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.
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