Radical convention: Winter Jazzfest 2013

Some quick thoughts about Winter Jazzfest 2013, which is wrapping up as I type this in the wee hours of Sunday, 1/13. This is by no means intended as any sort of comprehensive review of the fest—I'm sure we'll read many smart ones in the coming days—but merely as a distillation of my own (very enjoyable) experience of the event. Some from-the-field impressions can be found on my Twitter page.

I heard a lot of, for lack of a better term, high-tech music at WJF 2013: groups that used samples, groups that focused on proggish, daredevil precision, groups that nodded to funk, hip-hop and electronica, groups that foregrounded their now-ness, their distance from a conventional notion of what jazz is. I enjoyed several of these groups very much; I look forward to hearing more from, e.g., Marcus Strickland's Twi-Life (trombonist Frank Lacy was the MVP here) and Rafiq Bhatia's group.

But my favorite sets at the festival had nothing to do with any of that. They were unadorned, acoustic, lacking in any particular eye-catching hook. They were just about sensitive, in-the-moment interaction; they were about listening; they represented very different aesthetics, but they all, in one way or another, conformed to some relatively well-established, historically proven way of playing jazz.

1) The trio of pianist Kris Davis, bassist Eric Revis and drummer Andrew Cyrille (pictured above) at Zinc Bar on Friday. An extraordinarily sensitive set, that built from a hush to a subtle dance then back to a hush. It seems silly to say that the appeal here was the sound, but that's the only way I can think to put it. All three players were considering the sounds they were producing in relation to the sounds the others were producing. It's an obvious idea, but less commonly illustrated in practice than you'd think. Cyrille, master of timbre and touch dictated the pace (unhurried) and the focus level (extreme), but no one was really the star; or in another sense, everyone was. It was free jazz, but without any of the chest-thumping or catharsis. It was "out," but it was not self-consciously weird. It moved along as it pleased, but with real narrative intrigue. I would love to hear this band again soon. This is a moment for Andrew Cyrille: last year's Bill McHenry and David Virelles records, for example—the first of which Revis also appears on. I very much look forward to seeing Cyrille w/ Virelles at the Vanguard at the end of the month, and hopefully w/ Ethan Iverson, Tim Berne and Sam Newsome at Smalls the week before. (He's also playing a free big-band show at Lincoln Center next Thursday!)

2) The quartet of reedist Andrew D'Angelo, trumpeter Kirk Knuffke, bassist Ben Street and drummer Nasheet Waits, known collectively as Merger, at Culture Project on Saturday. On Twitter, I pegged what this band was playing as freebop. I'm not sure if that's the correct term, but I'm referring to a sort of inside/outside thing, part vanguard mid-’60s Blue Note, part late ’50s / early ’60s Ornette, part ’90s downtown. Jazzy, but also abstract, noise-embracing. Each player has an extremely distinctive voice on their respective instrument, and all those voices came through b/c each player made it his business to complement his bandmates' voices. Again, a "duh" idea, but to see it really happening, live, is special. Super-quiet moments, like a minutely detailed unaccompanied Knuffke solo, and aggressive ones, where D'Angelo was frothing in post-Zorn fashion. The rhythm section knew what to do with all of it, and that didn't necessarily mean rise up and meet the frontline; it just meant, "Find what's complementary, even if it's counterintuitive." Nasheet Waits is a poet of his instrument. He gets me closer to the bliss I get from primo Tony Williams than just about any other living drummer. The tempos are fluid, but the looseness does not signify slackness. There's such authority, whether the beat is explicit or left in the rearview. Nice thematic material in this set too. Merger needs to make a record, probably a live one.

3) The quartet of reedist Don Byron, pianist Aruán Ortiz, bassist Cameron Brown and drummer Rudy Royston at Le Poisson Rouge on Friday. I don't know Don Byron's work very well, but I do know that he has a penchant for the conceptual hook, the project devoted to a specific historical repertoire or genre, the kind of thing artists such as Dave Douglas and Ken Vandermark have often engaged in. Nothing against that approach, but this set was so, so not that. I didn't get to see the full performance, but what I did see was capital-J Jazz. Long solos, band swinging incredibly hard, each musician playing with serious flair and flash. No sense of "We need to get past this fossilized format." No. Merely a sense that what we need to do is play our asses off in a well-established mode, a mode that's well-established because it works. This was probably the most conventional set I saw all weekend, and interestingly, because of the context described at the top of this post, it also felt like one of the most radical. (Honorable mention in a similar vein: James Carter's Organ Trio at LPR on Saturday.)

