Patrick Bartley Quartet w/ YUJC 1/31/26 Sudler Hall at Yale

 The Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective is a loose assemblage of well connected jazzbos that flex for an annual festival. Usually held in the spring, this one took over the final weekend of the longest month of the year. I’ve seen such luminaries as Randy Weston (at Toads!), Dave Holland, Jason Moran. Recently, the emphasis has been on emerging talent, young lions so to speak. Nate Smith and Kinfolk, Dezron Douglas, and this years offering, Patrick Bartley are all new to the scene.

The afternoon show starts with a set by the students. Piano, bass, guitar, drums, clarinet, and dueling saxes made up the septet. A disparate group of nerds might birth a future lion, more likely a behind the scenes, Yale-educated, inhabitant of the music teaching or business world. A capacity crowd at Sudler enjoys their offering.

The beauty of highlighting emerging talent is to see new directions in jazz. Dezron Douglas shared the stage with Phish and Patrick Bartley has the notion of fusing video game music with jazz. A self-deprecating intro has Bartley describing his slacker youth as a video game obsessed anti-student. His suffering grades would inhibit entry to such a prestigious school but, here he is. He polls the audience as to their familiarity with video games. 62 year old me is in the minority, with absolutely zero knowledge or interest in the genre. The set is fascinating as the quartet blows through Pokémon, Mario, Zelda, Final Fantasy, and others. Having no baseline for the tunes, I am pleasantly surprised by how complex the renditions are. Mario has a distinct tradjazz feel while Final Fantasy feels like a film score. The other players were also jazz visionaries. William Schwartzman on piano, Wallace Stelzer on bass, and Dom Palombi on drums capably handled their roles. Turns out that Patrick is Grammy-nominated and has played with Wynton Marsalis, Jon Batiste, Emmet Cohen, Herbie Hancock, and Carole King. Lead jazz nerd seemed Asian-American and met up with Patrick in Japan, a hotbed of video game music I assume. There has always been a push-pull relationship between tradition and the notion of “music” with jazz roots. I am happy for the existence of the YUJC who continually shine a light towards the future.

Frederic Acquaviva and Kombat Diva 1/28/26 The Institute Library

 The Institute Library, established in 1826, is the oldest membership library in the US. Occupying a second and third floor of a lower Chapel street address, the IL is not easy to find. With no real sign, one must trust one’s own wits, entering to a stairway with a meek placard that says “we’re open”. On this block, we’re open could have led me to a hair braiding or yoga studio. Happy to enter the library, a long thin space with floor to ceiling shelves of books that ends in a comfortable reading room. The incredulous librarian takes my entry fee while feebly trying to explain the “music” that is about to happen. “I see plenty of weird shit” I explain while finding a chair amongst the 30 brave souls who thought it would be a good idea to leave the couch on this sub zero evening. The self taught Acquaviva is a prolific artist on the underground experimental music scene. He works on the notion of “oxymoron” and the intersection of voice and computer editing which includes video, text, or livestreams. Lore Lixenberg is a mezzo-soprano sound artist that performs under the moniker of Kombat Diva. The performance is choreographed by Frederic who remains hidden amongst the books. The show starts with Lixenberg rolling her suitcase through the crowd. The Doppler of the rolling casters clanking over threadbare carpet and hardwood is mesmerizing. She settles in front of the audience and performs a series of skits that were numbered “musicas”. Seems that Acquaviva has created a work called 120 Musicas, small vignettes that use found sounds or music. I should have been tipped off when Lixenberg starts the sequence by stating “ladies and gentlemen, welcome to tonight’s performance. We ask that you turn your cellphones……On, for the duration of the show”. She starts with some passages of yelping, high pitched squealing, and other vocalizing. She pulls out her phone and wanders the room taking selfies with the audience while sticking her tongue out and blowing raspberries. At one point, Elton John’s Rocket Man plays loudly while she reads a biographic passage of Wagner. Then Wagner plays while she reads a biographic passage of Elton John. She polls the audience if they have any “musical allergies”. Country music, bagpipes, death metal, the open minded attendees found joy in explaining their allergies. She finds one audience member and coaxes some bills from her wallet. She proceeds to crumple and fold the money in close proximity to the woman’s face creating her own personal performance. After a short set break, the lights are turned low and Kombat Diva emerges, dressed in a sequined Sun Ra frock and head dress. Her head gear is made from CDs strapped together to completely shroud her face. This is her piece called Panic Room. She roams the audience and sticks her shrouded face at people asking if they are “panicked”. She does this in operatic tones which adds to the surreality. She asks me if I am panicked, to which I reply “no”. “Why not?” This is normal for me, I reply. She settles on Martha Willette Lewis, Institute Librarian and local DJ on the fiercely independent WPKN. Martha joins Kombat Diva up front and proceeds to be psychoanalyzed by the opera singing figure. Trippy video backdrop has a calming effect for this panic room. As I exit the performance, I encounter the librarian and tell him his lack of description of the performance hit the nail on the head, it was truly indescribable.

