooth Dolls (his guitar duo with Paul Quigg, who was along at Grackle to provide audio and video documentation) and Monks of Saturnalia (my favorite band that doesn't play often enough), a vehicle for Gregg's Mingus-influenced compositions featuring Drew and multi-reedist Jeffrey Barnes (Brave Combo). Looking further down the road, they also plan to do a live soundtrack to film (possibly clips from Fellini's Casanova) on October 19 -- same day as Daron Beck's memorial at Texas Theater, so we may need to make a Dallas day of it.

Kris Davis's "Run the Gauntlet"

It's been a decade now since pianist-composer Kris Davis's last outing at the helm of a trio -- 2014's Waiting for You to Grow on Clean Feed, with John Hebert and Tom Rainey. After two albums with her Diatom Ribbons ensemble, a Grammy award for the first album with Terry Lyne Carrington's New Standards project, three albums with the collaborative Borderlands Trio, and a year of touring with Dave Holland's New Quartet, Davis is back with a new trio, featuring some surprising collaborators. 

Bassist Robert Hurst is best known for his work with Wynton and Branford Marsalis, while drummer Johnathan Blake is a leader in his own right, as well as a veteran of side gigs with Kenny Barron, Dr. Lonnie Smith, and Tom Harrell, among others. If Davis's new bandmates' pedigrees seem more mainstream than the folks she usually runs with, check out the YouTube videos of the Vision Festival set she played with William Parker and Wynton's old drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts a couple of years ago.

In a way, Run the Gauntlet -- out on Davis's Pyroclastic label on September 27 -- can be seen as an extension of Davis's work with Carrington at Berklee's Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice: a celebration of women who inspired and supported Davis as she embarked on a career in music as "a woman, an immigrant, a parent, [and] a fan of avant-garde music." But where Carrington's New Standards strives to bring the works of women composers into the jazz canon, on Run the Gauntlet, Davis uses her own compositions to pay tribute to fellow pianists Geri Allen, Carla Bley, Marilyn Crispell, Angelica Sanchez, Sylvie Courvoisier, and Renee Rosnes. 

Davis was first exposed to Allen's work via Carrington's project, while Bley is a formative influence whose "Sing Me Softly of the Blues" Davis has covered, most recently on her Octopus duet album with Craig Taborn. Crispell, Sanchez, and Courvoisier have all released music on Davis's label. Crispell and Sanchez were role models in pursuing  experimental directions, while Courvoisier was an inspiration for Davis's use of prepared piano (a Davis trademark since 2011's Aeriol Piano, audible here on "Softly As You Wake" -- with gorgeous arco work from Hurst and wonderfully subtle accompaniment from Blake -- and the freely improvised "Subtones" that ends the album). 

Davis's fellow Canadian Rosnes (whose son Davis once babysat) and Sanchez served as exemplars of how to balance career and family. Waiting for You to Grow was made while Davis was pregnant with her son, who's now 11. A triptych of tunes on Run the Gauntlet, originally composed for Dave Holland's quartet, charts his growth, from the rhythmic irregularity of "First Steps" through the growing assurance of "Little Footsteps" (with a mightily grooving rhythm section) to the elegantly swinging "Heavy-footed" (which floats cascades of notes over Davis's steady left-hand comping). 

The title track showcases Blake's rhythmic flexibility and responsiveness as he negotiates a series of vamps, which also afford the leader ample opportunity to demonstrate the different facets of her burgeoning keyboard artistry. It's a good intro to the trio. "Knotweed," inspired by an oppressive invader to Davis's Massachusetts garden, glides along with a straight-ahead swing that belies the tune's title until the sprung-rhythm conclusion. Blake also contributed the lovely lyrical composition "Beauty Beneath the Rubble," which provides an oasis of calm in the middle of the album and is continued in the "Meditation" that follows it, replete with more exquisite arco bass and prepared piano.

Run the Gauntlet is a new milestone for Davis, and ranks with Waiting for You to Grow, Capricorn Climber, and Live at the Village Vanguard among her most accomplished works. Looking forward now to hearing her Solastalgia Suite, which she'll record in Poland with the Lutoslawski Quartet in November.