P.S. Almost exactly 10 years ago, I interviewed Andrew Cyrille and wrote this profile.

Best of 2012: Jazz, part III

Here's the third and final installment of my 2012 jazz round-up. Complete, unannotated list is here, part I and an intro are here, and part II is here. And here's a thematically fitting bonus track: my Pitchfork review of the new Mingus box set on Mosaic. All-genres-in-play year-end lists coming soon!


Jim Black Trio
Somatic [Winter and Winter]

David Virelles
Continuum [Pi Recordings]

Grouping these two together might be a little bit of a stretch, but I think it makes sense. At heart, they're both unconventional piano-trio records that work hard to sustain a particular mood/feel over their respective running times.

I remember receiving a download of Somatic about a year ago, right in the middle of the 2011 year-end-list frenzy. Right from the first spin, I really enjoyed it, but I was worried that it would get lost in the shuffle as the year progressed; albums that come out early in January often do. (Though, interestingly, the album that ended up topping my 2012 all-genres-in-play list—to be revealed in due time—is also a record I've had my hands on since the very beginning of the year.) Fortunately, this did not occur. I saw a very good show by this band at Cornelia Street Café in February, and the record stuck with me pretty stubbornly throughout the year.

So what is Somatic, exactly? Jim Black is a musician I've come around to gradually. I first heard him at Tonic with Dave Douglas's Tiny Bell Trio, probably around 1999 or 2000, and soon after that I ran into him on records by Tim Berne's Bloodcount. I wasn't in love with his drumming at that time. I respected the skill, but the aesthetic didn't click with me; something about the way he was channeling rock seemed sort of like a knowing paraphrase rather than the result of true, head-on engagement, and I found his signature idiosyncrasies, both timbral and rhythmic, a little distracting. But as I heard more of Black's work over the years—especially the gorgeous records he made with his AlasNoAxis band (e.g., Houseplant), on which he did an awesome job of getting out of the way of his own compositions and simply letting them speak—I really turned around on him. Jim Black, the composer-bandleader, appealed to me much more than Jim Black, the sideman.

With Somatic, I think he's reached a new peak. He's stripping the aesthetic down to the bone here, uncluttering it in an admirable way. AlasNoAxis retained that rockish feel via Hilmar Jensson's guitar and the backbeat feel of some of the grooves, but that kind of allusion is less apparent here. This set of pieces feels entirely secure within itself; listening, you're not preoccupied with what the influences might have been. So yes, as I mentioned above, this is a piano trio record: Black, plus bassist Thomas Morgan and pianist Elias Stemeseder (a young Austrian player whose name is new to me). The writing is just remarkable. You get these simple, folksy, memorable themes, such as "Uglysnug" and "Terrotow," which gets stuck in my head constantly, and a bunch of moodier, more troubled-, pensive-sounding ones—like opener "Tahre" and "Chibi Jones"—and then some, like "Somatic," that seem to combine those two sensations. A lot of slow, extremely chilled-out music here, but unpredictable and unboring. "Somatic" is a good illustration of what's so compelling about this record; the composition is sort of lilting and catchy, but the playing is teeming with strange detail. Black, Morgan and Stemeseder are having a real Bill Evans Trio kind of group conversation here, drifting in and out of in-time playing, just sort of flowing where the piece takes them. This record isn't just my favorite example to date of Jim Black's writing; it might be my favorite example of his drumming as well. On "Somatic," he seems to be going for an unbelievably subtle version of the Tony Williams–on-"Nefertiti" thing, i.e., a sort of constructive disruption. The trademark sounds of his kit, those dry cymbals, the splatty bass drum, and the strange, slurred time feel—here you hear all this in a quiet and composed setting. The improvisation does threaten to heat up at times, but it's all so dynamically controlled, so essentially balladic.

