Taking Their Turn: sinonó in Holyoke

Every jazz generation has to carve their own path, create their own networks, and forge their own artistic identity in a constantly shifting landscape. Vocalist isabel crespo pardo, cellist Lester St. Louis and bassist Henry Fraser, who performed on Dec. 13 as sinonó, are 30-somethings doing just that. They gave a concert at Holyoke Media to a mesmerized crowd of 30.

The set consisted of crespo originals sung in Spanish, pieces she called “poemsongs”. These compositions, aptly referred to as “a kind of expressionist fado, middle-of-the-night music,” by Dada Strain, revealed a simpatico trio of fearless improvisers. A vocalist of Costa Rican ancestry, crespo delivered songs with a soft-edged fierceness that fit comfortably within the ensemble. sinonó is not a band featuring vocals with accompaniment, but a fully embedded assembly of accomplished musicians creating a group sound.

While they often sung in whispers and hushed tones, crespo also offered wordless vocalizations with a pointed attack that was matched by aggressive bowed string vibrations. They also referred to the pieces as “ofrendas” or offerings, and indeed the entire concert had the feeling of a prayer service. The pause before applause at the end of songs, and the audience’s extended, enthusiastic reaction at the conclusion of the evening, were indications of the reverence we felt in the space.

Despite their reserved and modest demeanor, crespo exudes a quiet, even steely confidence. Since earning a Masters from the New England Conservatory of Music in 2021, they have been busy creating art and community in New York. In addition to leading sinonó, they have used embroidery and screen-printing to construct graphic scores, devised haunting monologues for an experimental play, Mighty Angel…, and developed their solo practice under the moniker iiisa, weaving melodies and archival recordings of their family in Costa Rica. crespo has forged this new work through a Loghaven Artist Residency, a Roulette Intermedium Residency, and a Van Lier Fellowship, and has appeared at Pioneer Works, Bang on a Can’s LOUD WEEKEND, MATA Festival, and Big Ears Festival. Like many of their peers, they are piecing together an unconventional life in the performing arts.

Bassist Henry Fraser also graduated from the New England Conservatory (in 2014), and immediately moved to New York, where he still lives. He has collaborated with guitarist Brandon Seabrook on his celebrated release, brutalovechamp (2023), as well as the forthcoming Hellbent Daydream, both on Pyroclastic Records. Another high profile collaboration has Fraser working in guitarist Mary Halvorson’s new quartet, Canis Major, along with David Adewumi and Tomas Fujiwara. They headlined the fourth day of the Vision Festival in June, where they generated an exuberant response. Fraser has many touchstones, including the late Barre Phillips, and he told us the story of being first in line to acquire one of the great bassist’s bows after his passing. Like Phillips, who made the first solo bass record in 1968 (Journal Violone) and numerous others over 50 years, Fraser has dug deep into solo practice. His fourth solo record, Pneuma, is slated for release by Kou Records in early 2026. His extensive arco work and his use of harmonics captivated our ears and sparked our imagination. We will be hearing much more from the Wellesley-born bassist in the years ahead.

The interaction between Fraser and New York-born cellist Lester St. Louis was rich and provocative. Their combined sonorities were alternately sweet and sour, pleasing and prickly, and when added with crespo’s warm vocals, provided real drama. An autodidact with perfect pitch, St. Louis developed his musical skills not by matriculating at an institution, but by auditing cello, theory and composition classes all over New York. He’s had commissions from JACK Quartet and Roulette Intermedium, performed with new music juggernauts International Contemporary Ensemble and Wet Ink Ensemble, along with artists like edi kwon, Chris Williams, Ben Lamar Gay and Pheeroan Aklaff. He’s also curated music series at Sister’s in Brooklyn and the experimental music venue, SpectrumNYC. I first met him in 2018 when he performed in Easthampton with Jaimie Branch’s Fly or Die. Talented, affable and determined, I bet St. Louis will continue to show up in all kinds of interesting musical settings.

crespo has done retreats at the women-centered Institute For the Musical Arts in Goshen, and will be involved in helping to shape a succession plan for the organization. In fact, all three members of sinonó (yesnono) have absorbed the lessons of elders and are applying them with talent and conviction, crafting a friendly takeover of the creative music environment. The rivers of imagination continue their flow.

