The Creativity Never Stops: Dan Weiss Trio

Even though our Jazz Shares season was chock full when drummer Dan Weiss asked if we’d be interested in hosting his trio, I immediately said “yes”. After all, he was proposing a concert with alto saxophonist Miguel Zenón and pianist Matt Mitchell in support of his new recording, Even Odds. I can’t think of three more creative and virtuosic musicians on their respective instruments, and since we specialize in presenting the best of the best, we squeezed them in. The 95 people who filled Newhouse Hall at the Community Music School of Springfield on April 29 were glad we did.

Since his 2015 appearance with Amir ElSaffar’s Two Rivers Ensemble, Weiss has played western Massachusetts in bands led by Michael Dessen, Jon Iragabon, Noah Preminger, and in a mind boggling duet,  guitarist Miles Okazaki. Weiss is more than a talented drummer. He is a composer and conceptualist, who constructs frameworks in which to pour his ideas.

Many composers build pieces from the piano, where chords and key changes can be explored. For this project, Weiss did most of his composing from his drum kit, where he first established the rhythmic scaffolding. Originals titled “Bu” (a tribute to Art Blakey) and “Max Roach” illustrate his reverence for past masters. Weiss encouraged us to check out Roach’s eight-bar drum break on Charlie Parker’s "Klact-Oveeseds-Tene", which inspired his piece. Weiss is a connoisseur of recorded jazz and a student of its history. He spoke about gigs at The Bop Shop, a Rochester, NY record shop and venue, where he's spent considerable resources beefing up his collection.

The exceptions to Weiss’ unique compositional process were the two gorgeous ballads we heard: “The Children of Uvalde” and “Fathers and Daughters”. Both highlighted the round, burnished tone of Zenón’s alto, who used simple declarative statements at modest volume to convey maximum emotion.

Zenón, who in the past week added a prestigious Doris Duke award to his Grammy, MacArthur and Guggenheim honors, is a modest, self-effacing genius who seemed unfazed by the accolades. These days, Zenón rarely appears as a sideman, but I’m guessing he committed to this nine-day tour that took him to Springfield, MA, New York, Minneapolis, Cleveland, Toronto and Philadelphia, because of the respect he has for Weiss and Mitchell, and because of the challenge and reward the music provided. It was a great honor to meet and host Zenón, who is now an Assistant Professor of Music at MIT, and one of Puerto Rico’s great gifts to the world of music.

Like Weiss, and seemingly half of all the musicians who perform via Jazz Shares, Matt Mitchell lives in Brooklyn, and like Weiss, he has been a regular visitor over the years. The pianist performed in 2012 with Dave Douglas’ Quintet in Jazz Shares’ first season, and has made subsequent trips to the Valley with Anna Webber’s Simple Trio, Jon Iragabon’s Quartet and Miles Okazaki’s Trickster. On two of the more complex, up tempo pieces: “It Is What It Is” and “Five To Nine”, Mitchell provided the backbone and a dazzling display of hand independence. Like his bandmates, he is a superb technician who only uses his prodigious talent when it serves the music. Nate Chinen’s description of him as “a pianist of burrowing focus”, is apt and accurate, and it’s hard to argue with Will Layman of PopMatters, who called him "the most complete and well-integrated improvising pianist of the last 15 years."

Weiss leads Starebaby, an unconventional amalgam of doom metal and electronic music, featuring Craig Taborn, Matt Mitchell and Trevor Dunn. He is an accomplished tabla player, who has translated his studies with his guru, Samir Chatterjee, to drum kit (see Tintal Drumset Solo - and Jhaptal Drumset Solo). He has written startling material for big band (see Sixteen: Drummers Suite and Fourteen). That’s all in addition to a slew of leader credits in more conventional settings, and a busy schedule of sideman work with some of the leading lights of jazz. With the possible exception of Ches Smith, Weiss has a wider musical palette than any current improvising drummer. I’m confident prestigious awards will be coming his way, and glad that we get to experience his evolution on a regular basis. 

