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.

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.