Oak Cliff, 8.25.2024

It's not every year you get to experience a total wish fulfillment gig, and this year, I've had two -- second Dennis Gonzalez Legacy Band show at Texas Theater, and last night's meeting of Max Kutner's Partial Custody and Trio Glossia with Jonathan F. Horne at The Wild Detectives. Two bands of master improvisers, playing well crafted compositions to a big (for the venue) and enthusiastic audience. My buddy Darrin Kobetich (whose banjo Max borrowed for one tune) and Austin muso Lacey Lewis posted some video on Facebook, but other than that, it wasn't documented that I am aware, so if you weren't in the room, you missed it. 

Trio Glossia -- Stefan Gonzalez on vibraphone and drums, Matthew Frerck on bass, and Joshua Miller on drums and tenor sax -- is my favorite band o' the moment, and their record, which you'll be able to buy in 2025, will undoubtedly be a top spin of mine next year. (I wrote liner notes, so I got to hear the mixes as soon as Aubrey Seaton finished them. How fortunate am I.) Now they're going from strength to strength as they get more comfortable with the pieces and have started reimagining them in live performance. 

The addition of Stefan's longtime collaborator Jonathan F. Horne on guitar -- fresh from dueting with Gregg Prickett at Full City Rooster the night before -- gave them an even higher level of energy and intensity as he tore into the tunes and soloed like a whole nest of angry hornets. Opening with Stefan's "Shedding Tongues," with its memorable theme and multiple tempo shifts, they continued with "Ode to Swamp Thing," with Horne joining in its gorgeous unisons, and Frerck's "Zoomorphology," inspired by a Henry Threadgill seminar at Oberlin, with Miller speaking in tongues through his tenor. Frerck was as virtuosic and expressive as he always is, after TWD's Ernesto Monteil had to intervene to quiet a barfly who seemed determined to tell the entire city his life story. Some people. But no matter, Trio Glossia and Mr. Horne still burned and soared.

The unenviable task of following them fell to Partial Custody, who proved themselves more than equal to the challenge. Max Kutner (Grandmothers of Invention, Captain Beefheart's Magic Band, Oingo Boingo Original Members) is a brilliant composer as well as a fiery, inventive guitarist, who combines stellar chops with a penchant for the sound of surprise. Ben Stapp is an improvising tubist in the grand tradition of Howard Johnson, Bob Stewart, and Joe Daley, playing fleetly fluid lines and holding down the bottom end on the big horn. James Paul Nadien is a mainstay of the Brooklyn free improv scene and currently mans the drum chair in Weasel Walter's Flying Luttenbachers. Not only can he play inside and outside time, but he occasionally seems to bend it to his will, and propels the music into unknown territories. Their self-titled album on Orenda is one of my favorites of this year. 

Their set opened with the loose-limbed second line funk of "Exaggeration Holmes," which grew heavier and morphed into something resembling the Meters jamming with Gentle Giant (with Nadien on glockenspiel, borrowed from Stefan Gonzalez's niece Issy) and thence into an arcing, achingly mixolydian ride from Kutner that sounded like every good note Frank Zappa played in the '80s, then back into more tortuously tight ensemble play. Max played the pointillistic study "Going" on my buddy Darrin's banjo, which gave it a more rustic sound than the recorded version as it followed a veritable Appalachian Trail of melody. Another set highlight was a crushing version of Brian Eno's obscure late period work "Bone Jump" (from 2010's Small Craft On A Milk Sea), with Stapp using some extended techniques on tuba. 

In sum, the New York boys brought it, and Stefan Gonzalez later expressed a desire to tour Trio Glossia with them -- it should happen. Today, Partial Custody heads for Houston, where they'll be at 1810 Ojeman tonight and Khon's tomorrow night. The last time I was this high from witnessing a show, I got shitcanned from my straight and didn't even care (for a couple of weeks, at least). Mileage varies, but if you're in H-Town, you owe it to yourself. Or you can use the Bandcamp link below to experience it in the privacy of your own home. 