Front and Center: Sara Serpa/André Matos Duo at the Institute For the Musical Arts

On Friday I met with jazz scholar, radio host and record producer Ben Young, who gifted me albums recorded in the 1960s and 70s by Archie Shepp, Ted Daniels, Sirone and others. They were “free” jazz records made entirely by men. The next night, March 30, Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares presented vocalist Sara Serpa at the Institute For the Musical Arts in Goshen, MA. The juxtaposition of these two events in my life underscored the sea change that has taken place in both the music and those who make it.

In the past 50 years, and especially in the last 20 or so, the number of women who have taken jazz’s center stage has exploded. Of course, even back in the day women like Mary Lou Williams, Alice Coltrane and Carla Bley had major impacts on jazz. But now, the number of female jazz artists working in the field has grown so great as to seem unremarkable (although more work remains). In the past five weeks alone, for instance, Jazz Shares has presented bands led by Tomeka Reid, Kris Davis, Ingrid Laubrock, Anna Webber and Sara Serpa. These artists were not hired to fulfil some random women’s history month quota, but because they have thriving careers making music on a high level. And they are far from alone.

Serpa, who performed with her husband, guitarist André Matos, and keyboardist Dov Manski, gave us a set of ethereal originals that filled the barn at IMA with love and creative energy. The material, all written by either Serpa and Matos, were drawn from a series of fine recordings they have produced, the majority from their most recent, Night Birds (2023). Utilizing the wordless vocal style that is her trademark, Serpa’s voice is precise and evocative, conjuring a tensile strength with an angelic disposition. Manski played both acoustic piano and synthesizer with understated authority, his bass-like lines on synth providing a nice bottom to the proceedings. Playing electric guitar, Matos gave the music its melodic backbone and compositional contour. Although all three musicians were highly proficient, none of them flaunted their technical skills. Instead, they let these simple pieces shine in beautifully direct ways.

For the last two numbers, the group invited tenor saxophonist Nathan Blehar to join the trio. Blehar, who owned Northampton’s The Dirty Truth from 2008 – 2017, now lives in Warwick, MA, and is a long-time friend and colleague of Matos. On “Carlos”, a beautiful piece that seemed to be constructed of a series of two-note commas, he soloed convincedly and gave the ensemble a velvety depth.

Serpa, who was born and raised in Portugal, has used her career success to advocate for women and social justice. She is a charter member of the We Have Voice Collective, a diverse group of musicians, performers, scholars, and thinkers who are shifting the cultural landscape by fostering awareness, inclusion, and the creation of safe(r) spaces for all. She conceived and composed Recognition (2020), a multi-disciplinary work that traces the historical legacy of Portuguese colonialism in Africa. Serpa (along with fellow musician Jen Shyu) is the co-founder of Mutual Mentorship for Musicians (M³), an important non-profit organization created to empower and elevate women and non-binary musicians. On “Degrowth”, one of two originals with lyrics, Serpa exhorted us to “fly less, drive less, walk more, slow down, buy less, waste less, look more, listen more.”

It was entirely appropriate to have Saturday’s concert at IMA, a women-centered recording studio and retreat space best known for their rock and roll camps for girls. Serpa and IMA co-founder Ann Hackler had a lot to talk about over dinner and our post-show reception.

Serpa and Matos’ lovely 10 year old son Lourenzo came along for the trip. We ate food cooked by Priscilla Page and yours truly, the musicians stayed in the home of Dorothy Nemetz and John Todd, who were at the dinner and concert, and we shared conversation in the home of Ann Hackler and June Millington. Along with the good vibe of the performance venue (dubbed “the musical queendom”), the evening was an exercise in relationship building.

The increase in the number of women in jazz has coincided with the proliferation of jazz studies programs on college campuses, the Me Too movement and the fight for equal rights more generally, and the presence of powerful role models like Geri Allen, Nicole Mitchell and Terri Lyne Carrington. It makes perfect sense that the higher profile of women in jazz manifests itself in how musicians relate to each other, how they are treated by the industry and perhaps even the very shape of jazz to come.