This trio doesn't sound anything like the Motian/Frisell/Lovano band, but there's a similar kind of murky, liquid lyricism at work here—an experimentalism that has no time for obvious signifiers. A few pieces on the record veer off in other directions—the postboppish "Sure Are You," one of the only tracks here with what I'd describe as a jazzy rhythmic feel, and the tumbling, prog-funky "Beariere"—but overall, Somatic is a pretty remarkable feat of sustained moodcraft. If you like your jazz reflective, with a little stimulating yet unobtrusive weirdness around the edges, you will eat this record up. Every time I put it on, I feel like I've previously underestimated how good it is.



Again, David Virelles's Continuum—a very different record. Jim Black is a veteran compared to Virelles, whose name I've only started seeing around over the past couple of years. When I noticed that this Cuban pianist's working band, also called Continuum, featured Andrew Cyrille on drums—as well as Ben Street, also a member of the Billy Hart Quartet discussed in part II of this round-up—I was instantly intrigued. Cyrille's been doing awesome work in Bill McHenry's band over the past couple years (check out the recent La Peur du Vide), and he sounds incredible on Continuum. (I've written before about intergenerational jazz bands designed to showcase the work of an older drummer; you can add Virelles trio to that list.)

As Ben Ratliff pointed out in his review, Continuum is a multimedia presentation, in which Román Díaz's chant and even Alberto Lescay's painting play a central role. While I've come to enjoy those elements—and I'll admit that Díaz's vocals took some getting used to—the sound of the piano trio at the core of this ensemble is what's kept me coming back to Continuum. I love the way Virelles, Street and Cyrille groove on the funky dervish dance "The Executioner"—Díaz's subtle Afro-Cuban percussion is key here too—working up to a tense climax and giving way to a masterfully textural Cyrille solo. Some of the other pieces go for pure texture; "Threefold" is a super-quiet masterpiece, an abstracted ballad, in which Virelles and Street leave tons of space for Cyrille's pinging cymbals and rustling brush-on-snare work.

The record can be a little disorienting, since the group's approach mutates constantly; almost every piece seems to have a different sonic objective. After a few spins, though, I started to embrace the variety. This is a record that ranges from "Manongo Pablo," essentially a nimble, uptempo Cyrille drum solo set against Virelles's spacey, almost psychedelic Wurlitzer, to "Our Birthright," where a Díaz recitation over hushed accompaniment from the trio gradually transitions into a passionate, spirit-raising free-jazz episode, featuring guest horn players Román Filiú, Mark Turner and Jonathan Finlayson. (During this latter section, you really hear how valuable Cyrille is to the session; when the other players dial up the intensity, he keeps his volume and density carefully controlled, assuring that the crescendo doesn't turn into a cacophonous blowout.)

While I look forward to spending more time with Continuum, I'm not sure I'll ever understand fully what Virelles is going for here. In the liner notes, he writes about the Afro-Cuban religious practices that inspired the record, discussing the "highly complex cosmologies" that guide them and the way Díaz's verse weaves together Spanish with the "ritual languages" of Karabali, Kongo and Yorùbá-Lucumí. No translations of any of the text are provided, so in a sense, any listener not steeped in these traditions is kept deliberately on the outside. It's an intriguing and, in a weird way, almost refreshing way to present a record, i.e., clue the listener in slightly to the concepts guiding the work but don't overexplain. The result is that Continuum scans like a mystery rather than some sort of context-laden cross-cultural artifact. It's fascinating stuff.

Note that this band plays Drom tonight. They're also at the Village Vanguard from January 29 through February 3, with Filiú guesting Friday to Sunday and none other than Henry Threadgill (!) sitting in on Thursday.

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Henry Threadgill Zooid
Tomorrow Sunny / The Revelry, Spp [Pi Recordings]

As discussed on DFSBP a couple weeks back, I recently had a bit of a moment with Threadgill's three most recent Zooid releases, developing a new appreciation for the band's sound—and the ways in which it diverges from H.T.'s "classic" work. The postscript marked "Update" there features some in-the-moment impressions of this latest Zooid record, which welcomes cellist Christopher Hoffman to the fold, so I won't go into too much detail here. Tomorrow Sunny doesn't differ wildly from the bands prior two LPs—Vols. 1 and 2 of This Brings Us To—but you can hear a progression in terms of the band's deep-listening interaction. The group dynamic on tracks like "So Pleased, No Clue"—one of the sparser, shorter, less groove-oriented pieces—is stunningly sensitive. You really hear the players breathing together, completing each other's sentences, coexisting, collaboratively coaxing out the ensemble sound. In the post linked above, I wrote about how Zooid's music isn't the kind that comes to you; you have to meet it on its own terms. But once you're there—and for me, that meant shedding my desire for big, bold, super-memorable ensemble themes, so prevalent in older Threadgill—this is a very pleasurable, even sensuous record and probably my favorite Zooid statement yet.