Dallas, 8.24.2024

Gregg Prickett and Jonathan F. Horne are two of my favorite guitar slingers on Earth, so the opportunity to see them duet for only the second time at Full City Rooster in The Cedars was too good to pass up. Jonathan had started the day in San Antonio and been up for 32 hours when they hit (aided by Full City's good coffee). He's in the area for a couple of shows -- he joins Trio Glossia at The Wild Detectives tonight, opening for Max Kutner's Partial Custody from NYC. Then he heads back to Norway (where he left his main Mosrite axe) for jazz gigs with groups led by Ingebrigt Haker Flaten and Paal Nilssen Love, rock gigs with a new band he's formed there, and touring with Haker Flaten's Exit (Knarr) and droney Austin rockers Water Damage. Busy guy.

Prickett, of Decoding Society/Unconscious Collective/Monks of Saturnalia fame, and Horne have known each other for 15 years, but only performed together for the first time last December. They are very different players, but like minded enough to blend their sounds without discussion or pre-planning, listening and responding to each other in the moment with near-telepathic automaticity. Gregg's classical facility and fretboard mastery allow him to produce the maximum number of notes possible from any position on the neck, and he uses a minimal setup, with delay and volume pedals, along with the echo unit that's affixed to his Strat-style instrument (with classical-width neck), to create an expressive sonic signature. Jonathan takes more chances than any guitarist I know and his approach is reminiscent of prepared guitar specialist Sandy Ewen, with whom he first played free improv a couple of decades ago. His stage trip is marked by a nervous energy that translates into enthusiasm and restless activity, which might just mean, as he says, that "I care a lot."

Prickett opened the evening with a reading from a Japanese anime in memory of a recently departed musician friend. (Paul Quigg, who plays in Sawtooth Dolls with Gregg, was on hand to record and photograph the proceedings.) The two shifted between electric and acoustic steel-string axes, with Jonathan playing a vintage 1939 Martin and a Fender Bass VI along with the Mosrite he played as a teenager. The sounds they produced included shimmering cascades of arpeggios, staccato percussive bursts, Ivesian indeterminacy, mutant blues and bluegrass, and snatches of slide (from Prickett) and bowed guitar (from Horne). The audience of about 20 folks -- a good crowd for a small room -- listened attentively and responded enthusiastically. (And kudos to Michael and Full City for having voter registration forms available at the counter; Michael says folks have been using them, too.) Gregg will be back in Fort Worth at the Grackle Art Gallery on September 7, in a duo with bass master Drew Phelps. I plan to be there; you too?

Patricia Brennan's "Breaking Stretch"

It's been two years now since producer David Breskin first dropped Mexican-born vibraphonist-marimbist-composer Patricia Brennan's name in my ear. Since then, she's released an album of solo vibraphone and marimba performances (Maquishti) and another (More Touch) for Pyroclastic that featured Brennan at the helm of a percussion ensemble -- with Kim Cass on bass, Marcus Gilmore on drums, and Mauricio Herrera on hand percussion -- that drew upon jazz, contemporary classical, Afro-Caribbean, and Mexican influences. On September 6, Pyroclastic will release Brennan's latest, Breaking Stretch, and it's a boldly extroverted piece of work. 

On Breaking Stretch, Brennan expands her sonic palette with the addition of a three-horn front line -- Jon Irabagon on alto and sopranino, Mark Shim on tenor, and Adam O'Farrill on trumpet and electronics -- to her quartet. The album's release also marks 20 years since Brennan left her native Veracruz for the United States, and the writing here is marked by a concern with roots, identity, and testing limits -- which is  highlighted by echoes of early salsa, funk, and rock inspirations like the Fania All-Stars, Earth, Wind & Fire, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Chicago. Brennan uses the extremes of the instruments' ranges to give the impression of a larger group.

Opener "Los Otros Yo (The Other Selves)" works off the tension between parallel melodies that unfold at different rates. The title track begins in a dreamlike space where drifting horn lines first clash, then coalesce into waves of rhythm, setting up solos by the horns, and a final melodic convergence. "Palo de Oros (Suit of Coins)" opens with an extended bass solo, giving way to a swirling array of asynchronous rhythms, the horns' regularity contrasting with Herrera's wildly careening hand drums. In "Suenos de Coral Azul (Blue Coral Dreams)," Brennan depicts her immigrant's journey, fraught with conflicting emotions, the wistful horns and percolating percussion setting the stage for an episode that finds Brennan back in her "early electric Chick and Herbie" bag. 

