Love Fest: Jason Robinson's Ancestral Numbers in Amherst

Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares, the small non-profit dedicated to bringing extraordinary live music to western Massachusetts, achieved a high-water mark on October 17. Jason Robinson’s Ancestral Numbers quintet gave a spirited and technically brilliant display of music-making before a packed house at The Drake. Thursday’s event, featuring Robinson (tenor and soprano sax and flute), Michael Dessen (trombone), Joshua White (piano), Drew Gress (bass), and Ches Smith (drums), drew 175 listeners, the second most in the 13 year history of the organization.

Robinson is a Professor of Music at Amherst College, who joined the faculty as a visiting assistant professor in 2008. He has spent the last 16 years invigorating the local jazz scene, building bridges across stylistic and geographic divides. He has not only increased the amount of jazz activity at Amherst, he has laid deep roots where he lives, seeming to have interacted with every major improvisor in the Valley. Robinson is also a charter member of the Jazz Shares board of directors. He is a true home-town hero.

Many in the crowd were Amherst College colleagues of Robinson, including President Michael Elliott, Provost Martha Umphrey and a slew of faculty, staff and students. It was important for them to understand, if they didn’t already, that Robinson is an elite composer, instrumentalist and bandleader. Among the many other friends in the crowd was Michael Musillami, the guitarist and label owner of Playscape Records who released Robinson’s new recordings Ancestral Numbers I and II, and jazz scholar Ben Young, who recently moved to Holyoke. There was a lot of love in the room for Robinson.

The band, who performed as a quartet (minus Dessen) in Northampton in 2021, was embarked on a five date tour that took them to New York, Boston, New Haven and the greater Washington, DC. area. They played material from the two Ancestral Numbers discs, featuring compositions inspired by Robinson’s family history, in particular his grandmother, Ruby Annette Kilbury, who passed in 2022. The composer told us he was the latest (and last) in a line of eldest children born when their mothers were 17 years old going back to his great great grandmother.

Robinson and Dessen are long-time friends and formed the front line of the quartet Cosmologic during the first decade of the 21st century; they met in 1998 at UC San Diego where they were mentored by Anthony Davis and George Lewis. Dessen has taught at UC Irvine since 2006 and is currently chair of its music department. Robinson and Dessen are successful, engaged educators and world class performers/composers; they embody Aristotle’s dictum: “Those who can, do. Those who understand, teach.” Of course they nailed the impossible swing tempos of “Deployment”, grooved the backbeat of “Greyscale”, and breezed through the slinky contours of “Second House”. By the way, Robinson, a veteran of the roots reggae band Groundation, has produced a dub version of “Second House”.

While the demands of academia can make maintaining chops difficult, Dessen’s sound was rich and confident, his facility crisp, and his ability to read down complicated charts undiminished. I’ve been knowing Michael Dessen since the late 1990s when he was studying with Yusef Lateef at UMass, and became friends when he returned to the Valley in 2002 to teach at Hampshire College. I’ve gotten to witness some of his cutting edge forays into telematics or networked concerts, where collaborators in distant locations perform together in real time. Here is an excellent example of his work in this realm. 

Pianist Joshua White lives in San Diego and doesn’t get east very often, which made his Amherst appearance even more special. I listen to a lot of pianists and there are very few that reach the heights White does. The crowd at the Drake agreed. His solos consistently generated the loudest yelps and most thunderous applause. When I talked with his bandmates about him the next day, they laughed and shook their heads at how talented he is. I remember getting the same reaction years ago from Vijay Iyer when talking about a little known drummer named Tyshawn Sorey. Hearing some of the best musicians in the world marvel at how off the charts White is, tells you all you need to know about his gift. He played with force, locking hands to add energy and using his dexterity to articulate well crafted runs of single notes. He deserved every minute of the ample solo space he was afforded.

The rest of the rhythm section is crème de la crème. Finding windows of time when both Drew Gress and Ches Smith are available is one of Robinson’s biggest challenges. I met Gress in 1995 when the Magic Triangle Jazz Series presented Tom Varner’s Quintet, and again in 2002 when he was part of Uri Caine’s genre-busting version of Bach’s “Goldberg Variations”. He has been a first call bassist for Tim Berne, Don Byron, John Abercrombie, Fred Hersch and Dave Douglas, among others, and has released a half-dozen projects as a leader. On more than one occasion Robinson has commented how Gress’s deep sound and unerring sense of time provides the ultimate security blanket.