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Joe Fiedler
Big Sackbut [Yellow Sound Label]

I don't know too much about the trombonist Joe Fiedler, but I have enjoyed the last couple of albums of his I've checked out: 2007's The Crab and last year's Sacred Chrome Orb, both lean trio discs geared toward showcasing the leader's charming compositions and impressive command of odd timbral effects. Big Sackbut debuts a very different project, a World Saxophone Quartet–style four-piece with three trombones (Fiedler, Ryan Keberle and Josh Roseman) and one tuba (Marcus Rojas. I like the more extroverted tracks on here, e.g. Fieder's "Mixed Bag" and a take on Willie Colon's "Calle Luna, Calle Sol," but the more measured, reflective pieces ("#11," "Don Pullen") impress me the most. For me, the real hurdle a project like this has to clear is "Does the music transcend the eccentricity of the ensemble make-up?," and I'd answer a definite yes with respect to this record. Enjoyable stuff, especially for the brass-inclined.

Here's a clip of the group doing "Calle Luna, Calle Sol" live in 2010.

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Yoni Kretzmer 2Bass Quartet
Weight [OutNow]

Another one that foregrounds an unusual ensemble make-up. Here, I'd heard everyone but the leader—Israeli tenor-saxist Yoni Kretzmer—going in; the rest of the band—bassist Sean Conly and Reuben Radding, and drummer Mike Pride—are all NYC stalwarts.  There's definitely a gritty, post-Ayler quality to Weight, but that's only a fraction of what's going on here. Kretzmer has a very classic tenor sound, raspy yet melodic—I believe I cited Dewey Redman in one of the prior write-ups; I think of him here too—and a sometimes borderline-sentimental compositional sense; on pieces like "Giving Tree," and "A Bit of Peace," these qualities clash fruitfully with the grittiness of the improvising. This push-and-pull keeps me interested. I'm all for the backbeat-driven meltdown at the beginning of "Again and Again," but I'm even more intrigued by the way the dynamics dip down to ballad level instead of continuing to blare. "Smallone," a measured interlude that sets Kretzmer against the two plucked basses and Pride's tasteful brushwork, is another standout. As with the Threadgill record, Kretzmer really lets you hear every player in the band; it's a beautifully recorded disc, and its greatest pleasure is hearing the group members carrying on a lively yet expertly controlled conversation, e.g., on a track like the sing-songy "A Bit of Peace." Everyone's really listening, here and throughout the album.



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Ted Nash
The Creep [Plastic Sax]

I'd never really checked out Ted Nash's work before this year. One of the most welcome side benefits of researching my Jazz Composers Collective profile a couple months back was getting to know various Nash projects like the Double Quartet, Still Evolved and Odeon. As with the Fiedler and Kretzmer records above, some of this past Nash work—e.g., the tango-inspired Odeon and the string-quartet-augmented Double Quartet—thrives on unconventional ensemble make-up. The Creep is something different, though. It's simply a scrappy, hard-swinging quartet record, driven by Ulysses Owens's ass-kicking drumming and the stimulating warm-cool contrast between Nash's saxophone and Ron Horton's trumpet. Much like the Dolphy/Curson/Mingus/Richmond band, this group gets a ton of mileage out of its stripped-down instrumentation, emphasizing density or sparseness, abandon or control as the situation demands. Check out "Burnt Toast and Avocado" and "Plastic Sax Lullaby" in succession and you'll see what I mean. Nash has cited Ornette (particularly his use of a plastic saxophone) as an inspiration for this record, but to continue with our overriding theme, The Creep is another no-school jazz statement. It simply does its thing (many things, really) and leaves the classification up to the listener.




