Mike Baggetta Trio Moves and Inspires

When one approaches a novel situation – say like encountering a different way of producing and organizing sound – with an open mind, the results can be disorienting, or they can be exciting, even liberating.

The Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares audience, being generally open to new ideas, spent almost 90 minutes wrapping their heads (and arms) around the Mike Baggetta Trio at Hampshire College on Saturday, October 14. Baggetta, guitar and electronics, Jerome Harris, bass guitar and Billy Mintz, drums, were in the Valley on the last stop of a seven concert tour.

The wall-to-wall sound, coming in complex waves of beauty and uncertainty, put this listener in an exhilarated, altered state. Baggetta, who grew up in Agawam and was mentored by Ted Dunbar and Yusef Lateef at Jazz in July, relocated from New York to Knoxville a couple of years ago. Perhaps being so close to the center of country music has pushed him to explore what some now call “Americana.” But his was not the straight-forward, stripped down version we associate with Bill Frisell, but a thicker, multi-dimensional, ecstatic roots music. Not the flat paintings of Piet Mondrian or Jasper Johns, but the highly textured, impasto of Vincent van Gogh and Willem de Kooning.

With its simple melodies, elemental energy and emphatic beat, at points it also felt like rock music. Is this what Cream might sound like if they were today?

Baggetta played a custom guitar made by one of the world’s leading luthiers, Portland, Oregon’s Saul Koll, played through a new Aether amplifier by Fryette Amplification. In Baggetta’s own words, “the live sampling/looping and sound processing revolved around a short-length randomized phrase sampler and another longer-length, deeply manipulatable, sampler/looper that was being controlled from a mounted iPad via Bluetooth.”

In discussing the electronic manipulation of conventional instruments, cornetist Rob Mazurek recently told Jazz Times, “You want to get to the point where it just sounds like one instrument, not like something being done to something else. You want it to sound like one strange entity moving through air.” I’d say that perfectly captures what Baggetta achieved.

The results were hypnotic, cumulative. There was no silence, no breaks between sections, no place for applause and very little unaccompanied soloing. But despite all that sound, you could easily hear very subtle grace notes and bent tones. Periods of abstractness made the sections that were beautiful, even more beautiful.

Bass guitarist Jerome Harris was making the first of three Jazz Shares appearances this year. He’ll be back in February with the Ricky Ford Quartet and again in March, playing with his old friend Marty Ehrlich. (They were roommates at NEC, and have appeared frequently on each other’s records.) He provided the perfect grounding for Baggetta’s fanciful flights, anchoring the band while constantly shifting its center.

Like Jerome Harris and yours truly, drummer Billy Mintz was born in Queens, NY. Now back in New York after a long period in Los Angeles, Mintz had the introspective nonchalance befitting a veteran who had played all kinds music in all kinds of settings (Merv Griffin Show, Vinnie Golia, Gloria Gaynor, Alan Broadbent.) Although not effusive, you could tell how much he enjoyed this context. He was able to hold it down and color the sound. There was a point early on, during a real rise in intensity, when Mintz was full out bashing his cymbals, creating cascades of colliding overtones that mixed with the two electric strings to create a feeling of floating on a sea of overwhelming.

When you present music that is organized in an original way, with a particular palette and orientation, you’re bound to leave some behind, while enchanting others. That was the case at Hampshire College (a few found it too loud.) But many I talked to afterwards were genuinely moved, actually transported from one place to another.

Sharing Pain and Beauty: Stephan Crump’s Rhombal at the Shea Theater

The problem with the canon handed down from the academies and the critics, writes Addison Gayle, Jr. in The Black Aesthetic, is that “it aims to evaluate the work of art in terms of its beauty and not in terms of the transformation from ugliness to beauty that the work of art demands from its audience.”

Gayle is referring to the ugliness of slavery and the systemic exploitation of Africans in America. But the trauma can also be personal. Stephan Crump turned the illness and death of his brother, Patrick, three years ago into a book of music that transformed his pain into fully-realized beauty. The bassist, composer and Amherst College graduate (’94) shared the music with a rapt Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares audience at the Shea Theater on Saturday, October 7.

The concert followed the contour of his eponymous 2016 recording, Stephan Crump’s Rhombal, (Papillion Sounds). The quartet: Adam O’Farrill, trumpet, Ellery Eskelin, tenor saxophone and Kassa Overall, drums, were well-oiled, having logged dozens of performances in the last year, including at the Greenwich House in New York the night before coming to Turners Falls.

What a treat to hear Kassa Overall live for the first time. As you’d expect from a long-time member of Geri Allen’s trio, Overall was precise, but never stiff or too loud. The drum duties with Rhombal rotate. Tyshawn Sorey is on the record, but Crump has used Eric McPherson, Richie Barshay and Ben Perowsky, among others. Overall, who splits time between hip-hop, rock and jazz worlds, had no problems negotiating the piece’s quirky rhythmic turns, while adding texture to multiple moods and tempos.

