William Parker 2/16/25 Real Art Ways Hartford

 Annual stop for the William Parker Pantooker Revue starring some regional Jingtinglers. That’s right, Parker is such a mythic figure, he’s downright Seussian. The Improv Now monthly series at Real Art Ways has thankfully moved from the overly mirrored poor sound quality ballet studio to a gallery space near the entrance, cafe, and bathrooms. The gallery space has a large projection screen exhibiting the work “Thin Ice” by the CT artist Joseph Smolinski. The video is that of a Ford 150 with an American flag stuck in the tailgate (we’ve all driven behind one) that is slowly sinking through thin ice. The piece is mainly about climate change but takes swipes at toxic masculinity, faux patriotism, and modern day jack-assery. The video was halted for the performance. Parker is a downtown bassist and general multi instrumentalist. He is joined by Improv Now mastermind Joe Morris who plays bass, guitar, ngoni, and banjuke, and percussionist Jerome Dupree. The listing had local cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, but he failed to show. The trio plied their improv trade. First tune had Parker on some kind of a brass umbrella stand and Morris on standup bass. Morris with baseball cap looked like a middle-aged avant garde first base coach. Coaxing his team to try running to third base first, or agreeing to let all nine players play right field. Dupree was nimble, with light touches and brushes, he followed the others with impeccable timing. With nerd glasses and wool beanie, Jerome looked the ultimate hipster. We learn that Dupree was drummer for the amazing Cambridge indie trio Morphine back in the day. Parker is a sight, my last viewing I realized halfway through the show that his clothing made him look like a big strawberry. Red pants with felt ‘seeds” affixed to them and a green beret “stem” of sorts. Todays show had somewhat normal attire, but upon closer inspection his obviously hand crafted pants seemed to be made of coral pink bath towels stitched together for 38X32 trousers. Better yet “pockets” made from a red tie dyed T-shirt were sown on each calf. Seems that these pockets were made to hold bow rosin at the perfect altitude. Next tune had Morris on guitar while Parker moved to standup bass. He plucked  and bowed to great effect. The interplay was great as these three are masters of jazz telepathy.. William also played a small metallic vuvuzela that gave off an Asian lilt. I braved shitty weather for this show and was delighted to see a near capacity crowd do the same.

Lea Bertucci 2/11/25 World Music Hall, Wesleyan

 Lea Bertucci is a NYC-based sound artist who focuses on tape loop and voice manipulation. Tonight’s performance was billed as a MA thesis program. Seems that Bertucci, whose installations have been featured worldwide, thought it would be a good idea to obtain a graduate degree from Wesleyan. The program had two long form pieces. The first was “Two Way Mirror” which revolved around stream of consciousness vocalization in which she warped her voice through creative misuse of a reel to reel tape machine. The tape extends and shatters words into fragments and confounds the relationship between language and meaning. The result seemed somewhere between Laurie Anderson and the Exorcist. Lea proceeded to expound with treated vocal fragments, “mass confusion and mass delusion”, “good government, good god”, “it’s a shame what has happened to the Americans”. The reel to reel lends an antiquated air to the piece, Lea hovers over the machine like a club DJ. The second piece was “ The Days Pass Quickly Immersed in the Shadow of Eternity” a work for multichannel speakers, electronics, and “live early flutes”. Lea had the audience move to the stage area and sit on cushions arranged in a circle around her. The music was taped flutes from Norbert Rodenkirchen, an early music scholar, who offered her sustained microtones from wooden and bone flutes. The instruments in this iteration were the Bass Renaissance, Medieval Traverso, Tenor Renaissance , Sheep Bone, and Swan Bone flutes. The result was haunting, ancient and modern. A fascinating journey that toggled time.

Mali Obomsawin 1/31/25 Sprague Hall, Yale

 Winter installment of Yale’s Ellington Jazz Series hosts genre fluid standup bassist Obomsawin and her band. Mali is a proud citizen of the Odenak First Nation, an indigenous section of central Quebec along the St. Lawrence seaway. Her heritage flows in and out of her work in the form of  field recordings, cadence, and wordless vocals. The band was excellent with Allison Burik on alto sax and bass clarinet, Noah Campbell on tenor  and soprano sax, Magdalena Abrego on guitar, and brothers Zack and Adam O’Farrill on drums and trumpet respectively. The show starts with an extended bass solo, with Mali plucking while in a trance. Wafer thin with saucer sized earrings, Mali had command of her instrument that was roughly her same size. On one speedy passage, it looked as if Mali was shaking the mast off a sailboat. Burik spent much of her time on the unusual bass clarinet, the hookah of the reed family, it is a hybrid brass and woodwind. Campbell seemed to be a devotee of fire music with Ayler-esque runs on both tenor and soprano. Tiny Abrego was fascinating, she started with bent note shading like David Torn, moved to Henry Kaiser angular solos, and even rock choogled like Jimmy Page, her diminutive size anathema to her sound. The O’Farrill brothers come from Latin jazz royalty, father Arturo and grandfather Chico were big band leaders that served as a proving ground for countless musicians. Obomsawin has a toe in many styles, Deerlady is a shoe gaze duo with Abrego, an excellent recording with roots musician ( and blog favorite) Jake Blount, film scores, and various sized jazz ensembles allow her to compose in many directions. The result was music that was difficult to categorize. One song had a field recording of an elderly Odenak male speaking in his native tongue, the backing music swelled in a buoyant fashion effectively assigning triumphant meaning to his words. Another had Burik and Abrego engaging in a back and forth electrical storm with battling effects pedals. At one point, Mali asked if Yale had divested in Israel to which the crowd yelled “no”. Obviously annoyed, she explained that support of indigenous peoples is contradictory to imperialist policy. Great evening of music, it wasn’t indie, it wasn’t world, it wasn’t jazz…..it was all of the above.