In Search of Sound: James Brandon Lewis Trio at the Shea Theater

It’s not always possible to see a star rise in real time. It is often only in hind sight that we can ascribe importance to an emerging talent. But in the case of James Brandon Lewis, the jazz world has reached a consensus, and we can now say with certainty that the Buffalo-born tenor saxophonist is a legitimate force in the field. We got first hand confirmation as Lewis and his Trio: Christopher Hoffman, electric cello and Max Jaffe, drums, performed at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls on Thursday, March 10 in a concert produced by Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

Lewis, now 39, is serious about everything he does. That includes writing prose and poetry, conversing, researching and playing the tenor. His performance at the Shea established the point. The 70-minute set was filled with simple, direct statements delivered with power and conviction. Lewis’s music had a spiritual effect on this listener, as small nuggets of melody were woven in endless variation. Much like the preacher who seizes on a theme then spins corollaries, Lewis emphasized his point with run after dazzling run, using the declarative power of the blues to do it. He stood grounded, with feet shoulder width apart, sermonizing in broad brawny tones, delivering combinations of emotion-packed punches. That searching quality we associate with Coltrane and Ayler is also present in the music of James Brandon Lewis.

Lewis’s father is a minister and he grew up in the Church, where “he found out what it meant for music to brush against the holy spirit,” as Giovanni Russonello wrote in the New York Times. That spirit-infused attitude has been a constant as Lewis has emerged into the limelight.

Seeing Lewis’s Trio with Luke Stewart and Warren Trae Crudup III at the Vision Festival in 2016 was a stop-in-my-tracks moment. Two years later, Lewis was back at New York’s Vision Festival, sharing the stage with legends Dave Burrell, Kidd Jordan, William Parker and Andrew Cyrille. The symbolic torch passing was hard to miss.

Last year, he was voted the top rising tenor saxophonist by critics in Downbeat. This year he earned the top tenor player award by critics in Jazz Times, and his release Jessup Wagon, was recognized as the record of the year. Whatever that all means, Lewis’s star has clearly risen.

Although the Trio is relatively new, they have already gelled. Jaffe said playing in the trio is natural, “like breathing.” We are awaiting the results of a completed studio recording.

Jaffe earned his Masters from Cal Arts last year and was a long-time member of Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones and the experimental rock collective, JOBS. The drummer has been on the road with Ava Mendoza, Peter Evans and Rubblebucket, among others, and was through these parts in October, playing in Steph Richards Quartet. He pushed the band into ecstatic territory without playing loudly, using dynamics and the lower sonic end of his drum kit to provide all the energy the band needed.

Hoffman is an in-demand cellist and who is into his second decade as a member of Henry Threadgill’s Pulitzer Prize winning ensemble, Zooid. He is also part of Anat Cohen’s Tentet and Rudy Royston’s Flatbed Buggy, and has performed at Jazz Shares concerts led by Tony Malaby (2015) and Josh Sinton (2019). He can be heard (along with Kirk Knuffke, William Parker and Chad Taylor) on Lewis’s celebrated Jessup Wagon. Hoffman’s electric cello, played while standing, looked like the stick bass favored in lots of Latin bands. His use of pedals brought another dimension to the proceedings, changing timbre and attack to anchor and provoke.

James Brandon Lewis is a curious soul, who draws inspiration from many sources. Jessup Wagon channels the myriad accomplishments of George Washington Carver, who designed the wagon that brought his innovative farming techniques to poor Black southern growers.

In his wonderful liner notes that accompany the recording, Robin D. G. Kelley summed up an attitude shared by both Carver and Lewis: “The lesson is clear,” Kelley wrote, “remember the old ways, learn the new ways.”

Worth the Wait: The Michael Musillami Trio +3 at the Shea Theater

Third time’s a charm. After two false starts, Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares finally got to present the Michael Musillami Trio +3. The six musicians: Michael Musillami (guitar), Jason Robinson (tenor sax), Thomas Heberer (trumpet), Caleb Curtis (alto sax), Joe Fonda (bass) and George Schuller (drums), smoked a 70-minute set at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls on Saturday, March 5.

“It had been almost 2 years to the day since this band had played on stage together,” Musillami wrote in a note of thanks. “I know that the cats were a bit uncertain because of the complexity of the music and the lack of time performing at a very high level. Well, once a few minutes in, it was like old times. It felt natural, yet there was an awareness that these are uncharted waters. We made music!!”

This ensemble, minus Curtis, had embarked on a European tour in mid-March, 2020, just as COVID was beginning to rear its head. Shaking off rust and reviving muscle memory for complicated music after two years away is not easy, and lay listeners tend to take for granted the amount of talent and dedication it takes to pull it off. But nobody on stage was sweating; the heat emanating from the bandstand, however, was intense.

In the main, the music – all written by Musillami – was driving, full of blues feeling and punchy riffs. But Musillami included enough open sections and unaccompanied solos to cleanse the palate. These solo interludes, about five minutes each, were creative tour de forces, while providing respite from the density of the full ensemble.

The well-oiled rhythm section, featuring old friends Joe Fonda and George Schuller, has been together for over 20 years, and through the decades Musillami has invited various horn players, such as Thomas Chapin, Marty Ehrlich and Dave Ballou, to join the Trio. Robinson and Heberer have been the +2 for a few years now while Curtis was making his public debut with the group. “Welcome to the team,” I overheard Musillami tell the 36-year old alto saxophonist at The Rendezvous after the concert.

When firing on all cylinders the sextet produced a welcome wall of sound and I joked that the guitarist might want to finally make a big band record. Schuller reminded me that Musillami does in fact write large ensemble charts as part of his day job as Director of Jazz Studies at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, CT. The arrangements were elaborate but clean and uncluttered.

