Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, Scott Amendola 11/22/24 Firehouse 12

 West coast friends convene for a night at the Firehouse. Goldberg on clarinet, Sickafoose on standup bass, and Amendola on drums and electronics. The set was a celebration of their recent release, From Here To There, a concept where Goldberg plays with the notion of  the “bridge”.  These three all pray at the altar of Thelonius Monk who was a master of the bridge. They played their composition “Self Evident” which pulled from Monk’s “Evidence” and “Sad Trophy” which borrowed from “Epistrophy”. I learn that Goldberg was mentored by the soprano sax legend Steve Lacy, who also spent much of his career inhabiting the compositions of Monk. Ben looked like Sherman from Underdog fame, his decidedly latitudinal mouth was perfect for clarinet play. Sickafoose is a Tony and Grammy winner for his role in the Broadway production of Hadestown, a play conceived by Anais Mitchell who fronts the excellent indie-Americana outfit Bonny Light Horseman. I have seen Amendola on numerous occasions, usually in a duo setting with the groove guitarist Charle Hunter. Scott had a tray table of shakers, bells, and small cymbals that he scraped and shook on the kit. At his left was an electronics console which enabled him to loop and stretch the sound in an almost dub-wise echo fashion. These three had excellent telepathic interplay making for an enjoyable set.

Jamie Saft, Joe Morris, Herb Robertson ,Bobby Previte 11/15/24 Firehouse 12

 Leader Saft is a piano virtuoso. Local jazz legend Morris plays standup bass and electric guitar. Bobby Previte on drums and old guy Herb Robertson on trumpet and “stuff”. The second set is nearly sold out to get a glimpse of these talented multi-instrumentalists. I enter the space to see the stage crammed with instruments, the sounds promise to be many and varied. Saft is surrounded by keyboards, the F-12 Steinway, organ, Wurlitzer, and a harpsichord. Morris plays electric guitar and bowed and plucked bass. Previte’s kit was standard, but he played any and all surfaces to great effect  That leaves the old guy, Herb’s array of blowables was extensive: trumpet, mini-trumpet, slide whistle, telescoping vuvuzela, double playskool illuminated megaphones, clarinet, micro-french horn, and a selection of duck calls and kazoos. The set had two extended pieces where each player was able to shine and shade. Saft moved from keyboard to keyboard with the Wurlitzer and harpsichord showing exotic flourishes. Morris is lead wrangler for the Improv Now series at Real Art Ways, a monthly showcase of top tier jazz talent. Previte has backed Tom Waits and Elvis Costello and has been a downtown drumming presence for years. Saft  has a crazy CV as well. Bad Brains, Beastie Boys, film scores, and a list of A-list jazzbos too many to count. I’m not familiar with the old guy, but Saft introduces him as the “great” Herb Robertson. The music ebbed and flowed, from free jazz squiggling to churning rock throb. There was one point where electric guitar and Wurlitzer got into a rock and roll tussle and I saw every head in the audience start to bob. Saft has a ZZ Top beard and it’s a wonder he doesn’t  bump into it while playing. I learn that Jamie was raised an Orthodox Jew, makes sense as he is a regular fixture in the many John Zorn Tzadik label Jewish related projects. Had this one circled on my calendar for months, these four visionaries did not disappoint.

Abdullah Ibrahim 11/14/24 Shubert Theater

 South African piano legend was born Adolph Johannes Brand. If you are born in 1934, and your parents name you Adolph, you have a duty to ditch the moniker. He chooses Dollar Brand, more capitalist than fascist. The music is a fascinating blend of jazz and traditional Cape Town folk styles. In the early 60s, Brand moved to Europe where, and I can’t believe I get to write this, was “discovered” by one Duke Ellington. From Europe to the US, with approval from Duke, Brand fell in quickly with such forward thinkers as Don Cherry, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Pharoah Sanders. Brand is now in a perfect spot to play a role in the Black Power movement, convert to Islam and change his name again to Abdullah Ibrahim. Returning to South Africa, AI pens the tune Mannenberg, widely considered the theme song of the anti-apartheid movement. The body of work continues to grow with forays into free jazz and film scores. In the 90s, I stumble upon the soundtrack to the movie Mindiff, which beautifully encapsulates the Ibrahim sound. Happy to get a rare viewing of this storied nonagenarian jointly presented by the Shubert and the Schwarzman Center. On this evening, the format was trio with Cleave Guyton Jr. on flute, piccolo, and clarinet and Noah Jackson on bass and cello. The set leans on the recent Solotude record with some renditions of Trieste My Love, Blue Bolero, and Mindiff. The instrumentation gave a cinematic feel with cello and flute being perfect foils for Ibrahim’s surprisingly nimble runs. At 90, the set was brief but it felt like I was witnessing history.

Six Organs of Admittance, Tashi Dorji, Kath Bloom 11/10/24 Spaceland

 Just caught the last half tune from local legend Bloom. She is in the twilight of a cult career of the freak folk variety. Her early aughts records with downtown guitarist Loren Connors are fantastic. Her childlike vocal style allows for complex simple tunes, like the late great Daniel Johnston.

