Thinking On Your Feet: New Muse4tet in Springfield

About a third of the way through the New Muse4tet concert at the Community Music School of Springfield on January 4, violinist Gwen Laster, the leader of the ensemble, reminded us that “all of us have to improvise every day.” The quartet, reduced to three when violist Melanie Dyer took ill and couldn’t make the trip from New York, had to reconfigure repertoire and arrangements on the fly. Luckily, for seasoned jazz artists like Laster and her bandmates, Teddy Rankin-Parker (cello) and Andrew Drury (drums), improvising is second nature. It’s what they do.

This followed on the heels of another medical mishap on December 19 when cornetist Kirk Knuffke was unable to continue playing with his bandmates, Joe McPhee and Michael Bisio at the Parlor Room. Then, too, the show went on, albeit with some drama and disruption.

Although the band, (New Muse3tet?), largely stuck to their original compositional game plan, there was more improvising on stage. Precipitated by Dyer’s absence, Laster decided that each musician would play a duo with the others. The pairings provided additional intimacy on stage and broke up the soundscape in a very nice way. While the Laster/Drury duet was a funky piece with clear form, Laster’s go-round with Rankin-Parker featured heavily textured string vibrations with little rhythmic roadmap. Both were captivating.

The percussion/cello duo was spontaneously composed and something else entirely. Drury was hardly seated at his kit. He was up playing a set of metal bowls, then some hanging gongs. At one point he left the stage and returned with a timpani (one of the benefits of having the show at a music school), which he proceeded to sing into using a funnel-like devise on the skin of the drum. His kitchen-sink approach to the world of percussion added dynamism and levity. Rankin-Parker matched him surprise for surprise, rapping the body of his cello and producing other-worldly harmonics.

This was my first opportunity to hear Rankin-Parker, who had a gorgeous tone, a surfeit of technique, and a fearless spirit. It was yet another reminder that there are always more first rate creative musicians to meet. Rankin-Parker came up in Chicago, replacing Tomeka Reid in Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble, and interacting with other members of the City’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians. He also has a foot in the rock music world, recording and touring for years with Primus and Sam Beam’s Iron & Wine. In another life, he is a LMSW Gestalt Therapist in New York, as well as the father of two kids under 5 years old. All evening, I had the sense that he was the center of the band, the fulcrum between rhythm and melody.

At another point I was convinced Drury was the band’s linchpin. Stationed in between the two string players, he added excitement and a foundational drive. He served as wild card. Drury is an affable, low key dynamo, both on and off the bandstand. He founded and runs Continuum Culture & Arts, a non-profit dedicated to education and performance in marginalized communities. He cooks for, and curates, Soup & Sound, a series of world-class concerts given in his Brooklyn home, which has presented over 130 events. He has given masterclasses on three continents, and has led over 1,500 workshops in schools, prisons, museums, homeless shelters, shelters for battered women, with Kurdish refugees in Germany, on Indian reservations (including the Oneida Nation where he was artist-in-residence for six months in 2000) and in remote villages in Guatemala and Nicaragua. I first met him in 2015, when the UMass Magic Triangle Series presented Jason Kao Hwang’s cross-cultural octet, Burning Bridge. I’ve been an admirer since. It occurred to me, that with its array of marimbas, timpani, glockenspiel and other percussion, the Community Music School of Springfield would be the perfect venue to present Drury’s percussion ensemble, The Forest.

Gwen Laster was a gracious and resourceful leader, and a fabulous composer and instrumentalist. She referenced Claudia Rankine’s book of poems, “Citizen” and Clyde Ford’s “The Hero With an African Face”, as inspiring two of her compositions. (Cuban music scholar Ivor Miller who was in attendance, immediately ran out and got a copy of Ford’s collection of African myths.) Her playing was strong, definitive and teeming with life, and the music flowed easily between poles of form and abstraction.

There were connections (community) everywhere. Laster’s colleague at Bard College, pianist Angelica Sanchez, was in the house, as was fellow violinist Terry Jenoure, whose writing workshops have helped Laster refine her thoughts. Laster reminisced with clarinetist and Amherst College professor Darryl Harper about their experience as students at the Jazz in July program. Willie Hill, the former director of the UMass Fine Arts Center, and Melanie Dyer’s middle school music teacher in Denver (!), was there to surprise her (alas!)