Kayodot w/ Tongue Depressor 1/8/26 Space Ballroom

 Local string wranglers Henry Birdsey and Zach Rowden form the duo known asTongue Depressor.  Zach bowed a standup bass while Henry played some sort of bagpipe. I asked local scenester and instrument aficionado Adam Matlock for a ruling on the pipes and he thought North Umbrian Pipes. The pipes are perfectly suited for instrumental drone music. The bowed bass had swoops and scrapes, while the pipes could sustain a note indefinitely. They played one long song. Henry usually plays fiddle but must have gotten the pipes for Christmas.

NYC outfit Kayodot has been around for years. I remember seeing them in the back room at Bar in the early aughts. Led by bassist/ vocalist Toby Driver, the lineup seems to have evolved. Keyboard player also played clarinet and sax, fiddle player also played trumpet, guitar, and in your face prog drumming rounded out the quintet. The music was a muddy prog metal mix with Driver’s vocals often distorted. I previewed the recent release and it had some sections with aggro death metal vocals. Towards the end of the set, a bald, leather panted biker hops on stage to supply the growl. The problem with being a genre defying group is that the sound often gets lost in the schizophrenia.

Ingrid Laubrock’s Grammy Season 12/19/25 Firehouse 12

 Fitting artist to close the 2025 Fall season and celebrate 20 years of phenomenal jazz from the folks at the Firehouse. Laubrock has graced the Firehouse many times over the years and her evolution from squawking busker to compositional wunderkind has been a pleasure to view. The trimmed Grammy Season lineup has Ingrid on saxophones, Brandon Seabrook on guitar, Shawn Lovato  on standup bass, Tom Rainey on drums, with special guest DoYeon Kim on gayageum. Ingrid starts with fire and toggles easily from soprano to alto, carrying herself as the bandleader. Seabrook is a Firehouse regular and seems at home with delicate shading or strenuous noodling. At one point, Brandon scrapes what looks to be a small tape player on his strings giving a haunting word-less vocal quality. Lovato’s capable bowing or plucking along with Rainey’s understated timekeeping forms the canvas for the others to spill paint. The gayageum is an odd Korean instrument like a large zither, Japanese koto, the Chinese guzheng, the Mongolian yatga, the Vietnamese Dan tranh, the Sudanese kacapi, or the Kazakh jetigen. With 12 strings, it looks like a diving board with a couple of bridges. The sound could morph from harp, to acoustic guitar with a decidedly “eastern” accompaniment. Laubrock’s excellent recent recording Purposing The Air has her conducting a series of duets based on a book of poetry. Makes sense that one of tonight’s pieces was inspired by a Rilke poem. Firehouse owner Nick Lloyd came out to thank the audience for years of support. The thanks go both ways as I am very grateful to have participated heavily over the past two decades.

The Dream Syndicate 12/9/25 Space Ballroom

 It must have been the roses, and by that I mean The Days of Wine and Roses, the seminal debut from Steve Wynn and The Dream Syndicate that hooked me in 1982. Leading the genre inexplicably dubbed “the paisley underground”, this band typified hard driving smartass rock and roll. Stealing their name from a pre-Velvets avant garde collaboration between John Cale and Lamonte Young, maybe paisley underground referred to a smash of Velvet Underground and the California psychedelic scene. No matter, call me a fan. While the debut knelt at the altar of Reed and Cale’s Velvets, the sophomore recording The Medicine Show swerved delectably toward a Neil Young and Crazyhorse choogle. Smitten with The Medicine Show, Wynn reassembled the band to perform the record for old (me), and new fans. Since a lifetime of music has occurred since the 80s, tonight’s show was split into two sets. The first set billed as the 21st century came with a setlist: Where I’ll Stand, Filter Me Through You, Out of My Head, Black Light, Like Mary, 80 West, How Did I Find Myself Here, and Glide. Wynn is a tireless artist and his post Dream Syndicate endeavors Gutterball, Steve Wynn and The Miracle 3, and The Baseball Project are all worthy of intense rabbit-holing. The second set brought the Medicine Show in its entirety: Still Holding On To You, Bullet With My Name On It, Daddy’s Girl, Burn, The Medicine Show, Armed With An Empty Gun, Merrittville, and the incendiary fifteen minute John Coltrane Stereo Blues ( complete with the bass tease of A Love Supreme chant). Tonight’s lineup was Wynn on guitar and vocals, Mark Walton on bass, Dennis Duck on drums, Chris Cacavas on keys, and the amazing Jason Victor on lead guitar. This group took no prisoners and the opener-less stage stamina was impressive. The tour has coincided with a deluxe repackaging of The Medicine Show with plenty of outtakes and live recordings to wade through. The performance closed with nugget inflected encore: Tell Me When It’s Over, That’s What You Always Say, and a blistering punky reading of Eric Clapton’s Let It Rain.