Musillami played in organ trios in the early 1980s alongside Richard “Groove” Holmes and Bobby Buster. His comping behind Robinson’s blustery tenor solo was deeply swinging, worthy of Grant Green or Thornel Schwartz. Other highlights included my first live experience hearing a straight alto, the same instrument Rashaan Roland Kirk called a stritch. Curtis played a newly acquired, 85-year old horn that had a woody, soprano-like quality with notes of boysenberry and cinnamon.

One tune ended dramatically by featuring the three horns playing some knotty counterpoint and stretched harmonies that felt like a chorale off the rails. At one point, Heberer’s unaccompanied solo included a thin buzzing sound. I’m used to hearing folks like Nate Wooley, Steph Richards, Peter Evans and Taylor Ho Bynum extend the range of trumpet. But Heberer’s horn was by his side! Was he employing some looped electronics? Was someone else making the sound? It slowly dawned on me that Heberer was vocalizing, making “trumpet” sounds with his lips.

Musillami’s compositions, all written within the last five years or so, had plenty of hooks to hang your hat on, with infectious melodies and well-established grooves. But things were constantly shifting, with someone often blowing freely on top of it all. The combination of driving rhythms and abstract sound made for a crowd pleasing evening of high quality music.

Without much fanfare, Michael Musillami has put together a substantial career in music. In addition to his role as an educator and band leader, the guitarist runs Playscape Recordings, which since the turn of the century has released 75 titles by artists like Mario Pavone, George Schuller, Peter Madsen, Thomas Chapin and himself. And he is invested in the continued health of the music as manifest by his status as a shareholder in Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

Styles Collide: Mostly Other People Do the Killing in Springfield

Although they perform in business suits, Mostly Other People Do the Killing are a subversive ensemble, upending expectations with an impish attitude. Led by bassist and composer Moppa Elliott, MOPDtK is a 19-year old band that includes Ron Stabinsky, piano and Kevin Shea, drums. They entertained 40 people on Saturday, February 19 at Newhouse Hall at the Community Music School of Springfield, as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares began the second half of their 10th season.

The band, which began in 2003 with trumpeter Peter Evans and saxophonist Jon Irabagon alongside Shea and Elliott, takes the whole of jazz history, puts it through a blender and spits out a mélange. Reminiscent of John Zorn’s jump-cut collages, these modernists add humor and mischievousness while pin-balling from style to style. Despite the change in personnel and instrumentation in 2017, MOPDtK has not deviated from their method. In fact, with Stabinsky and Shea playing Nord electronic keyboard and Nord drum synthesizer, they have added a space-age vaudeville vibe to the proceedings. Stabinsky told me they call it the “revenge of the Nords”.

But their tongue-in-cheek character did not distract from the musicality and inventiveness of the trio. Playing pieces from their brand-new recording, Disasters, Vol. 1, they moved from open, atonal sections to deep swing, from a shmaltzy dirge to classical concision, all within minutes. The effect could make you dizzy, and there were times I wished they would have settled into a groove for longer than they did, but then we’d be listening to a different band. The new record, on Elliott’s own Hot Cup Records, details various disasters that have befallen Pennsylvanian cities. Disasters, Vol. 1, continues Elliott’s tradition of naming all his tunes after places in the Keystone State. (He was born in Scranton.) On Saturday, he gave us thumbnail histories of those tragedies, which ranged from floods and fires to mine and nuclear accidents. “Centralia”, for instance, which is now largely a ghost-town, has had an active underground coal mine fire burning since 1962. Elliott’s tune, a feature for the supremely talented Ron Stabinsky, had a barrelhouse early rock feel.

The music was frenetic at times, with a mad-cap quality achieved by speeding up and slowing down the tempo, or having one of the musicians playing at cross-purpose. Often that person was Shea, a masterfully busy drummer who played with precision and a rock mentality. While piano and bass were playing music right out of a top-hat waving, 1930s musical, the drums were bashing away at twice the tempo and twice the volume. Other times Stabinsky would seem to be soloing on a different tune, only to finally tip-toe towards the established groove. The electronics greatly expanded their sound palate, creating moments of cartoon comedy or otherworldly universes.

Elliott played the straight man, often maintaining the pulse and dictating the changes in direction. The bassist, now in his mid-40s, presents as a conventional, law-abiding musician. But there is something audacious in his unceremonious mash-up of jazz history. In 2014 he created a firestorm of controversy when MOPDtK released, Blue, recreating Miles Davis’ iconic Kind of Blue with a level of faithfulness that fooled experts and lay listeners alike. The liner notes include a reprint of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, where the fictitious Menard immerses himself so thoroughly in Cervantes’ work as to be able to actually “re-create” it, line for line. The band takes its name from a quote from the inventor Leon Theremin, who after spending years in a Soviet gulag, excused Stalin’s behavior, saying “mostly other people did the killing”. Elliott’s wry humor and irreverent attitude is further reflected in early MOPDtK album covers that parody important records like Ornette Coleman’s This is Our Music and Roy Haynes’ Out of the Afternoon. It’s all part of his rebellious, punk-inspired impulse to “kill yr idols”.

But it’s clear that his post-modern sensibilities are rooted in his love and mastery of the jazz tradition. Throughout the 70-minute set, we heard snippets of ragtime, swing, rock, “lounge”, bop and the Afro-future. The band’s total command of so many jazz dialects can only come from musicians who have studied seriously, practiced diligently and revere the tradition. Elliott told me he is about 30 discs shy of owning all 300 records featuring veteran bassist Sam Jones.