In Their Prime: The Peter Evans Septet on Tour

If athletes peak in their mid-to-late twenties, musicians seem to hit their stride a decade later. By that time, extensive training has mixed with a modicum of experience to begin to produce fully formed art. The Peter Evans Septet, six of whom are in their mid-to late thirties, provided brilliant illustration of this premise, as they treated 85 listeners to a mind-altering Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert at the Arts Block on Sunday, April 9.

With the exception of Jim Black, the exceptional 49-year old drummer, the other members: Sam Pluta, live electronics, Mazz Swift, violin, Ron Stabinsky, keyboards, Tom Blancarte, bass, Levy Lorenzo, percussion and electronics and Evans, trumpet, are all young veterans with something to say and the means to say it.

At one point the Septet sustained a single note over two or three minutes that filled the space with shards of overtones. At other points, the band swung with the forward momentum of a 16-wheeler on a 35 degree decline. Over the course of the concert the ensemble reduced to playing in mini-groups of two or three. Throughout the evening there was consonance and dissonance, conventional and extended technique, loud and soft sounds, pretty and disturbing passages, all coexisting in an unfolding narrative.

After playing uninterrupted for an hour, during which we journeyed through a myriad of moods, textures and tempos, the crowd erupted in sustained applause. Evans told us to “go home and think about what you just heard.” But the crowd wanted more, and the band obliged with a stately, slightly melancholy encore.

Evans is a virtuoso who can do anything on the trumpet (and pocket trumpet.) At one point he removed the mouthpiece and blew directly into the instrument’s bore. Sometimes he produced sounds like a beatboxer; other times I heard a soprano saxophone. All of it was in service to the music.

Over the years, I’ve heard a good amount of music with electronic elements, but never have I been so moved by plugged in instruments. The electronics, provided by Lorenzo, Stabinsky and especially Sam Pluta, were so well integrated into the ensemble, I stopped caring who was making what sound, and how. A computer whiz who just started teaching composition at the University of Chicago, Pluta is the most advanced and musical laptopist I’ve encountered. His solo was articulate and rhythmically complex, with a dazzlingly variety of constantly changing sounds. For the first time, I heard the laptop and associated gear as a full-fledged and equal partner in a musical proceeding and not just as an agent of color and texture.

As Pluta settles into academia, Peter Evans, Jim Black and Mazz Swift are earning their living on the road. In fact, Swift is missing the last four shows in this nine-city tour so she can rejoin the Idina Menzel band, whose next stop is the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. A more recent addition to Evans’ ensemble, Swift told me how much she loved playing with this group, but alas, the paydays are as different as the music.

For me, getting to hang with the musicians and hear their backstories is one of the real pleasures of doing this work. Levy Lorenzo, the other more recent addition to the ensemble, met Evans through the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE), one of today’s premier new music ensembles. (Lorenzo serves as the group’s technical director.) He earned his Masters in Mechanical and Computer Engineering from Cornell University, and after working for Bose, Lorenzo had had enough, and enrolled in a PhD program in classical percussion at Stony Brook University. He happened upon a class in improvisation taught by Ray Anderson and his life direction changed.

I first met pianist Ron Stabinsky when he would make the four-hour trip from near Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania to the Valley to hear concerts I produced by Borah Bergman, Cooper-Moore, Sam Rivers and others. Stabinsky, who recently replaced Peter Evans in the ensemble Mostly Other People Do the Killing, learned about the Taubman Approach when dealing with a piano-related injury. Developed decades ago by Dorothy Taubman, it is a groundbreaking analysis of the mostly invisible motions that function underneath a virtuoso technique. The resulting knowledge makes it possible to help pianists overcome technical limitations as well as cure playing-related injuries. Stabinsky has since become an expert.

The Peter Evans Ensemble will travel thousands of miles playing nine concerts in nine days. This grueling schedule under Spartan conditions is best suited for the young and the dedicated. They are both.

On Top of the World: Mary Halvorson at the Magic Triangle Jazz Series

Mary Halvorson has the world on a string. Six strings, actually. The 37-year old Brookline, Massachusetts native has spent the last dozen years creating a unique compositional and playing style that has catapulted her into the upper echelon of the jazz world. The guitarist led her ensemble, Reverse Blue, in a meaty, provocative evening of music at Smith College’s Sweeney Concert Hall on Monday, March 27, as the Magic Triangle Jazz Series continued its 28th season.

The band, Chris Speed, tenor saxophone and clarinet, Eivind Opsvik, bass, Tomas Fujiwara, drums, and Halvorson, performed 70 minutes of original music for about 300 people. Drawn from their 2014 Relative Pitch release, Reverse Blue, the concert featured the knotty, off-kilter approach that has distinguished Halvorson’s sound.

Although there is plenty of precision in the music, there is a constant feeling that the wheels are about to leave the rails. Of course, in the hands of these accomplished artists they never do, but that uncertainty fuels the excitement of listening. The music sounds at once familiar and disorienting, rhythmically assured and harmonically ambiguous.

At times Halvorson and Speed played tricky unison lines; at other points they played intricate contrapuntal passages. Just like beach tension, where waves move one way and the undertow pulls in the opposite direction, the ebb and flow created shifting landscapes. On more than one occasion, Opsvik would change his rhythmic allegiance from Fujiwara to the “front line” players, creating a two-at-once feeling. Wherever the bassist locked in, he was spot on.

