A Wistful Exuberance: Eric Vloeimans & Will Holshouser Lift the Curtain on Another Jazz Shares Season

The butterflies that routinely congregate in the gut as the calendar turns to September result from a lifetime of school beginnings, a resumption of adult responsibilities at summer’s end, and the looming melancholy of another cold and dark New England winter. One antidote to that early fall apprehension is the start of another Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares season. The Jazz Shares tip-off produces a jolt of anticipation, built on the prospect of dozens of the world’s best creative musicians visiting our neck of the woods over the next 10 months.

Season 13 of Jazz Shares got off to an auspicious start on September 5, as trumpeter Eric Vloeimans and accordionist Will Holshouser filled the elegant marble music room at the Wistariahust Museum with mellifluous music full of heartfelt melody. Their 75-minute performance had the hallmarks of a proper European recital: sturdy compositions played with impeccable technique and executed with brio. There were short bursts of improvisation, but in the main every hair was in its proper place. With the exception of “I Wish You Love”, the program consisted of originals by Vloeimans and Holshouser, who collectively harnessed elements of European formalism, homey country music, and indeterminate folk traditions to create music that, while composed by the performers, sounded like classic tunes.

“I Wish You Love”, written by Charles Trenet in the early 1940s and made popular in the U.S. in 1957 by vocalist Keely Smith, featured the most jazz-inflected playing of the evening. Vloeimans swung in spurts with fleet, well-articulated runs straight out of the Clifford Brown playbook. The trumpeter became interested in jazz while at the Rotterdam Academy of Music before moving to New York to study with Donald Byrd. He later cut his teeth in the big bands of Mercer Ellington and Frank Foster. Vloeimans’ sound was round, burnished and as bright as his outfit (colorful floral shirt, loud yellow pants and pointed red boots).  His tone and approach was a perfect fit with the dazzling venue.

During the intermission that was the COVID pandemic, Vloeimans turned to composing and wrote a body of work he numbered and grouped under the heading “Innermissions”. We heard a few of them. “Innermission # 1” had a gorgeous plaintive melody with a delicate oom-pah waltz rhythm that I’ve been humming for days. “Innermission # 12”, an up tempo romp that highlighted the (seemingly) effortless facility of the instrumentalists, ended with a slow hymn-like exhale. As with many of the pieces we heard in Holyoke, both are found on their recent disc, the excellent Two For The Road. Everybody loves melody, and the entire program was full of strong, memorable lines. The crowd of 50 seemed pleased.

The Duo recorded Holshouser’s “The Light Quick Bones” on their first collaboration, Eric & Will (2018). The piece had a playful, spritely quality with short bursts of craziness. “Deep Gap”, also written by Holshouser, paid homage to the great guitarist Doc Watson, who was born in Deep Gap, North Carolina in 1923. It had the feel of a good mid-twentieth century country tune, and highlighted the deep, reedy resonance of Holshouser’s chosen instrument.

The accordionist is a graduate of Wesleyan University, where he studied with Bill Barron and Anthony Braxton. It’s no surprise, given the versatility and universality of the squeezebox, that Holshouser’s career spans musical worlds, and bands led by David Krakauer, Suzanne Vega, Han Bennink and Martha and Loudon Wainwright III. His fondness for the early 20th century Paris musette tradition (explored in depth with his band Musette Explosion), his experience working with the Brooklyn Philharmonic and the NYC Opera, and his affinity with jazz and country traditions, were all brought to bear on Thursday. The results were transportive, and removed all fear and worry from my end of summer.

Susana Von Canon, Vloeimans’ manager and a long-time champion of Dutch jazz on both sides of the Atlantic, accompanied the band to Holyoke along with subsequent gigs in Cambridge (The Lilypad) and New York (Drom). She was instrumental in helping me organize a  UMass Magic Triangle concert in 2006 featuring Misha Mengelberg and Han Bennink’s legendary 10-piece Instant Composers Pool Orchestra. I met her then, and it was great to see her 18 years later. It was inspiring to see her continued perseverance on behalf of musicians and the music despite current punitive visa restrictions and diminished state support.

New Band, New Sound: Taylor Ho Bynum's JAK4

The careers of musicians constantly twist and turn. Surges and droughts in productivity, job opportunities outside of music, family obligations, health issues, fiscal constraints and many other factors all impact the creative trajectory of artists. In the case of cornetist and composer Taylor Ho Bynum, changes included a move to rural Vermont and a hiatus of five years as a bandleader.

