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.