A roll-with-the-punches, make-it-work attitude permeates the jazz world. That was on stark display Saturday, as New Muse4tet displayed calm flexibility in the face of a last minute change of plans. With our world hurtling towards increased uncertainty, I’m throwing my lot in with those who can improvise, and who value community.

The Youth Movement Has Arrived: The Micah Thomas Trio

In the 100+ year history of the music we’ve come to call ‘jazz’, there has been almost constant handwringing over its future. The fraught, defeatist refrain: “Is jazz dead?”, and its more optimistic corollary: “keeping jazz alive”, has accompanied every style-change and aesthetic pivot throughout its evolution. I’m here to tell you, jazz - in its broadest meaning  - is as alive as it’s ever been. Exhibit A: the Micah Thomas Trio.

Pianist Micah Thomas, bassist Dean Torrey and drummer Kayvon Gordon, who performed for 55 active listeners at Hawks & Reed on December 12, are all in their late 20s-early 30s. To judge from Thursday’s results in Greenfield, the future of the music is in good hands. These three emerging artists, along with peers like Elena Pinderhughes, Immanuel Wilkins, Nubya Garcia, Mali Obamsawin, Nick Dunston, Savanah Harris, Joel Ross, Lesley Mok, Jazzmeia Horn, and many others, make it clear the jazz pipeline is flowing fine. The problem is not a lack of talent, but a dearth of opportunities to get the music before the public, especially in live performance.

Thomas has been getting his music before the public. Days before his first visit to western Mass, the 27-year old pianist was headlining Kuumbwa Jazz (Santa Cruz) and the Bach Dancing & Dynamite Society (Half Moon Bay), two venerable California jazz institutions. His extensive work with his former Juilliard classmate, saxophonist Immanuel Wilkins, has certainly raised his profile. Adam Shatz’ glowing article in the New York Review in 2020, plus extensive coverage in the New York Times, a 2024 feature in the New York City Jazz Record, and his inclusion in Downbeat’s recent piece, “25 For the Future”, have helped create a well-deserved buzz around Thomas. Here’s Nate Chinen’s 2020 profile of him for NPR. Thomas has toured with the fire breathing  saxophonist Zoh Amba (he told me his fingers would bleed after playing with her); my friend Cliff Peterson said he recently saw him at The Falcon (Marlboro, NY) with drummer Joe Farnsworth’s band. He has the chops and the range to be comfortable anywhere in the music’s ever expanding tent.

The Trio began with a free, open-ended, three-way conversation. The musicians were listening deeply and each had something to say. I heard the intense, telepathic interplay and elastic sense of time that defines all great improvising ensembles. About half way through their 80-minute set, Thomas introduced a stride figure that catapulted the band in a dramatic new direction. Locked in and swinging, the band launched in a language we all understood. Soon enough, of course, the trio loosened the reins; liberties were again taken.

That was prelude to an even more unexpected, if timely, romp through a medley of popular Christmas melodies, including “Jingle Bells”. It was obvious from the get-go that Torrey, Gordon and Thomas could play their instruments. But playing at impossible tempos, the torrent of fresh ideas on this all-too-familiar material was impressive, to say the least. This seasonal offering pleased the crowd.

It’s always exciting to hear musicians for the first time, and my introduction to bassist Dean Torrey was a thrill. He was hyper-responsive to his surroundings, accenting his bandmate’s phrases while continuing to suggest his own. He never had to play loudly to be heard in the mix, and his supple time stretching resulted in uncertainty, drama and an element of danger. He was a perfect foil for Thomas.

Kayvon Gordon came up in jazz-rich Detroit under the tutelage of Motor City icon, Marcus Belgrave. Now living in New Jersey, Gordon works with pianist Sullivan Fortner and talented newcomers like saxophonists Kevin Sun and Nicole Glover. He can be found on recent recordings by Sun, Glover and Micah Thomas. Like his rhythm-mates, he never overplayed and was continually intent on creating a group sound.

Home base for the Micah Thomas Trio has been Smalls in New York’s Greenwich Village, where they’ve spent lots of time performing and hanging out. The night after their Jazz Shares date, the Trio worked at Mezzrow, Smalls’ sister club next door on West 10th  Street. The camaraderie and sense of shared purpose they’ve built is clear on Reveal, their 2023 Artwork Records release, and their easy rapport was apparent during dinner and their hang at my house.