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Jeremy Pelt 
Soul [HighNote]

Hat-tip to Phil Freeman for turning me on to this one. I knew Pelt's name, but little else about him, going in. I was intrigued by the idea of hearing JD Allen and Gerald Cleaver in a new context, and I wasn't disappointed at all. This is a low-key and unassuming session, ballad-heavy, clearly indebted to ’60s Blue Note fare—esp. moody Wayne Shorter records like Speak No Evil—and gorgeously recorded. (Pelt's site says that Rudy Van Gelder himself engineered this one, though, oddly, Joe Marciano's name is listed on the CD itself.)  It's a throwback record, but it's not slavish in the slightest, and the playing is outstanding, whether on the more freewheeling, uptempo tracks like "What's Wrong Is Wright" or "The Tempest"—both of these have a pretty strong mid-to-late-’60s-Miles-quintet vibe going on, with Cleaver clearly mining a Tony Williams vibe on the latter, and sounding great—or whispery slow pieces like "The Ballad of Ichabod Crane." The latter piece exemplifies one of Soul's most appealing qualities, its ability to convey chill-ness without sleepiness; in the end, this is a fairly straightforward record, but there's enough intrigue and conviction in the playing that it doesn't feel rote. Playing this again now, though, I'm reminded by its subtle magnetism—I'll definitely be returning to this one, and keeping an eye out for future Pelt releases.

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Ralph Peterson 
The Duality Perspective [Onyx]

As with Soul, I woke up to this one after reading another writer's take, in this case Ben Ratliff's review. And again, I'm very thankful for the heads-up, since I wasn't familiar with Peterson's prior work. Part of what intrigued me in the Times write-up was the description of the Fo'tet—one of two bands featured on this record—a quartet with clarinet, vibes and bass. (The sidemen are Felix Peikli, Joseph Doubleday and Alexander L.J. Tosh, respectively—all new names to me.) The combination of clarinet and vibes is one I've loved since I first heard the ’30s Benny Goodman Quartet back in college—got a nice opportunity to binge on these sides during WKCR's recent Teddy Wilson centennial marathon—and though the Fo'tet is no Swing Era throwback, the texture of the band does hint at the crisp, fresh, chamber-jazzy interplay of Goodman and Lionel Hampton. To me, this group sounds best playing more or less straightforward postbop, as on album opener "One False Move." What I like about this piece, and "Princess" as well, is the contrast between the cool sound of the clarinet-vibes frontline—and I mean that more texturally, since Peikli is a daring and passionate soloist—and Peterson's busy, churning accompaniment. He's got a rumbling, Elvin Jones quality to his swing, and he certainly smacks the kit from time to time, but his dynamics are impressively controlled; he's driving the band without overdoing it. I'd have to agree with Ratliff's assessment of the record's latter half, which features Peterson's sextet ("The sextet has its moments, but it deals in more weighed-down and conventional moods and doesn’t have as recognizable a group sound," he wrote). The title track—a lushly orchestrated ballad—is a definite winner, though: a strong showcase for Peterson's writing/arranging, that muscular yet sensitive drumming style I mentioned above and the appealing two-sax frontline of Walter Smith III and Tia Fuller. I look forward to hearing more from Peterson, especially the Fo'tet.


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Eric Revis's 11:11
Parallax [Clean Feed]

Was a little apprehensive about including this one on my year-end list, mainly because it only showed up in the mail a few days before I filed. But I knew that (A) the band featured here—the sidemen are Ken Vandermark, Jason Moran and Nasheet Waits—was too special to overlook and that (B) the record wasn't really going to be eligible for 2013 consideration. Definitely still digesting this one, so my impressions are a little sketchy. But I will tentatively say that Parallax lives up to my high expectations. (I remember seeing this band listed on the Jazz Gallery schedule a few years back, and after missing that gig, I eagerly awaited a recording.) Revis is, in his own way, one of the most eclectic players I know. I've been seriously impressed by his playing with Tarbaby, Bill McHenry's current working quartet, Peter Brötzmann (the 2011 Vision Festival featured a Revis / Brötzmann / William Parker trio), and Branford Marsalis—a pretty wide range of contexts—and I remember really digging his last leader record, Laughter's Necklace of Tears, when I checked it out a while back.