Smith is simply one of the most active drummers and expansive musical minds working today. His last three releases as a leader on Pyroclastic Records (Laugh Ash, Interpret It Well, and Path of Seven Colors) are each wildly different and extremely ambitious, and he has greatly added to the bands of Marc Ribot, David Torn and Dave Holland. He was locked in all evening, playing just loud enough, while adding delicate accents on glockenspiel. Smith will make his Jazz Shares debut as a leader in September alongside Mary Halvorson, Liberty Ellman and Nick Dunston.

Being able to present a dear friend in concert before an adoring home-town crowd was a pleasure to produce. The confluence of good vibes in the room and the high level of music and musicianship is why we do what we do. 

The Cream Rises: Joseph Daley's Tonal Colors Trio

There comes a time in an artist’s life when the pendulum swings, and the hard work and dogged pursuit of excellence forged over many years begins to bear fruit. With mid-career in the rear view mirror, the accumulation of credits and accomplishments becomes so impressive, the time left so precious, that respect, and maybe even a few accolades, begin to pour in. Such is the case with Joseph Daley, the 75-year old low brass player whose performance on October 6 at Hawks & Reed in Greenfield was a study in power and restraint.

Accompanied by bassist Ken Filiano and guitarist Shu Odamura, Daley debuted his Tonal Colors Trio on Sunday for a Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares audience of 50. Playing tuba, euphonium, piano and wood flute, Daley led the ensemble in an evening of bracing and elegiac music.

The first half of the concert featured an open floor plan, mostly non-metered and harmonically free with textures galore. Filiano and Daley, playing tuba, inhabited a similar nether world of bottom friendly sound, with Odamura’s shimmering guitar floating on top. The music, while untethered, nevertheless had a certain momentum, propelling us through uncharted soundscapes. This approach, never settled but not unsettling, was peppered with short sections of intricately written material that seemed to come out of nowhere, nailed with precision.

The second half of the program was highlighted by a gorgeous rendition of Don Pullen’s “Ode To Life”, that jumped off the stage with a beauty that made us gasp. Why this composition has not become a modern jazz standard is beyond me. Pullen’s piece was brilliantly juxtaposed with an equally beautiful Daley original dedicated to his late wife, Wanda. Daley has written a number of works in honor of his wife and he includes at least one during every live performance. Odamura told me later that he was not familiar with the composition, but once he figured out what key it was written in, was able to acquit himself quite convincingly.

Odamura was born in Kyoto, Japan and moved to the U.S. in 2006 to attend the Berklee School of Music on scholarship. He’s been living in New York since 2009, including five years in my old stomping grounds of Woodside, Queens. Affable, humble and a monster player, Odamura had a clean ringing sound and an approach that was devoid of grandstanding and excessive volume. Perhaps his extensive experience making music for theater, including over a decade as musical director for Watoku Ueno’s shadow puppetry group, explains the guitarist’s ability to fit in and serve the music.

Filiano was his usual commanding self. The great bass player has been a regular and welcome presence at recent Jazz Shares events, enhancing bands led by Anders Griffen, Taylor Ho Bynum and Jeff Cosgrove in the last couple of years. This time Filiano employed an array of pedals and electronic effects to enhance his sound. Watching him manipulate his devices was a bit distracting, but when I closed my eyes and focused only on auditory information, the bent, swooped world he created opened up vistas. Combined with his patented vocalizations and the knitting needles he wove between his bass strings, Filiano embodied the band’s name: tonal colors, indeed.

Regal yet relaxed in his stocking feet and beautiful print tunic, Joseph Daley seemed cut from African royalty. Obscured behind a music stand and his large coil of brass, Daley controlled the proceedings with a light but confident touch. Appearing almost two years to the day since his Jazz Shares debut with Reggie Nicholson’s Brass Concept, Daley celebrated his 75th circumnavigation of the sun by leading his trio in a masterful display of improvisatory spirit. After a good run on tuba, Daley moved to the smaller, nimbler euphonium, a cousin to the baritone horn, my instrument of choice through middle and high school. The baritone, Daley explained, has a cylindrical bore, meaning that the tubing is a uniform diameter throughout most of the instrument. The euphonium on the other hand, has conical tubing, it gets larger as it moves from mouthpiece to bell. Explained like the consummate public school teacher he was.

Daley has also been the consummate side man over his illustrious 50 year career. I know him from his ground breaking stint with Sam River’s Trio, as well as his work with Taj Mahal, Howard Johnson’s tuba-heavy outfit, Gravity, and the big bands of Gil Evans, Charlie Haden and Carla Bley. I first met him in 2015, when he (and Filiano) performed with Jason Kao Hwang’s genre-straddling project, Burning Bridge, as part of the UMass Magic Triangle Jazz Series. But Daley is also a first rate composer and arranger. Do yourself a favor and check out his brilliant 2011 opus, The Seven Deadly Sins, and his 2013 follow up, The Seven Heavenly Virtues, both featuring his orchestral Earth Tones Ensemble.