The venerable Sweeney Concert Hall was designed for choirs and chamber orchestras, not drum kits. After some readjustment from the sound technician, we could better hear the guitar and reeds. But being able to readily hear Fujiwara was its own reward. His playing was precise and articulate. He swung the band, providing just the right accents and colors. A word to the wise: Fujiwara’s quintet, The Hook Up, (featuring Halvorson), will conclude the Magic Triangle Jazz Series with an April 27 concert in Bezanson Recital Hall at UMASS.

In the recent past, Halvorson has been the subject of cover stories in Downbeat and Jazz Times, and major articles in the New York Times and NPR. Right after her Northampton gig, she was off to Europe to perform John Zorn’s Bagatelles. She has a week-long engagement at the hallowed Village Vanguard with her octet in July. Next January she has a month-long residency at The Stone. Despite all the acclaim and opportunity that has come her way, Halvorson is humble and unpretentious.

After spending some time with Halvorson’s parents, it’s clear why her head is not too big and on straight. Craig and Karen still live in Brookline and made the trip west (along with Tomas’ mother, Chantal). I first got to know them when they all came to Greenfield to hear Thumbscrew, the cooperative trio Mary and Tomas co-lead with bassist Michael Formanek. They are educated, down to earth and generous (Mr. Halvorson treated us all to drinks at the Hotel Northampton after the performance.)

“When you see Mary Halvorson on stage, she doesn’t look like much of a trailblazer,” begins a November NPR feature. “She plays sitting down. She’s small, and mostly hidden behind her hollow-body guitar and glasses. But then she starts to play. And the sounds coming out of her amp are anything but conventional.”

Thanks to Smith College Professor Steve Waksman this Magic Triangle concert was offered free to the public. That explained the larger crowd and allowed the curious and uninitiated to check out the music at no cost. In these days of corporate-fueled groupthink, our political and aesthetic imagination has shrunk. Just as our national debate is truncated, the music we are exposed to is exceedingly narrow. So it was important, especially for those folks who left early with furrowed brows and puzzled countenance, to understand there are many ways to organize sound.

In It For The Long Haul: The Michael Musillami Trio

Conviction and commitment. Those are words that come to mind thinking about the Michael Musillami Trio, which enthralled over 100 of us on Saturday, March 11. The concert at the 121 Club at Eastworks in Easthampton was a Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares event.

The Trio has been together for 13 years. They have five recordings as a threesome and another four with added guests. Joe Fonda (bass), George Schuller (drums) and Musillami (guitar) have logged so many shared miles of collective performance they can anticipate each others’ gestures and direction. Musillami has kept the Trio together through turbulent personal times, the bottom falling out of the record business and now the rise of fascism in the United States. He has invested personal fortune to keep Playscape Recordings, the wonderful record label he started in 1999, afloat.

Coming out the other side of those tribulations is a real working trio with over 80 tunes under their belt and a thirst to add more. The 80-minute concert included previously recorded Musillami compositions like Uncle Fino’s Garden (a nice uncle who happened to be a safecracker) and Old Tea (dedicated to his son who committed suicide.)

Another set of tunes chronicled Musillami’s recent journey through an aneurysm and subsequent brain surgery. Pieces like MRI Countdown and Nurse Rose that recall the trauma, will be recorded and released within the year. The band seemed equally assured on both the old and new tunes.

Assurance. Your trusted band mates creating a comfort level. Countless days on the road, countless hours in rehearsal and on the bandstand, a shared history. That assurance is the reward for putting in the time and energy. There are no shortcuts to forging a group sound and creating chemistry.

We are the beneficiaries of all that effort, as three profoundly self-possessed musicians thrilled us with their sense of invention.

Joe Fonda, who was in the area last week performing with Oliver Lake, Graham Haynes and Barry Altschul at Amherst College, is a magnetic performer and magnificent bassist. An extended, unaccompanied solo late in the set unleashed the loudest spontaneous applause of the evening. His earlier arco solo was brooding, blues-like, ancient. The pings he produced playing below the bridge of his instrument provided the perfect accompaniment coming out of Schuller’s note-bending solo.

George Schuller’s bent notes, especially audible during solos and subdued sections, resulted from a unique technique of handling the cymbal after striking. Stick rubbing on drum skins produced similar undulated sounds. His time, whether playing in a rock, swing, funk, Latin or free vein, was as impeccable as his dynamics. Schuller is the son of the late composer, conductor, historian, educator and NEA Jazz Master Gunther Schuller, and has spent considerable effort to preserve and disseminate his father’s legacy. He is also an astute historian of the music. We had a great time, long into the night, discussing musicians, bands, recordings, and his on-going projects.

What a pleasure to hear Michael Musillami, who only lives in Longmeadow, MA, but works in the other direction at the Hotchkiss School in the northeast corner of Connecticut. Without the pedals and effects that occupy many contemporary guitarists, Musillami’s well-articulated notes, tart and sweet, kept us engaged all night. His intricate compositions provided a sturdy framework with an open floor plan.

He told me this was his first concert in the area in over a decade. For someone that close and that talented, it makes no sense. But where are the opportunities? That’s the big question everyone’s asking. That the Michael Musillami Trio has persevered despite the lack of a good answer shows an inspiring conviction and commitment.