Two is Enough: Sara Serpa/Matt Mitchell Duo at IMA

There is a small but satisfying number of great duo pairings in jazz. The work of Chick Corea/Gary Burton, Bill Evans/Jim Hall, Albert Manglesdorff/Lee Konitz, Archie Shepp with Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and Harold Mabern, and most of all, Charlie Haden’s duos with Pat Metheny, Ornette Coleman, Alice Coltrane, Hank Jones, Hampton Hawes, Don Cherry and Paul Motian, come immediately to mind.

The duo is a daunting but rewarding configuration. It requires intense interplay, musicians must listen deeply and react spontaneously, creating a true musical dialogue. The duo provides space and simplicity, featuring "open doors" for improvisation and freedom. And there must be a shared philosophy, successful duos develop a common musical language, understanding each other's phrasing, rhythm, and harmonic ideas. 

By those standards, the duo of vocalist Sara Serpa and pianist Matt Mitchell can take its place in the pantheon. Their new recording, End of Something, which they showcased with an east coast tour supported by a South Arts’ Jazz Roads grant, stands as a shining example of the art of the duo. Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares hosted Serpa and Mitchell in concert at the Institute For the Musical Arts in Goshen, MA on December 6.

The event, attended by 40 listeners, mirrored the record, produced on Mitchell’s Obliquity label. They began with a Serpa original, “News Cycle”, with its quick, spiraling repetitive motif, which bookended an open middle section. As is her wont, Serpa’s wordless vocals predominated. Her range is modest and her sound production breaks no new ground, yet she is a convincing, compelling singer, with a bell-like voice.

“Sara inhabits a very specific world,” Mitchell explains, “and I relish the kinds of parameters she brings to improvisation. It calls for a different kind of intensity-more aired out, more patient, with a lower volume ceiling but a huge range of nuance.”

One highlight was Serpa’s searching composition, “Carry You Like a River”, using a haiku written by Sonia Sanchez. “Carry you like a river/Strong currents in my heart/Always flowing, love's constant art.”

Serpa is no stranger to the duo format. She has three engrossing duo recordings with pianist Ran Blake, her mentor at the New England Conservatory of Music, and two with her husband, the guitarist, André Matos, with whom she played in IMA’s big barn with pianist Dov Manski in 2023. Serpa first worked with Mitchell in 2018, when John Zorn commissioned her collaboration with Nigerian writer Emmanuel Iduma. That  recording, Intimate Strangers, released in 2021, landed on Best Album of the Year lists in The NY Times, The Nation and Arts Fuse. Serpa is an accomplished educator, and with Jen Shyu co-founded M³ (Mutual Mentorship for Musicians), a groundbreaking collective dedicated to supporting women and gender-expansive artists through mentorship, collaboration, and community-building. Some M³ mentees (Lesley Mok, Isa Crespo Pardo, Maya Keren) have connections to IMA, which also centers women.

Mitchell likewise has experience in twosomes, including two duo records with saxophonist Tim Berne and discs with percussionist Ches Smith, and his wife, the drummer Kate Gentile. The 50-year old pianist, who grew up in the Philadelphia area, has an impressive and burgeoning resumé, having worked in Berne’s band Snakeoil, and the ensembles of Dave Douglas, Anna Webber, John Hollenbeck, Dan Weiss, Miles Okazaki and Jon Irabagon, among many others. He penned the majority of the compositions, many of which inhabit a meditative and emotionally full space, played at relaxed tempos. “From the beginning, I felt I could count on Matt,” Serpa recalls. “There was no fear of getting lost. He listens so deeply-and understands the voice in a way that’s rare.”

While some ensembles produce a variety of music in multiple styles, others, like the Sara Serpa/Matt Mitchell Duo, inhabit a very particular sound world. Operating within confines of their own choosing, these two exploratory musicians have created a finely shaded acoustic landscape full of subtlety and feeling. We are all the better for it.

