Jake Blount, Laurel Premo, Nic Gariess 4/25/23 Cafe 9

A good lead in to this post is my viewing of Jake Blount in the summer of 2022. Blount, an ethnomusicologist (read “nerd”) is a banjo ambassador and American roots music scholar. He plays banjo, fiddle, some backgroundy synth and sings. He is joined on this evening by Michigan-based guitarist and fiddler Premo and traditional step dancer Gariess. I’m fascinated by this music and how young people are drawn to it. These three can’t be over 30. The addition of the dancer brings the old timey feel full circle, Nic shuffled and tapped and was concerned with the placement and efficacy of his floor mic. He was billed as an ethnochoreographer (read “nerd”). He spoke of Celtic step dance, Appalachian stomp, and African dancing as instrumentless percussion. Premo was excellent, reminding me of the young roots guitarist Marisa Anderson. She played Jericho and Hop High from her awesome recent release. I notice that she is peeling off from this crew in support of a Bonnie Prince Billy tour. The songs were mined from the traditional pantheon and bent to a modern offering. Premo took some shrapnel from some 1800s Michigan hymn book and Blount synthesized lyrics from an obscure African-Scandinavian text from which his heritage lies. I urge readers to seek out these artists as they are torch bearers of music that deserves recognition, one might even dub them ethnomusicarchaeologists.

Prism 1965 : Vijay Iyer and Wadada Leo Smith 4/12/23 University of Hartford

 Billed as a “meditation on the year 1965”, a pivotal year marked by the assassination of Malcolm X, the marches in Selma, the invasion of Vietnam, the Watts uprising, and the passage of the Voting Rights and Immigration and Nationality Acts. Composer performers Smith (trumpet) and Iyer ( piano, Fender Rhodes, and electronics) soundtracked visuals provided by Whitney artist in residence Chiraag Bhakta. The performance was alleged to offer a”sonic and visual meditation on the relevance of those past events to our present moment, creating possibilities for meaning that language cannot touch”. Problem was, I felt little of that lofty missive. Smith and Iyer are on top of the modern composition ladder. I have seen them perform at a recent Newport Jazz and they were true to their form on this evening. Smith has won a Pulitzer and his challenging music often reflects social, natural, and political themes. Iyer’s honors include a MacArthur Fellowship, Grammy nominations and has an excellent new release collaborating with vocalist Arooj Aftab and multi-instrumentalist Shahzad Ismaily. The music is decidedly “uneasy listening”. Smith squawked and squiggled with and without his trusty cup mute. On quiet parts, Smith closed his eyes as if to meditate on Iyer’s lead. Iyer usually relies on the Steinway, but on this evening he dabbled with the Fender Rhodes and laptop electronics. The visual backdrop was puzzling. I am no video artist, and I have zero skills in assessing the relative complexity of a video feed, so I guess that makes me an expert on the critique. The picture movement speed was tectonic, so slow that it spurned my interest. The frames slowly mashed images utilizing a color palette of red, white, blue, and black. The speed and the rudimentary color palette were side issues, the main problem was that I could discern little of 1965 from the visuals, which was the whole point. We were left with a concert of the avant- garde stylings of the musicians. I was hoping for more Koyaanisqatsi and less Cafe Oto. The performance did make me meditate. I was able to meditate on how it was possible for me to miss the stated purpose of this performance.