Ho Bynum has taught at Dartmouth since 2017 but has remained quite active as a sideman. He resumed his long history of band leading this past week as he led his JAK4 quartet on a small tour that included a Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert at Holyoke Media on May 29, with subsequent stops in Boston and Firehouse 12 in New Haven. The band: Allison Burik, bass clarinet, Jacqueline Kerrod, harp, Ken Filiano, bass, and Ho Bynum, took 55 of us on a journey filled with sonorous twists and stylistic turns.

Setting up in front of an impressive array of percussion instruments, (the MIFA Victory Players were rehearsing for their Friday and Saturday performances of “Puerto Abierto”), Ho Bynum’s quartet delivered a discursive, dream-like 50 minute recital that highlighted the immense musical abilities of all assembled.

Playing cornet, a recently acquired flugelhorn and a rarely heard double bell trumpet that he had custom altered, Ho Bynum had lots of tone colors to choose from. He used a variety of mutes (including a bucket hat, a funnel and a piece of tin foil) that helped him mitigate the cut-through quality of his instruments. In fact, the sound balance of this all acoustic set was close to perfect, although Kerrod’s harp was occasionally lost when the band played at full throttle. Ho Bynum told me he relished the chance to play at reduced volume and mentioned there are certain techniques that are only possible when playing quietly.

Now 49 years old, Ho Bynum has already led a remarkable life in music. After studying with Anthony Braxton at Wesleyan, Ho Bynum led his mentor’s Tri-Centric Foundation for 15 years. He has recorded over three dozen recordings as a leader or co-leader, has written for The New Yorker, Jazz Times, Point of Departure and Sound American, and with Nick Lloyd, co-founded Firehouse 12 Records. He has completed epic bicycle tours through New England and the west coast from Vancouver, BC to Tijuana, Mexico, playing gigs along the way. I first met him in September, 2010 on his NE bicycle tour, when he stopped in Amherst to play at Mt. Pollux, before performing with Braxton at a UMass Magic Triangle concert . Those experiences have honed both his administrative and musical skills.

Although Ho Bynum had relationships with each of his bandmates, they did not meet each other before the start of this tour. Under Ho Bynum’s steady but light touch, I’m sure their quick coherence will deepen over time.

Kerrod and Ho Bynum have a recent duo recording, Simple Ways Such Self, and her solo record, 17 Days in December, was voted Best Debut Record of 2021 in the New York City Jazz Record. She comes from the classical music world, having studied in her hometown of Johannesburg, South Africa and later at Yale. Her work with the International Contemporary Ensemble, Wet Ink, and Alarm Will Sound has solidified her contemporary music bona fides, and she been improvising in various contexts with Braxton, including a duo recording, Duo (Bologna) 2018. On Wednesday, she played the chordal role typically handled by piano, guitar or vibraphone, while fully engaging with the ensemble. The flat floor space of Holyoke Media made sight lines difficult, so it was impossible for most of us to see her foot work on the seven pedals altering her instrument’s pitch, but her hands caressing and attacking the harp’s 47 strings were a sight to behold. I would have liked to have heard an unaccompanied solo or an extended duo with one of her peers, so we could have fully absorbed the unique sound of her instrument.

We heard Allison Burik playing alto sax and bass clarinet last year at the Institute For the Musical Arts as part of Mali Obomsawin’s sextet. In this more intimate context they had room to stretch out, and they played assertively with a full range of expression. Like the harp, the bass clarinet is not part of the typical jazz ensemble, making the evening even more special. Their hook up with Filiano’s bass provided deep low register vibrations, and their solos invoked echoes of Eric Dolphy and David Murray, masters of the bass clarinet. Now living in Montreal, Burik spent years in Boston earning degrees at Berklee and New England Conservatory. Their recent solo work, Realm, employs electronics to create both earthly and alien soundscapes.

Ken Filiano is, quite simply, one of the most creative and dynamic bass players working today. Whether rubbing his instrument’s upper bout to create other worldly sounds, inserting knitting needles between strings to alter the timbre, accompanying his notes with vocals, or simply swinging his ass off, Filiano is the complete package. His performance was riveting and it was hard to take my eyes off him. He’s back in the Valley on July 26 with Anders Griffen’s Quartet, and again on October 6 with Joseph Daley’s Tonal Colors Trio.