Saccata Quartet w/ Christopher Cavaliere 12/4/25 Park City Music Hall

 Caught the whole set from opener Cavaliere. Solo acoustic guitarist with an array of looping pedals. The music had an open air feeling, not unlike some early Metheny works, or even Michael Hedges or Alex De Grassi from the Windham Hill cabal. Technically proficient, the music bordered New Age. When viewing this type of music live, one realizes the level of difficulty attributed to such soothing sounds.

The sounds from the Saccata Quartet would be anything but soothing, but no less mesmerizing in the live setting. Led by jazz-rock chameleon Nels Cline on guitar, with Darin Gray on standup bass, drummers Chris Corsano and Glen Kotche. Cline serves as lead freak guitarist for the band Wilco but his entry into the music world has been more jazz and avant garde. Those skills are put to good use by Jeff Tweedy and company to inject experimental textures into their wonderful Americana-ish songs. I will never forget one (more?) Saturday night at the Vibes when Wilco graced the stage where Cline’s spasmodic jamming actually scared the hippie contingent. Kotche too plays for Wilco but must have a taste for the challenging sounds of improv. Chris Corsano is a polymath sideman equally adept in rock or free jazz, lending his talents to everyone from Bjork to Thurston Moore and Bill Orcutt. Not familiar with Gray before this evening, but I certainly will be rabbit-holing his exploits. The music is better viewed than listened via recording. Cline had a table of effects that he was constantly twiddling, at one point his guitar sounded like wolves in the distance. He had some device where he blew at the guitar strings and amplified the vibration. Gray also had some plastic tubing where he directed his breath at the strings. An array of pots and pans, drumsticks, were also used on the strings for different effects. Corsano and Kotche were masters of shading using an array of drum add ons to color the sound. This was not arena rock drumming, but percussion used in service to the improv. Park City Music Hall is a haven for hippie and jamband offerings, which is why I was surprised at the posting. Comfortable viewing with good acoustics and sight lines will keep me coming back for their fringier affairs.

Ariel Pink 11/22/25 Space Ballroom

 Arrived late for California provocateur Pink. He has a checkered past as an outsider musician with right wing views that led him to participate in J6. Pink on vocals and keys, guitar, bass and drums. There were some synths in the mix, but I couldn’t see from my back of the room vantage point. The music was a whiplash of styles soul, pop, artpop, even death metal. The setlist centered on Pink’s recent release With You Every Night. Life Before Today, Pocket Full of Promises, Credit, Dedicated to Bobby Jameson, Four Shadows, Time To Meet Your God, Sit n’ Spin, House of the Haunted Hebrews, Everyone’s Wrong, Dreaming, Fright Night, Lipstick, Mommy Made Dinner, Anosognosia,  Entertainment, Round and Round,  encored with White Freckles and Are You Gonna Look After My Boys?  The crowd was a heady mix of bros and freaks with some super fans up front that knew all the lyrics. The song structure was complex, a friend likened it to a mashup of The Flaming Lips with The Beach Boys. Perusing the lengthy back catalog, one comes to the conclusion that Ariel Pink’s body of work is uneven. Flashes of brilliance are countered by straight up dogs. The delightful Round and Round sounded like a Cure b-side, while Mommy Made Dinner could have been plagiarized from a third grader’s final essay. The band and the crowd gave off an Island of Misfit Toys vibe, which might just be the point. The tune Everyone’s Wrong had clubby flourishes with the refrain Everyone’s Fucking Wrong, which we could all get behind. Plenty of outsider artists have been reviewed in this blog. Usually, the outsidedness is in service to an unwavering artistic vision. In Pink’s case, he is on the outside because Everyone’s Fucking Wrong. A tough lane to occupy.