Thomas told me I reminded him of Frank Kimbrough, one of his mentors at Julliard. Knowing how universally loved and respected the late pianist was, I took that as a major compliment. In fact, Thomas and his band mates seemed eager to absorb the jazz past, and humble about their own achievements thus far. But they also exuded a quiet confidence that they too are contributing to the ongoing evolution of the music. I took comfort from that.

Guitar Advances in Holyoke: Brandon Seabrook

Over the years, I’ve been honored to present solo concerts by some of the world’s most outstanding jazz guitarists, including Marc Ribot, Fred Frith, James ‘Blood’ Ulmer and Elliott Sharp. But the November 20 concert at Holyoke Media featuring Brandon Seabrook now occupies a special place in my pantheon.

The technical display was dazzling, breathtaking even. Moments of astoundment, sometimes grounded in provocation, sometimes bathed in beauty, flowed into one another, as Seabrook danced across his fretboard at impossible speeds. But it wasn’t only the prodigious proficiency that wowed us, as impressive as that was. It was his playful approach and fearless attitude that made the concert so memorable.

Peter Margasak nailed it in 2017 when he wrote of Seabrook’s, “complex, idea-packed instrumentals with wildly shifting time signatures, rapid-fire chord changes, sinister riffing, and characteristically spastic solo explosions”. Wednesday’s 60-minute recital was as exhausting as it was exhilarating.

This was the 13th concert Seabrook has played since his new solo recording, Object of Unknown Function (Pyroclastic Records) dropped last month. For each of these solo concerts, he told me, he covers the same material in the same order, with lots of room for improvising, of course. In fact, he does the same thing for all his bands: every concert in a particular tour has the identical set list. The better to fully explore the possibilities within each composition, I suppose.

He played material from the new record, which is full of overdubbed guitar and banjo parts. On Wednesday he stuck exclusively to his 1998 Jerry Jones Neptune 12-string guitar. But nothing felt missing. With the help of various pedals and effects, Seabrook coaxed a universe full of sounds and textures from his instrument. Without resorting to loops, he created the illusion of multiple performers.

He told the 30 of us smart enough to show up, that the music he composed and performed was inspired by this particular 12-string guitar. He joked that the next time he was invited he’d just play banjo. (I might just take him up on that.)

Seabrook grew up near Gillette Stadium in Foxbrough, MA, about 20 miles south of Boston. Some of his older musician friends went to UMass, so while still in high school he’d come out to western Mass on weekends to play house parties and other assorted gigs. So even though the last time Seabrook performed in the area was in 2019 with Tomas Fujiwara’s Triple-Double, he has spent time in the Valley and knew his way around. One of those UMass friends, Kevin Delano, made the trip from Attleboro with his wife and son. For Kevin and his cohort, Seabrook is like the sandlot teammate who made it to the pros. He was demonstrably proud and marveled at Seabrook’s intrepid instincts and mind-boggling dexterity.

Seabrook has a well-developed sense of humor. At his insistence, his vocal mic had lots of reverb on it. He mused what it would be like to have that be his voice at home. “No” he bellowed into the microphone, followed by a much meeker “yes”. The titles of his pieces: “Historical Importance of Eccentricity”, “Perverted by Perseverance”, “Gawk Fodder”, “Some Recanted Evening”, reflect his whimsical nature. Here is his piece “Gondola Freak”. When he played it in Holyoke, he dedicated his performance to Jazz Shares Vice President Priscilla Page and yours truly.

Seabrook, now 40, is becoming an essential member of a generation of forward-thinking wunderkinds; he’s already collaborated with many of them. His trio with Cooper-Moore and Gerald Cleaver has produced two fantastic releases on Astral Spirits. His 2023 Pyroclastic release, brutalovechamp, written for octet, “demonstrates Seabrook’s remarkable abilities as a composer and conveys the breadth and imagination of his palette,” writes Stuart Broomer.

Seabrook’s virtuosity as a string player is firmly established, and his composing and bandleading skills are fast catching up. Like half of the artists we present these days, Seabrook now lives in Brooklyn, not so far from us here in western Massachusetts. We look forward to seeing his development up close in the years ahead.