Throughout the concert, the musicians flashed visual cues inviting colleagues to return to previously covered composed material, cues that could be accepted, ignored or deconstructed. It gave the improvised proceedings shape and also an element of fluidity and unpredictability. In the hands of this band of seasoned collaborators, the results were exhilarating and full of surprise, and reflected the flexuous path of its leader.

Standing On Giant Shoulders: Nate Wooley's Columbia Icefield in Concert

Inspiration serves as a powerful engine in the creative process, and paying tribute to mentors and past masters provides common source material for all the arts. So trumpeter and composer Nate Wooley’s decision to write a work in honor of Ron Miles is not unusual, but it yielded unexpected results on May 16, as Wooley’s Columbia Icefield debuted new material before a full house at CitySpace’s Blue Room in Easthampton, MA.

The Jazz Shares concert, featuring Wooley alongside Ava Mendoza, guitar, Susan Alcorn, pedal steel guitar and Ryan Sawyer, drums, used bits of melodic material gleaned from Miles’ recordings and performances refashioned and expanded by Wooley’s fertile imagination.

Wooley was familiar with Miles’ music even before he spent the late 1990s in Denver with the late cornetist. In his pre-concert remarks, he called Miles’ My Cruel Heart one of the greatest recordings of all time. This was not the first time he has used Miles as inspiration. Wooley’s group Argonautica gave him a chance to perform with Miles, and “A Catastrophic Legend”, part of Wooley’s 2022 release, Ancient Songs of Burlap Heroes, was penned as a love letter to his mentor.

“I spent a lot of time with Ron,” Wooley says in an interview in PostGenre. “I don’t think he would have ever allowed me to call myself his student, just because he was incredibly humble. But even without the label ‘student’, I learned so much from him. I watched him devote his life to the sound in his head. Sometimes these came across as long conversations about trumpet technique. He was incredibly virtuosic. I’m not sure most people truly knew how gifted he was on the trumpet. Ron was also constantly curious about not only music but also art, books, and really anything he could find a way to incorporate into his music. I think what I learned most from him was to be a good human being first. Work at treating people ethically. Be a good friend. Care for other people. Bring love and joy into the world. Those things must come first before you work on your music. I always got the feeling that was the order of operations for Ron. I try to live up to that example.”

Wooley told 75 audience members that the concert was a meditation on loss and the ways we mourn, both quietly and loudly. He began his evening-length suite with an understated unaccompanied solo that only hinted at his prodigious ability to extend the conventional parameters of his instrument. It was a subdued and heartfelt soliloquy. Over the course of the evening the band filled the Blue Room with rock intensity, complete with back-beats and fuzz guitar. At other times, pedal steel twang and cicada-like maracas held our attention. One of the themes the band explored was “Wildwood Flower”, made famous almost 100 years ago by the Carter family. The country classic was a favorite of Miles, and Columbia Icefield dealt at length with its beautiful melody. The concert ended as it began, with delicate trumpet eloquence.

The members of Columbia Icefield inhabit a transformed hybridized space. Alcorn has taken an instrument firmly rooted in a very specific genre and catapulted it into a completely new realm. Mendoza, whose parents are Bolivian and Bosnian, and Sawyer, who has Mexican and Anglo roots, are artists able to mix multiple styles into a joyful blend. Whether it is Mendoza’s 21st century progressive rock vibe on her new recording, Echolocation, Alcorn’s mash-up of Chilean folk and nueva cancion with free improvisation on her new recording, Canto, or Ryan Sawyer’s cassette releases, Baby Rattle and Death Rattle, where he plays maracas exclusively, these are musicians who are comfortable operating in in-between places.

The band was in Philadelphia and New York before coming to Easthampton. They were making their way to Toronto and Quebec’s Festival International de Musique Actuelle in Victoriaville. There are plans for the quartet to reconvene in the fall to record the material we just heard. While on a personal level it is important for Nate Wooley to memorialize the legacy of Ron Miles, making sure the jazz public understands Miles’ contribution to the music is equally critical. This project will have the added benefit of solidifying the reputation of one of Miles’ most important progenitors.