Bhutanese-born, Asheville NC resident, Dorji is an experimental guitarist. He takes the stage with an acoustic guitar and a briefcase of effects pedals and boxes at his feet. The music starts in a Fahey-esque style with repetitive picking and looping. The sound was wide and expansive, making me think of William Tyler or early Pat Metheny. He then switched to some angular avant garde picking layered on a looped backdrop. Growing up in Bhutan, Dorji relied on bootleg cassettes from China to learn the ways and means of western music. The effects pedals stretched the sound, he poked at one like it was a vending machine failing to give change. He puts the guitar down and picks up what looks like a book, made from wood. On the “cover” are 8-10 knobs that he twiddles along with the briefcase. The sound is not folk or jazz, but some kind of extraterrestrial mixture of the two. Dorji’s set was one long song that twisted and turned for 40 minutes. Look at his output on bandcamp and you’ll see a prolific collaborator  with truly original music.

Six Organs of Admittance is the guitarist Ben Chasny. Chasny has been making music since the 90s, much of which is solo or group settings on the fabulous Drag City label. He does time with Rangda, a psych folk supergroup with Chris Corsano and Sir Richard Bishop. Ben is an amazing picker and, like Dorji, his music is not easily categorized.  Relying less on effects, Chasny achieved his sound with open tuning and repetitive passages. His breathy psych vocals are secondary but necessary to give him his singular sound. Slim crowd for these three original artists.

Lankum w/ John Francis Flynn 11/8/24 The Warsaw Brooklyn NY

 So, I’m of proud Irish heritage. My father was from Newry, a sleepy border town in the North. My visits over the years have been lovely, packed with history, culture, and breathtaking landscapes. I’m even ok with the Irish basing their entire culinary palette on some dark and foamy liquid dispensed in pint glasses that requires a PhD to pour. What I have a problem with is Irish music. Not U2 or Van Morrison, but the reelery and jiggery that is traditional Irish music. Why then, would I drive to the hipster center of the universe to spend a night standing in a packed club with said hipsters to view Dublin, somewhat traditional, Irish group Lankum? The answer lies in the “somewhat”. Let’s start with opener Flynn. A big fella, Flynn hits the stage armed with a cup of tea, a pint of  Guinness, a drum machine, a guitar, and perhaps the driest wit this side of Stephen Wright. He plows through some originals, Tralee Jail, I Wish I Was in England ( which was definitely not true) while playing his electric guitar. The drum machine sounded hokey, but at 6’6” 280, I wasn’t about to tell him. He even played one tune on Uilleann pipes. Even with his dry delivery and unintelligible accent, he seemed genuinely excited to open for his longtime friends. Lankum takes the stage to a packed house. The group consists of brothers Ian and Daragh Lynch, Radie Peat,  Cormac MacDiarmada, and a mystery woman on drums for the tour. Ian played hurdy gurdy, concertina, pipes, and a small keyboard. Radie played accordion and harmonium. Cormac played fiddle while Daragh was on acoustic guitar. They all sang exquisite harmonies with female Radie being the standout. The song structure leaned traditional with typical Irish themes of drunkenness and suicide. The “somewhat” that I alluded to earlier is the addition of elements of drone and sonic dissonance coaxed from the traditional instruments. This dimension made the traditional modern, much to the delight of the Brooklyn crowd.  The set pulled from their three releases, starting with their signature tune Wild Rover,The New York Trader, Rocky Road to Dublin,  The Pride of Petravore, The Rocks of Palestine( complete with anti-colonialism rant by Ian), The Young People, On A Monday Morning, The Turn, Cold Old Fire, Bear Creek, and closed with the fantastic Go  Dig My Grave. The songs had a similar arc, starting soft and low then crescendoing to a core rattling racket. Like the Pogues who smashed Irish tradition with a punk ethos, Lankum’s mix of tradition with drone and noise creates something exciting and new.

Pamela Z CCAM 11/1/24

 Pamela Z is a woman of color, by that, I mean many colors.  An experimental musician, she uses voice and electronics as her color palette to compose elaborately layered washes of sound. The CCAM (Center for Collaborative Arts and Media at Yale) nerds have done it again. CCAMandant in chief RossWightman scours the outer reaches of the music art nexus for fascinating speakers and performers. PZ looks to be 60ish with oversized pink rimmed glasses, black gauzy attire, a rapunzelesque tangle of braids. Her boots look like they were fashioned on Argus 4, in the Shamwow galaxy. Wightman started with some questions. We learn that Z watered the seeds of avant garde while working at a college radio station in Boulder. Moving to the west coast and starting as a singer songwriter, she quickly realized that what was on her turntable was not what she was performing in clubs. A couple of analog delay pedals, and she was off to the races. Since the late 80s, PZ has circled the globe occupying countless residencies and performing live. Look on Spotify and there is little audioprint for this artist, that is due to the nature of her work best experienced live or as an installation. She took the stage armed with a laptop and two effects “boxes”. The smaller one emitted percussive sounds while the larger one spewed tones and word fragments. She used her hands to wave at these boxes to thereminic effect. The first piece had Z looping herself counting in different languages, stretched and magnified, and funneled through the top tier CCAM soundsystem, it felt like a hundred Zs counting in sensurround. The next piece had her typing a letter to her pen pal, with the percussion box acting as a Smith Corona complete with the carriage return ding. Next up she struck some tuning forks and smushed some bubble wrap into the looper. When replayed upon itself ad infinitum, the sound was deafening as if we were sitting inside a crackling fire. She then pulled out a keyboard that made bird calls with different keys. She mimicked these calls with her voice and phased them backward with the canned sounds. The timing came into phase then moved back toward cacawphony. The final piece sounded like a conversation with a boyfriend, she looped her voice and his voice into submission. His cadence became a bass loop and she layered herself on top. At this point, I notice she has small boxes on each wrist that interact with the stationary boxes as she gestures that manifest in sound. Fascinating artist and fascinating show.