Late in the concert Daley played piano and a Native American wood flute, which moved things in a spiritual direction and lightened up the evening’s dark sonorities. It was the perfect coda to a night of adventure and exploration, and served as an invitation to delve deeper into the remarkable career of Joseph Daley.

Josh Sinton and Jeb Bishop Play Nice Together

Far from the hoopla surrounding the latest artist du jour, there are hundreds of high caliber jazz musicians making “serious” music that is not without humor, passion and virtuosity. We saw two such musicians on September 27 at Holyoke Media: Josh Sinton and Jeb Bishop.

These two old friends ran down complex original compositions, plus pieces by Herbie Nichols and Steve Lacy, while engaging in a series of basic sound science experiments. Sinton coaxed a variety of sounds from his baritone saxophone, bass clarinet and flute, while Bishop did the same with his trombone.

The concert began with solo statements by each musician. Bishop, who moved to Chicago two years ago for his second stint in the Windy City, began the evening walking the stage using a mute as both percussion instrument and note bender. Mixing melodious runs and unconventional bleats with a judicious use of multi-phonics, Bishop constructed a lucid 10-minute musical statement, a master class in crafting coherence from a trunk-full of unusual components.

I think of the baritone sax and bass clarinet as Sinton’s main axes, but he told us it wasn’t until he picked up the flute in his late teens that he felt “as one” with an instrument. He began his solo producing a beautiful array of tones, full of purity and depth. Before long he was fluttering and vocalizing through his flute, turning his instrument into a wind-swept vessel of breath. Having just heard Nicole Mitchell in Hartford alongside guitarist Joe Morris, I was reminded again of the great sound potential and emotional range of the flute.

The whole evening was a celebration of breath, blowing life into low end devices, saturating the atmosphere with honking, slap-tonguing and tone-splitting vibrations. Often thought of as galumphing ugly ducklings fit merely for bottom-end oompah, the baritone saxophone, bass clarinet and trombone were transformed on Friday into princes of versatile derring-do.

The duo’s jaunty treatment of Herbie Nichols’ "Karna Kanji", (never recorded during Nichols’ short career), had his characteristic lilt and tilt, and Sinton and Bishop hinted at its playful, 1920’s-like spirit. Sinton first heard the piece on Roswell Rudd’s The Unheard Herbie Nichols, Vol. 1, and he asked Bishop if he was familiar with it. The trombonist quickly texted back a picture of his copy of the disc.

These two kindred spirits also tackled Steve Lacy’s “The Dumps”, written, we were told by Sinton, after Lacy’s weeks-long failure to try to write a convincing blues tune. After a trilling opening, the duo launched into the crux of the tune: a brisk bop-like unison line that provided a fertile platform for the two impassioned solos that followed. Sinton got to study with the great soprano saxophonist at the New England Conservatory in his last years. The experience was so profound for Sinton he formed Ideal Bread (Kirk Knuffke, Tomas Fujiwara, Adam Hopkins), built solely to perform Lacy’s compositions. Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares hosted Ideal Bread during our first season, thirteen years ago.

Since then, Sinton has come back to the Valley often. His parents, long-time Jazz Shares supporters John and Wendy Sinton, live in Northampton. (They moved to the Valley after Josh had flown the coop.) There have also been memorable Sinton sightings with Nate Wooley’s Quintet (2016), Sinton’s Predicate Trio (2019) and Charlie Kohlhase’s Saxophone Support Group (2020).

Until he moved back to Chicago, Jeb Bishop had called Boston home, where he (re)connected with folks like Nate McBride, Joe Morris, Tony Malaby, Ellwood Epps and others. Bishop grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, and in addition to playing trombone and guitar, studied philosophy extensively at the graduate level. He also translated the recently departed pianist Irène Schweizer’s biography, The Uncontainable Feeling of Freedom, from German to English. During Bishop’s first stint in Chicago in the 1990s, he closely collaborated with Ken Vandermark, Joshua Abrams, Frank Rosaly and Tim Daisy, among others. Lately, he has been playing a lot with Ed Wilkerson, Jr. and Avreeayl Ra. At a certain point during the concert, he used a plastic margarine container as a mute to produce a series of innovative buzzes, quacks and vocal distortions. Brilliant.

Sinton and Bishop were embarked on a modest tour that will take them to The Lilypad in Cambridge, Paul Lichter’s long-running Dimensions in Jazz series in Portland, ME, and back to Sinton’s current hometown, Brooklyn. Just two very accomplished musicians moving outside of the limelight, garnering all the right attention.