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.

Reverend William Barber 1/27/25 Battell Chapel Yale

 Annual MLK commemoration at Yale’s beautiful chapel has fiery racial and social justice voice Barber opining on King and the state of our fragile democracy. The evening starts off with Shades, a multicultural acapella group of students who perform Lift Every Voice and Sing and We Shall Overcome. Standards of the African-American church, the near capacity audience sways and mouths along to these renditions. Next up is Influence, a local poet and rapper who recites his piece on sanitation workers. The symbolism of black people as America’s “necessary but invisible” garbage men is compelling. Introduced by the Dean of Yale’s divinity school, we learn that Barber holds 10 honorary doctorates. He is a go to fixture on cable news and is an eloquent speaker on issues of race and justice. The theme was Martin’s final speech, fittingly in support of the Memphis sanitation workers strike. Barber said that King struggled with “America’s schizophrenia” citing many examples of moving one step forward and two steps back. It is impossible to ignore the orange mushroom cloud that was recently inaugurated. Barber said that Martin wouldn’t be content with having a “day” in his honor, his work ethic was his trademark. William drew some striking parallels from history, the Spanish flu was scapegoated and bungled much like the coronavirus. Voting rights, civil rights have both taken hits under recent and I’m sure future Republican administrations, Barber reminded us to perservere. He pleaded with us to “know who we are” as we navigate our way forward. The second Trump administration promises to be awful and ugly, seems that they know who they are. Barber closed his talk with a call for unity, urging attendees to approach the altar and join hands in solidarity. I’m sure King was smiling in heaven. One minor, but glaring error, had the Divinity Dean referencing Barber’s work with the NCAAP, an unfortunate case of CRD (clueless racial dyslexia) showing us that we still have work to do.

Sasha Berliner 1/24/25 AFAM Cultural Center Yale

 Middle day of the annual Yale Undergraduate Jazz Collective festival has young vibraphone artist Berliner in a solo setting. Originally from Frisco, she now splits her time between NYC and LA leading and a member in a variety of groups. She sets up with some looping and effects boxes to create a percussive bed over which to play. Tapping the microphone and recording some shaker passages, she layers the vibes on top. This festival usually happens in April, maybe the YUJC wants to be more “inclusive” of winter months. The African-American center has a no frills assembly room that houses some programs on this festival weekend. Berliner seems to be on the spectrum as her intersong banter was shy and nerdy. Put some vibe mallets in her hands however, and she shines. I had a good view, when four mallets were used, the sound was typical magic wand wish granting. When Sasha moved to two mallets, the music turned more tribal. She name checked Gary Burton, the godfather of jazz vibes, as having influenced her work. One song, “The Worst Person in the World”  paid homage to an obscure Scandinavian film score.  Berliner has played with some top names in jazz, Tyshawn Sorey and Nicholas Payton being notable. The set was brief, but I am always happy to see the Collective showcase up and coming talent in the jazz world.

Paul “HR” Hudson w/ T!lt 1/16/25 Cafe 9

 Been a while since I’ve graced the musicians living room, Cafe 9. The current owners seem more content to slosh high power cocktails than put quality artists on the stage. Excited was I then to see this show posted. T!lt is a local moptop quartet of twenty-somethings whose fast paced punk delivery is a fresh assault in a sea of young singer songwriters. Bass, drums, lead guitar, and rhythm guitar shredded a barrage of two minute songs with such titles as “Buzzcut”. Both guitarists sang to great effect, snarling their way through the set. Look at these guys on Spotify and we learn they’ve been nominated for three Grammys, a Nobel Peace Prize, and are 5x three-legged race World Champions. Heady accomplishments for a crew that is also embroiled in multiple high profile lawsuits with everyone from Michael Buble to Yoko Ono. These guys will have a good time warming up for acts passing through.

HR ( Human Rights) is the stage name of punk legend Paul Hudson who was lead singer for the DC-based seminal punk outfit Bad Brains. Cited as an influence to No Doubt, Sublime, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Beastie Boys to name a few, Bad Brains had the distinction of melding machine gun delivery with a reggae ethos. Add to that fact, they were black, Bad Brains were definitely an anomaly in the early 80s punk scene. The live show from the Bad Brains reached mythic status, with “James Brown gone berserk” frontman HR stage diving, back flipping, and engaging in general parkour hijinx that highlighted the aggro assault. Fast forward 30 years and the punk and the parkour are gone leaving a 70ish Rastafarian with back trouble. OK for me since I am a big reggae fan. HR takes the stage with an A-list crew of Rastas, guitar, bass, drums, and keys with a seated HR spew an excellent set of roots reggae. Floor length dreads indicate reggae authenticity and these guys brought the goods. Themes of peace and love, I and I, Rastafar I, bubbled from a stew of bass and echo. HR even “zionized” the Lord’s Prayer for a dubby dose of religion. Authentic reggae shows are hard to come by, and I was glad to be in attendance for this one. Many attendees seemed to be waiting for the old HR, a guy in front of me even wore his shirt stating “Violent, Skinhead, Rock and Roll”. Reggae is anything but violent, and that guy exited mid-set. Evolution shows up in many areas of life, reggae is a logical twilight endeavor of HR. While some lamented the lack of punk, I reveled in the high level reggae that was on display.

Joe Morris w/ Bob Gorry Neverending Books 1/9/25

 Two area avant skronk provocateurs meet on a cold January night for a set of improvised noodling. Morris has been reviewed many times in this blog. He teaches music composition in Boston and organizes the excellent Improv Now series at Real Art Ways. He is also instrumental ( pun definitely intended) in playing with and wrangling for bookings at Firehouse 12. Gorry is a local scenester who helms NHIC ( New Haven Improvisors Collective) a loose group of likeminded noiseniks who gather at the bookstore to ply their trade. The evening was billed to have three groups, assuming these two would headline, I planned my entrance accordingly. Upon arrival, I appear mid set for Joe and Bob. It’s ok, it’s not like they were playing Free Bird where one could discern a beginning, a middle, and an end. The music is challenging, but in the close proximity of the book store environment, you could really get a feel for how the improv works. Morris squiggled with an array of effect pedals while Gorry squaggled sometimes resorting to his trusty knitting needle for percussive effect. There was one passage that sounded like Morris was strangling an alien from a 60s movie set. The two diverged then converged in service to a marching beat that seemed like the thread that held them together. I stuck around for the final group which highlighted local reed man and contra dance aficionado Paul Maguire. The group had piano, guitar, bass, and Paul. The three pieces had Paul on different honkers. First was a crusty looking alto sax that looked like it was exhumed from the East River along side of Albert Ayler. The second was a soprano sax, the “straight horn” as Steve Lacy used to call it. Finally, Paul pulled out a recorder, the simulskronk sounding like a fourth grade assembly, on acid. This community embraces anyone brave enough to play or listen to this music, which is a life lesson we all should heed.