I’ve made my peace with the fact that I’m missing tons of great live music in New York. But I’ll tell you, the Philly calendar is nothing to sneeze at. Last night, Ethan Iverson and David King of The Bad Plus met two prominent avant-gardists, violist Mat Maneri and saxophonist Tim Berne, in a quartet they call Buffalo Collision. Iverson, a sometime critic for Downbeat and a truly creative blogger, describes the band this way: “Tim and Mat are pure, natural creators of abstract melody. Dave and I are impure, magpie souls who need drama and groove. These two philosophies collide like buffalo.” Indeed they did at Penn’s Rose Recital Hall: three extended free pieces, with Berne switching between alto and baritone saxes and Iverson threading all kinds of counterpoint and implied tempos, at one point sinking to his knees to play the piano’s highest register. The middle piece was the best: Iverson began it with fractured solo playing, and King and Maneri ended it with a hypnotic duo passage. The concert was held under the auspices of the Ars Nova Workshop, which has more vital stuff coming up — check the website.
Other recent highlights: Mats Gustafsson’s trio The Thing at an out-of-the-way venue called the Avant Gentlemen’s Lodge (another Ars Nova gig); drummer Calvin Weston at the Rotunda, with a remarkable keyboardist named Brian Marsella; and the Kronos Quartet playing Terry Riley’s “Sun Rings” at the Kimmel Center, with haunting sound effects and massive video display. This week Kurt Rosenwinkel plays two nights at Chris’s. And one of the better-known clubs, Zanzibar Blue, will shut down after a weekend apperance by vocalist Melissa Walker. She’ll be backed by Christian McBride’s trio, with Aaron Goldberg on piano.
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