Jon Irabagon Quintet: Talent + Inspiration

When you are supremely talented and can scale any technical challenge, the trick is to not hide behind your skill but to create meaningful work that moves people. The members of the Jon Irabagon Quintet: Irabagon (bass saxophone), Peter Evans (trumpet), Matt Mitchell (piano), Chris Lightcap (electric bass) and Dan Weiss (drums), are savants who can play anything on their instruments. But they are also musical, by which I mean they convey emotion and capture the imagination.

On November 23, these five geniuses did just that, impressing 65 patrons of the arts at the Community Music School of Springfield. The concert was the culmination of a mini-tour that included a Brooklyn gig at Ornithology Jazz Club, a concert and a recording session at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, and the Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert in Springfield, MA, all supported by a Chamber Music America New Jazz Work commissioning grant.

There was plenty of technical dazzle on display. The new book of Irabagon compositions was demanding. With the exception of a beautiful ballad, the pieces were fast, intricate, quirky and swinging. There are not many musicians on the planet with the chops to ace difficult material at such a very high level, but we saw five of them on Sunday.

Nate Wooley was supposed to play trumpet, but a lip problem forced him to bow out. Another super human trumpeter, Peter Evans, jumped in with two weeks’ notice and just nailed it. Wooley’s absence, however, eliminated some poetic symmetry: the bass saxophone Irabagon used belonged to Wooley’s father, who played saxophone and repaired instruments in Nate’s home town of Clatskanie, Oregon. About three years ago, Irabagon flew to Oregon, bought a few saxophones from Mr. Wooley and drove them back to Chicago. In fact, because the bass saxophone is so massive (6 feet tall and 19 pounds), flying with one is near impossible, so he drove the 12 hours from his home in Chicago to the northeast for these gigs.

Irabagon played the big horn exclusively. Throughout his career, the 46-year old saxophonist has often devoted entire albums to one instrument. He has produced all tenor, alto, soprano, sopranino and soprillo releases, and one expects to hear his bass saxophone record in the next year or so. For these old ears, the low frequency of the horn made certain unison passages hard to pick out, but Irabagon’s clear articulation mitigated the problem. I can only imagine the subterranean frequencies of the contrabass and the subcontrabass saxophones (one and two octaves lower than what we heard.)

This band has lots of shared experience. The Quartet (minus trumpet) has been an item since 2010 when they released, Beyond This Point. We heard the group when they played a live streamed concert at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke on April 18, 2021. Irabagon and Peter Evans go back to 2003, when the iconoclastic quartet, Mostly Other People Do the Killing, first formed. They make one of the most impressive front-lines in the present era.

The rhythm section was a joy to listen to. Like the 2021 hit at Wistariahurst (played without an audience during the pandemic), Lightcap played electric bass, which he does with unassuming agility. The 54-year old Williams grad was the glue guy, keeping the structural integrity of Irabagon’s compositions intact. Lightcap is equally impressive on double-bass, which he played at the Shea Theater in September with the Darius Jones Trio, at the Iron Horse last year with Nels Cline’s Concentrik Quartet, and in Greenfield in 2016 with his own celebrated ensemble, Bigmouth.

Pianist Matt Mitchell is also a recurrent guest in western Massachusetts, having performed over the years with Dave Douglas, Anna Webber, Dan Weiss and Miles Okazaki. He’ll be back next week in a duo with vocalist Sara Serpa, and again in early May with the Ralph Alessi Quartet. Mitchell keeps getting invited to participate because he is creative, adaptable and adds value to any musical situation. He took full advantage of his considerable solo space on Sunday, playing with hand independence that suggested two pianists.

Dan Weiss, one of the most in demand drummers in jazz, is also well known to area audiences. His solo came during the evening’s final piece, “hokší-hakákta” (?), a Lakota word meaning the youngest child in a family. Weiss built his solo from a simple, elemental phrase that spiraled into a complex statement, changing subtly over time. It brought the house down.

Speaking about Julius Hemphill in his authoritative book, Visions of Jazz: The First Century, Gary Giddins writes, “originality indemnifies him against his influences, allowing him to borrow freely and transform accordingly.” The same can be said of Jon Irabagon and his bandmates, who have secured a prominent place in jazz’s second century.