What a stroke of genius to pair Ellery Eskelin and Adam O’Farrill, who had never played together before this project. Actually, Crump had not played with Eskelin and had only met O’Farrill when the young trumpeter was a student at the Banff Centre for Jazz and Creativity. “When they were warming up before our first rehearsal,” recalled Crump, “their sound together was amazing. They push each other, feed off each other.” Throughout the evening, the horns interwove, not only playing heads together, but conversing, soloing simultaneously.

The writing was magnificent, much of it at slow to mid-tempo. But slow does not mean simple. I had the feeling of looking through a microscope, amazed at the space that exists between things. The clear, declamatory melodies, the tart harmonies and expressive solo statements were all easily examined and appreciated.

The uptempo tunes, like “Skippaningam”, were quite welcome. Composed after dropping his two young sons off at school, the piece was a bundle of skittering energy juxtaposed with a distracted section that seemed to just wander off. Crump also shared the creation story for “Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner”, which was inspired by Zacharias Kunuk’s 2001 film of the same name. Crump translated the image of the title character running naked over Artic ice into a tight flight at rapid speed. It was one of two pieces not on the recording.

Crump’s expressions were as distinctive as his compositions. Were they smiles or grimaces? Release or concentration? He moved with his instrument, strummed with flourish and at one point, rubbed his bass suggestively. He was an engaging host, generous with his spirit. Crump seemed genuinely pleased with the attentive and responsive audience, and told us we completed the connection between music and performer. When the last pieces ended, the elegiac Pulling Pillars and the ebullient Outro for Patty, there was hushed silence. Perhaps the 10 seconds that elapsed before applause erupted was prayerful respect. In any case, we were blessed to partake in the transformative power of art.

Most Welcome Sounds: Tom Rainey Trio Kicks Off Season 6 of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares

No music stands were needed on Thursday, September 14 as the Tom Rainey Trio launched Season Six of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares. The cluttered, but homey barn at the Institute for the Musical Arts in Goshen was full of extra amps and instruments, but full-blown improvisers travel light, with no written notes in sight.

The veteran drummer Tom Rainey, along with his fearless collaborators, guitarist Mary Halvorson and saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, gave a spirited, telepathic, 75-minute lesson in creative tightrope walking. No net needed.

The band, which has recorded three albums to date, was in the midst of an 11-city U.S. tour when they touched down at June Millington and Ann Hackler’s magical space, far from everywhere. They had completed seven concerts, with three to go.

We talked over dinner about some of the other gigs on their itinerary, presented by plucky, cash-strapped, die-hards like Paul Lichter in Portland, Maine, Mark Christman in Philadelphia and Bernard Lyons in Baltimore. It was inspiring, yet a little disconcerting to think that this brilliant, constantly evolving American music, revered everywhere on the planet, survives in the States on the backs of a few, grass-roots organizations.

I wished I had the opportunity to hear the Trio a second night, wondering how different the band sounds concert to concert. At IMA, the group would settle on a motif, only to have it pass away. Sitting eyes closed in a stuffed chair in the back without sightlines, it felt like a dream where images and the feelings they evoked scroll by with little time to analyze or reflect. The meaning that emerged from three deeply listening musicians was coherent and revelatory.

There was a moment towards the end of the evening that did have me craning my neck to try to decipher the sound. A meditative, yet curious Buddhist-like chant emerged from the mix. Was it a voice, a voice through a horn, an effect through the guitar, or coming from on high? No matter, it was transcendent.

Halvorson’s role in the threesome was the most varied. At times, she provided ambient drones, elsewhere walking bass lines, at other points a skronked rock vibe. Her sound, utterly her own and devoid of clichés, continues to impress. Even those who have yet to warm to her unique approach, have to give it up; she is doing exactly what is required of all artists: synthesizing the past in service to a present of her own making.

Laubrock has been through Jazz Shares with her own stellar Quintet (Tim Berne, Ben Gerstein, Dan Peck and Tom Rainey) and Andrew Drury’s Content Provider (with Briggan Krauss.) On Thursday she played soprano and tenor saxophone in equal measure, equally well. Like Halvorson, Laubrock has managed to not sound like any of her contemporaries, showing no interest in becoming the next Joe Lovano.

Tom Rainey (not to be confused with NEPR’s Tom Reney) is simply one of the most accomplished living jazz drummers. As we were preparing for the concert I started to pull recordings featuring Rainey. The pile was large and important, and included some of Tim Berne, Tom Varner, Fred Hersch, Drew Gress, Kris Davis, and Tony Malaby’s best work. The perennial sideman, in the last seven years Rainey has started to lead bands. His light touch as a leader, and his sensitivity on his instrument, allows ideas to flow and be heard.

“Authentic acts tend to get noticed amid the fakery and correctness on which postmodern culture thrives.” This statement from Adbusters’ Field Guide to a New World Order rings true for those of us who live outside the mass consumption of popular culture. The 60 people lucky enough to find themselves inside the IMA barn, even those unprepared for the Trio’s free expression, reveled in the impulse to create genuine, personal, authentic musical statements.