Like that LP, Parallax is an eclectic and challenging set. Revis doesn't just put together bands and let them rip; he assembles real programs' worth of music. This album features muscular, trancelike solo bass ("Percival," e.g.); dramatic, tightly orchestrated pieces like "Dark Net" and "MXR," which almost come off as proggy chamber jazz; entropic yet sensitive free-jazz pieces ("I'm Going to Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter," "Celestial Hobo," "ENKJ") that really show off the potent group dynamic this quartet has achieved; and at least one piece ("Winin' Boy Blues") that sounds like a riff on the kind of stylized retro vibe that Moran and Waits often explore in the Bandwagon. Skimming back through the tracks now, I'm realizing that I can't wait to give this record a few more focused spins. Revis has put together a fascinating group here—one that can breathe free-form fire when called upon to do so, e.g., "Hyperthral," or groove hard and tough, e.g., "Split"—and he really seems to be wringing all the potential he can out of these players.




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Harris Eisenstadt
Canada Day III [Songlines]

  










Canada Day Octet [482 Music]

Harris Eisenstadt has been a mainstay of my year-end lists over the past few years—I particularly dug 2008's Guewel and 2010's Woodblock Prints. He's prolific, but he's always worth checking in with. I'd overlooked Eisenstadt's Canada Day band in the past, maybe because it's his most conventional-sounding ensemble, a quintet with saxophone, trumpet, vibes and bass. As with previous Canada Day releases, the writing on III is very clean, clear and lyrical, sometimes with a shade of playful quirk.  The pieces seem designed to show off the sidemen, specifically the extraordinary frontline of saxist Matt Bauder and trumpeter Nate Wooley; both can veer into abstract/abrasive territory—fans of Wooley's work in freer contexts will recognize what he's up to on "Nosey Parker"—but what impresses me most here is when they're playing in this sort of soft, murmuring style—as on "Song for Sara"—and mingling their sounds with Chris Dingman's vibes. It's a very pleasant and accessible group texture, but far from conventional, which seems to be a hallmark of Eisenstadt's work overall. Don't meant to short-shrift the Canda Day Octet record record when I say that it's more or less a companion piece. Eisenstadt's writing for this expanded group is just as sharp as it is for the core band—the multipart "Ombudsman" suite, which really takes advantage of the larger ensemble, is magical—and again, Bauder, Wooley and Dingman are the stars here. Both these discs are highly recommended.

Here's some live footage of the octet.


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40Twenty  
40Twenty [Yeah Yeah]

David Ambrosio has shown up a couple times on this list already, on the Schuller and Yamamoto records, and the other three here are familiar names, all of whom lead their own projects. (Garchik's The Heavens is definitely one to check out.) This is a subtle one that I might have overlooked if it wasn't for Nate Chinen's recent shout-out. I like how this record manages to sound both weird and composed at the same time, as when the band plays an expertly controlled form of free jazz on Ambrosio's "One Five," or a slurry Monkish march on Sacks's "Jan 20." With only trombone in the frontline, the group has a kind of drollness about it, a vibe that's also reinforced in the writing, but there's some really heated, energized playing on tracks like Garchik's "Gi." Like many of the other projects on this list, 40Twenty is taking what it needs from various jazz strains without aligning itself to any of them. "Jan 20" sounds almost throwbacky—appropriate since the band's name is a nod to the grueling nightclub gig schedules of yore—while "Plainchant" is as delicate and austere as the name would suggest. The feel of the latter piece captures what I enjoy about this record—the way both its beauty and its oddness feel muted, sort of far off. 40Twenty is more elusive than most of the records cited above, but it's worth taking the time to get close to it.



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P.S. The best jazz performances I saw this year, with links to coverage, where applicable:

Miguel Zenón Quartet
January 6; Zinc Bar (Winter Jazzfest)

Craig Taborn Trio
April 6, 8; Village Vanguard

Darius Jones Quartet
June 12; Roulette (Vision Festival)

Marc Ribot Trio
June 29; Village Vanguard

Ethan Iverson / Ben Street / Albert "Tootie" Heath
August 26; Village Vanguard

Bob Stewart Quintet
November 10; Central Park (Jazz and Colors)

Henry Threadgill Zooid
November 24; Roulette

Go see Bill McHenry

Bill McHenry is playing at the Village Vanguard tonight and tomorrow with Orrin Evans, Eric Revis and Andrew Cyrille. Having caught a set last night, I strongly recommend that you go.