Dezron Douglas Trio 4/9/23 Dwight College Dining Hall Yale University

Hartford native Dezron Douglas brought a trio to headline the Annual Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective’s spring festival. Douglas on standup bass was joined by sax and drums.These events are free and open to the public, and I am always amazed at the level of talent they get. Douglas was mentored by Hartford jazz icon Jackie McLean. He has played with such luminaries as Pharoah Sanders, Enrico Rava, Ravi Coltrane, Mulgrew Miller, and I notice he is holding down bass duties for a brief stint with the venerable Louis Hayes. The set on this evening pulled from recent recordings: Foligno from 2022’s Atalaya and some Coffee song from the Force Majeure release. The trio navigated straight ahead skronk and lyrical mournful passages for an entertaining listen. A restless musical spirit, Dezron also has Grammy nominated production credits on recordings by his wife, the harpist Brandee Younger. During the pandemic, the pair churned out critically acclaimed duets from their Harlem apartment. If that wasn’t enough, Dezron is offering his services to support The Trey Anastasio Band, the Phish guitarist’s jammy solo behemoth. It seems natural that Dezron would appear to promote music education with the YUJC, he is the beneficiary of a rich musical education and seems like the kind of spirit that would pay it forward.

Mary Halvorson: Clone Decay 4/7/23 Firehouse12

 First off, yay. I mean hell-yay, so happy to have the Firehouse back after a pandemic and some water damage that required lengthy remodeling. Apropos then to have home court guitar wunderkind Halvorson show her recent project Clone Decay. The trio was Mary on guitar and processed electronics, Kalia Vandever on trombone, and Weston Olencki on trombone and electronics. You heard right, two trombones and guitar offered a sonic palette for Halvosen to jump styles and time signatures. The first tune had Olencki squeaking and squiggling from the computer, they sounded like C3PO getting squashed by a semi. Vandever stuck with the trombone and when paired with another could give the proceedings a marching quality or a boozy quality, as if they were soundtracking an Andy Capp strip. Halvorson, as nerdy as ever, in her Sally Jesse Raphael frames, is an unlikely band leader. She nods and smiles her way through improv like some approving librarian. Her tone is varied, I heard flourishes of Larry Coryell, angular Marc Ribot lines, even some Paco Delucia flamenco, deliberate, not speedy. One passage had her treated guitar sounding like it was being played under water. Having “played” the trombone through my junior high years, I have a certain affinity for the sound. It is one of the few instruments where sliding in and out of notes is encouraged. Olencki did some odd puffing embouchure techniques and made use of a cup mute, while Vandever just blew. Halvorson is an in demand avant- axe wielder, just coming from a Big Ears stint where she supported John Zorn’s Cobra. Near capacity turnout was a welcome sight for the nicely remodeled concert space.

Sunburned Hand Of The Man w/ Bentley Anderson 4/6/23 Cafe 9

 Bentley Anderson was a big fella psychguitar noodler. He played seated with a wide array of pedals in front of him. The sound was looped and processed which gave rise to a meditative effect. He played a couple of long form meditations that tucked and rolled with the final section ending with a muddily processed field recording of Amazing Grace.

SBHOTM is a loose collective of musical freaks from the Boston area. They work on psych, noise, drone improv. There were 6 people on stage. Check that, 6.5, the 0.5 being a mannequin head with a Mohawk and terminator shades fixed to a mic stand that peered menacingly at the crowd. Four people twiddled knobs one being a Moog, another a Mellotron. They were joined by bass and drums. One of the twiddlers was a young lady who was either a Karlheinz Stockhausen devotee, or someone’s niece working a summer job as freak drone operator. At the start of their set, one dude duct taped some oak tag to the wall as a receptacle for a decidedly lo-fi video screen which he proceeded to shimmy in front of as he sang. The songs were very Can-like with garbled vocals and a motorik drum and bass assault. One tune had the singer opining on “sweating the small stuff”.  I have seen this outfit several times since the early oughts. One memorable show in the back room of Bar had the crew dancing around a stolen Charlie Brown tree with drum and cymbal cases on their heads in a sort of a long-haired short-bus Bacchanalia. Look at SBHOTM on Spotify and you will see countless releases, many live recordings of this ever shifting group. I should note that pre-show and set breaks was expertly helmed by DJ Caren spinning vinyl, she had the good sense to play some Dire Wolves, a perfect trippy jammy mix. This group is way out and not for everyone’s taste but they are truly original. They ended their set with an unceremonious “thank you”, as if to imply “haven’t you people had enough?”