HomeMusic Jazz All About Jazz-New York New York at Night New York @ Night: May 2010

New York @ Night: May 2010

May 3, 2010 By dev Comments are Off

In the new All About Jazz-New York:

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While bassist Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra is named to conjure up great size and bombast, at present it’s a compact sextet, and its sonic inventory includes passages of nuance and overall calm. With a Bay Area lineup, Lane has released No(w) Music (Cadence, 2001) and New Magical Kingdom (Clean Feed, 2006). His New York edition has a two-disc item, Ashcan Rantings, on the way. At the Brooklyn Lyceum (Apr. 14), Lane provided a window into his current thinking, joined by David Bindman on tenor/soprano saxes, Avram Fefer on alto sax and clarinet, Herb Robertson on trumpet, Reut Regev on trombone and Igal Foni on drums. “Cycles” established a mood of swing shading into funk, with a catchy, bluesy melody in 7/8, tart trumpet and alto solos and a tight framework of tempo shifts. “Imaginary Portrait” was also steeped in blues flavor, teetering from 4/4 to 6/4 and giving Robertson an unaccompanied spot that prompted obstreperous free group improv. Here and during “Sanctum,” Lane showed a penchant for simple horn unisons expanding into richly voiced harmony in the second pass — an Ellingtonian touch made all the prettier by Robertson’s cornet and Fefer’s clarinet. The tunes had a rough-yet-polished character, allowing for pockets of free blowing and hinting at the band’s rowdy punk-jazz origins. But “Calypso,” an upbeat tribute to the late Johnny Dyani, closed the set in sweetly melodic fashion, with Regev in the lead.

(David R. Adler)

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Brian Drye and Westbrook Johnson, curators of the Second Annual Trombone Festival at IBeam, did a fine thing by corralling their trombone brethren and presenting 12 varied acts in five nights. The third evening in the series (Apr. 17) was a double bill shared by ERGO, with trombonist Brett Sroka, keyboardist Sam Harris and drummer Shawn Baltazor, and Curtis Hasselbring’s The New Mellow Edwards, featuring the leader/trombonist with Chris Speed on tenor sax and clarinet, Trevor Dunn on bass and Ches Smith on drums (standing in for John Hollenbeck). Simply put, ERGO is an electronic atmosphere band, NME is an acoustic blowing band, and both revealed a profound though dissimilar rock influence. Harris, taking the place of Carl Maguire, played Rhodes, synth and piano; Sroka, seated in a chair, molded sound with trombone, a laptop rig and pedals; Baltazor gave the mournful, ethereal and at times spooky music a beating heart of rhythm. Much of the material was from Multitude, Solitude, ERGO’s latest on Cuneiform, although “If Not, Inertia” and “The Widening Gyre” are yet to be documented. After the break, Hasselbring’s group exploded forth with a wry, peppy set of songs from their two releases on the Skirl label. They also snuck in a premiere, “You Are Many Names,” a wild bit of chamber funk with a snaking clarinet motif, arch dissonance from trombone and bowed bass, and strategically dished-out madness from the drums.
(DA)

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