The turbulent "Five Suns," inspired by an Aztec vision of cyclical creation and destruction, puts me in mind of Leslie Marmon Silko's novel Almanac of the Dead, with its army of Native people marching to reclaim their stolen land. The quietly reflective "Mudanza (States of Change)," inspired by Salvador Diaz Miron's poem of the same name, begins with a pensive marimba solo before the ensemble enters with severe, resonant harmonies. "Manufacturers Trust Company Building" is a delirious slab of salsa, inspired by a multifaceted Harry Bertoia sculpture that resides in front of the eponymous Manhattan structure. (Breaking Stretch producer Breskin's a huge Bertoia fan, who curated a series of concerts in conjunction with the Nasher Sculpture Center's Bertoia retrospective back in 2022.) 

The album closes with "Earendel," a darkly atmospheric piece named for the oldest and most distant star yet discovered, reflecting Brennan's penchant for astronomy. Patricia Brennan's musical universe continues to expand. Breaking Stretch is an intriguing way station on the voyage.

Denton, 8.21.2024

For the latest edition of Molten Plains at Rubber Gloves Rehearsal Studios, we welcomed back co-curator Ernesto Montiel (from visiting family in his native Venezuela on the eve of the contested election, the ultimate outcome of which still hangs in suspense), while we enjoyed the diminished levels of free floating anxiety in our domestic political scene, buoyed by the energy from the Democratic convention the last couple of nights (I only read the highlights, unlike some friends that have been glued to the screen since Monday, but I'm glad it's happening).

Last month I got to play participant-observer as part of the Improv Lotto, and this month I got to witness a performance by a comrade from days gone by, dancer-choreographer-educator Sarah Gamblin, Professor of Dance at Texas Women's University. Sarah's appeared at a couple of Molten Plains in the past. Back around 2010, I was in an experimental improv outfit, HIO, that accompanied contact improv dance jams with some of her MFA students who made up Big Rig Dance Collective (whose former members are now on the faculties of UTA, UNT, and TCU), and we also performed with Sarah at the 2011 Houston Fringe Festival. But this was my first opportunity to see her dance solo without being encumbered by having to play.

On this occasion, she was accompanied by Andrew Dunlap on upright bass, a frequent Molten Plains performer who's also a member of jazz-funk outfit Captain Moon and the Silver Spoons with Rubber Gloves sound tech extraordinaire Aubrey Seaton. While I've heard Andrew before in a number of contexts, this was my first time hearing him playing without other musicians, and I was able to fully enjoy the deep sound of his instrument and the thoughtful, lyrical counterpoint he provided to Sarah's body movement.

As an improviser, Sarah is intelligent, body positive, and fearless, and she excels at engaging with her accompanists. I asked her what her concept was for this evening's performance and she said while they had no prepared score, they'd talked about being inscrutable, allowing patterns to happen, and maintaining visual contact. Each movement, she said, creates a problem to be solved, and it was fascinating to observe her thought process in motion, in real time. In this instance, I think video can do a much better job of conveying what went down than my meager description. 

Heavy Stars is the performing rubric for Austin-based vocalist/multi-instrumentalist Lacey Lewis, whose vibraphone anchored one of the trios at last month's Improv Lotto. For her set this evening, she used simple elements -- synthesizer, samples from field recordings, loops of skeletal beats or melodic fragments -- to create hypnotic sound beds, over which she added the sound of her voice, echoed, sampled and looped. The result was a kind of spacey folk music -- a worthy soundtrack for metaphysical ruminations. 

Last set was by the first-time duo of guitarist Michael Meadows and sound artist Chad Mossholder. Meadows plays a lefthanded Jazzmaster through a small Fender amp with an array of effects, using a bright, biting tone, laden with reverb, that recalls Syd Barrett's lysergic explorations as well as the MC5 blasting off with Sun Ra's "Starship," and enables him to manipulate feedback at relatively low volume. Mossholder, who's performed worldwide under the rubric Twine and worked as a composer and sound designer for video games, created an acoustical environment that ranged from what sounded like Extreme Close Up insects eating to jarring seismic shifts under Meadows' guitar skree. The collision of their contrasting sound worlds produced some connections, and was a bold and bracing finish to the evening.

