Just a quick note on recent shows I’ve caught while not on assignment:
—John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet, with Gary Versace subbing on keyboard bass for the group’s regular bassist, Drew Gress. This was in the same room Kidd Jordan played three nights later. Great post on the Claudia by Darcy here.
—Ensemble Noamnesia, led by bass clarinetist Gene Coleman, playing works by the late experimental composer Luc Ferrari, with guest artist Vincent Royer on viola. Music “for ensemble with memorized sounds.” Hard to explain; more info here. Jarring and jagged, yet absorbing and somehow meditative. This is one of the projects I touched on in a forthcoming essay for the Philadelphia Music Project, which helped fund the evening.
—Same night, across the street at the Rotunda, caught just a bit of baritone saxophonist Charles Evans and guitarist Erik Dutko. I’d been impressed with Evans’s record Ballads, as I noted. Following the duo came Mostly Other People Do the Killing, a “terrorist bebop band” that’s too self-consciously wacky for my taste, though trumpeter Peter Evans can leave you astounded (same goes for his debut recording, The Peter Evans Quartet, on the Firehouse 12 label).
—Wayne Escoffery tore up Chris’s Jazz Café on tenor with Mark Sherman on vibes, Joe Martin on bass and Pete van Nostrand on drums. Not Wayne’s usual lineup; he and Sherman had met for the first time that very afternoon. But the music clicked, and Wayne’s extensive touring with Tom Harrell has left him in exceptional shape. (Disclosure: I wrote liner notes for Wayne’s two latest albums.)
—Orchestra Underground presents “Hybridity”: a project of the American Composers Orchestra, also funded by the Philadelphia Music Project and touched on in my forthcoming essay. Premiered Friday at New York’s Zankel Hall, repeated here in Philly on Sunday at the Annenberg Center. The idea was compositions for orchestra across disciplines, by people who don’t write for orchestra. “Pintado’s Dream” by drummer Susie Ibarra was the standout, followed by Steve Coleman’s “The Illusion of the Body.”
Tonight at Penn’s Houston Hall, free jazz pianist Burton Greene will appear with bassist Ed Schuller and drummer George Schuller — both sons of Gunther Schuller, for whom Charles Mingus wrote “Relevations,” part of the “Hybridity” program as well. Check out the Ars Nova website (under “event calendar”) for a 1964 pic of Greene with Bill Dixon, Paul Bley, Cecil Taylor and other members of the Jazz Composers Guild.
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