Breaking New Ground: Anna Webber's Shimmer Wince Plays The Shea Theater

What happens when you combine an inquisitive intellect with superior musicianship? You get projects like Anna Webber’s Shimmer Wince. The prolific 39-year old tenor saxophonist and flutist is also a first rate composer and musical thinker who took a deep dive into “just intonation” during the depth of the pandemic. Her research led to a new book of compositions, and the formation of a new band of crack musicians who breathed life into the material. Seventy of us got to hear the results at the Shea Theater on March 17 at a concert produced by Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

Shimmer Wince includes: Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Mariel Roberts (cello), Elias Stemeseder (synthesizer), Lesley Mok (drums) and Webber. They are touring the northeast in support of their self-titled release on Intakt Records.

Just intonation is a tuning system that has its origin in ancient Greece, and differs from the more widely adopted equal temperament system. Just intonation is based on the natural vibrations of physical objects, such as strings or vocal chords, and pitches are expressed as fractions. Its complex notation system requires a good understanding of tuning theory, which is why most musicians are not fluent in it. As a non-musician, it’s certainly beyond me. 

Webber was a fellow at the American Academy in Berlin in 2021 during the worst period of the pandemic, a time of “enforced quiet”, she writes in her detailed liner notes that accompany the recording. Webber immersed herself in the inner working of just intonation, reading the scholarship, studying scores that utilize it, and listening. The music we heard on Sunday was the result of her intense focus on this ancient system of harmony. “If this music sounds different from some of my previous albums, that’s because it is,” Webber writes. She wanted the music to feel “almost like a collection of incredibly bizarre standards.”

The music had a coherence that felt off or slightly inebriated, full of odd harmonies as well as daring flights of rhythmic fancy. Despite the complexity of the music, Adam O’Farrill barely seemed to refer to the written score, and nailed all the parts. Not yet 30, O’Farrill tours the world with the pianist Hiromi, performs with Mary Halvorson’s Amaryllis, and has worked with Rudresh Mahanthappa, Vijay Iyer, and his father, pianist Arturo O’Farrill. O’Farrill played a Jazz Shares concert in Easthampton in 2017 with his quartet Stranger Days, part of his first tour as a leader outside New York.

Drummer Lesley Mok ushered the band through all the variegated tempo changes with ease. Although they only stepped to the forefront during “Periodicity 2”, you could tell they had a surfeit of chops. In their late 20s, Mok is now touring and recording with Myra Melford’s super group Fire & Water, the percussion collective The Forest, and David Leon’s Bird’s Eye. Their debut recording, The Living Collection, was nominated for a German Jazz Prize in the categories International Debut Album of the Year and Album of the Year. I first met her when she was a student at Berklee and participated in a retreat at the Institute For the Musical Arts.

This was my first opportunity to meet and hear the marvelous cellist Mariel Roberts whose work is firmly planted in the contemporary music world. She is a member and co-director of the Wet Ink Ensemble, and is also part of the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), the Mivos Quartet and the Bang On a Can All-Stars, all premier new music organizations. As we heard on Sunday, she is also a first rate improviser. Her sonic interaction with sounds generated by Elias Stemeseder’s synthesizer added both woozy depth and sharp accents to Webber’s compositions. Neither soloed at length; instead they provided short riffs and fills that gave the music its warp and woof.

I first heard about Stemeseder in 2017, when drummer Jim Black hipped me to his name. With bassist Thomas Morgan, the pianist was part of Black’s phenomenal trio, which has four discs to its name. This was also my first opportunity to meet and hear him. He and Roberts set the stage for “Fizz”, laying down a sultry bed over which the horns soared, and he got to dazzle briefly with an arresting array of buzzes and bleaps on “Periodicity 1”. He is an exceptional pianist and I look forward to hearing him play acoustically.

Like her fellow saxophonist and composer Ingrid Laubrock, who performed in the Valley three days earlier, Anna Webber is a rising star who continues to turn heads and break new ground. She’s poised to do so for years to come. It’s a good time to be a fan of creative music.