Next Molten Plains will be September 18. The October edition will be late (the 30th, rather than mid-month), and the Fest in December is planned for the 14th and possibly the 15th. Tonight I'll be taking my wife to dinner at Nova in Oak Cliff with the proceeds from selling our VHS collection to Rubber Gloves, after which we'll take in Requiem for the Troposphere featuring pianist Thiago Nascimento with visuals by Lightware Labs at the Kessler Theater. I'll be back in Dallas Saturday to hear guitarists Gregg Prickett and Jonathan F. Horne duet at Full City Rooster, then again Sunday to hear Jonathan and Trio Glossia open for Max Kutner's Partial Custody at The Wild Detectives. It's a great life if you don't weaken.

Wendy Eisenberg's "Viewfinder"

Writing record reviews can be excruciating, but once in awhile, a piece of work comes along that's so engaging that I know I'm going to be spending a lot of time with it, and so I want to get out of the way as quickly as I can the part of my relationship with it where I have to listen analytically. Wendy Eisenberg's Viewfinder -- which arrived unexpectedly yesterday, although I wasn't expecting it until mid-September -- is one such recording.

The Brooklyn-based guitarist-singer-composer has been working on this "song cycle for improvisers" (originally titled Eye Music) for a couple of years, inspired by the Lasik surgery she underwent in 2021, facilitated by a 2022 commission and 2023 residency at Roulette Intermedium. Her concern here is "[that] strange, faintly colonial relationship between seeing something and thinking you understand it, believing that you own it, in a way, because you can see it."

To these feedback-scorched ears, after the first couple of spins, Viewfinder seems to be a step forward for Eisenberg on all fronts. It's the largest ensemble she's recorded with to date: a septet including another chordal instrument (Andrew Links' piano) and a two-horn front line; all the musicians except Eisenberg and the bassist (Carmen Q. Rothwell on the live-recorded "After Image," Tyrone Allen II everywhere else) play electronics as well as their primary instruments. I'll admit to having a particular affinity for trombones (hat tip to TSgt Shabazz from the bomb dump, Big Marcus Brunt, Patrick Crossland, and James Hall), but Zekereyya el-Magharbel is a particularly strong asset here, as is trumpeter Chris Williams. The wider sonic palette adds new depth and dimension to Eisenberg's songs.

Two of Eisenberg's musical signatures have been the vulnerability of her voice and the elegance of her guitar technique, even when playing noisy free improv at volume. On Viewfinder, Michael Coleman's recording (mixed by longtime Eisenberg collaborator Nick Zanca, mastered by Denton's own Andrew Weathers) captures the tactile immediacy of Eisenberg's sound in higher resolution than any of her other recordings to date. What one hears is a new strength and confidence in her voice -- as in the acapella openings to "Set A Course" and "If An Artist," or the album closing "In the Pines" (no, not the Leadbelly tune Cobain covered, but a candidate to replace Auto's "Give It A Year" as my favorite Eisenberg song), where she dares to explore the low end of her vocal range.

As a guitarist, Eisenberg has always exemplified the antithesis of jazz-school music as athletic event. She's technically adept, but always in service of expression. On the aforementioned "Set A Course," her solo, spiked with edgy dissonance, builds slowly to an intensity, then overlaps with Williams' trumpet ride over Booker Stardrum's thunderous percussive power. The result is a complexity that doesn't feel overly busy. 

On "If An Artist," a dissonant bossa nova gives way to electronic hyperspace, while the title track boasts a hypnotic distorted guitar riff (following a pensive intro that features wordless vocals with trumpet and electronics). "In the Pines" opens with a gorgeous, Charlie Haden-esque bass solo from Allen before Eisenberg ventures as close to a blues as she's ever come (still skirting Leadbelly). When she deadpans "I'm charred to the core by the vastness of my anger," you get the feeling she means it. Like a good European film, the song ends without resolving, which incites the attentive listener to start over again from Side A. You all go ahead on; I'll be here for awhile.