I've been following McHenry for a few years. I think it was 2006 when I first heard him live, playing at the Vanguard with the same band on his ’07 record, Roses: Ben Monder on guitar, Reid Anderson on bass and Paul Motian on drums. (McHenry's new record, Ghosts of the Sun, features the same personnel, and I'm pretty sure it comes from the same sessions as Roses.) In ’09, I caught McHenry in a very different context—a freeform duo with Monder, which you can hear on the album Bloom.

The band he's playing with this week is extraordinary. You've got pianist Evans and bassist Revis—both hailing from Tarbaby, who blew my mind at this year's Undead Jazzfest—and Cyrille, longtime Cecil Taylor collaborator and all-around jazz-drumming badass, behind the kit. I guess what struck me overall is this group's versatility, its refusal to align itself with any particular jazz faction. The band has no "angle," no spin, no gimmick; its M.O. is simply to commit fully to whatever tune McHenry calls, to get deep into it, to execute. The set was beautifully constructed: It opened with a stirring free-time piece, and I also remember a midtempo swinger, a funky soul-jazz stroll, an easygoing ballad. There was no channel-changing vibe at play though; it was just smart pacing.

"La Fuerza," a piece from Ghosts of the Sun, sticks out in particular. McHenry led the band through its floating theme—which for me paints a picture of a proud matador (as the title suggests, it's definitely got that Spanish flavor)—and then stepped aside to give Evans and later Revis some space. Each player built up from a misty cloud to a shuddering, super-physical climax. When those storms died down, Cyrille began an unaccompanied solo, constructed of little taps and clicks. Revis joined in, striking the wood frame of his bass; McHenry, sitting off to the side, started pressing down the keys of his horn, getting a percussive effect, and for a few minutes, the Vanguard stage became a makeshift drum circle.

Here and throughout the set, McHenry seemed delighted by the invention of his bandmates. After his solos, he'd retire to the bench at stage right and sit and listen, looking like a wide-eyed boy. There was a lot to hear. Evans was simply excellent: tasteful, minimal, bluesy at times, but breaking also into seismic, full-keyboard runs, episodes of zoned-out minimalism or full-on classical-styled romance. As he was when I heard him with Peter Brötzmann at this year's Vision Festival, Revis was both tough and songful, using his brief solo spots to advance the music rather than trot out technique. And Cyrille was a model of understated gravity; he swung and propelled with airy funkiness, the pulse sliding and gliding, and you felt no less buoyed by his out-of-meter colorations, which gave off a deep feeling of careful intent.

As so many have written, McHenry has this one-in-a-million tone, gauzy yet robust. It just sounds so classic, well-aged, the sonic equivalent of his tenor's tarnished gold finish. He sings through the horn with no agenda, assured rather than chopsy, no show-offiness. But like Evans, he has these sudden devilish impulses; he might let out a series of brief screeches, or a booming foghorn sound, or get caught up in a tic of fingering, a little OCD figure that he repeats and repeats.

This is that rare brand of jazz that has no name. No one seems to know where it came from. (Is is the Motian-Frisell-Lovano band, maybe?) It's the kind of jazz where the classic and the experimental bleed together and seem as one. Neither aspect feels perfunctory and both are heightened by exposure to the other; you listen harder to the "straight-ahead" swinging, sense more form in the open-ended blowing. It is not a noncommittal middle ground. It is an aesthetic of making calm, mature peace with the full spectrum of available materials. It does not draw attention to its own breadth and range. It is about using each strategy and sitting with it, making it genuine, so that it's not putting on a different hat for every tune, so that it all feels gracious and above board and non-intellectualized, non-"clever." Hear this band and you're not hearing a style of jazz; you're hearing players who take themselves out of the way of the music and just let the songs in, discovering on the spot what they want to sound like.

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*NPR graciously streamed Wednesday's 9pm set by this band. Check it out in archived form here.

*As a P.S., here's a 2003 All About Jazz profile I wrote on Andrew Cyrille. I have fond memories of interviewing him; aside from his patience and thoughtfulness, I recall that he was the one who put me in touch with the late, great Walt Dickerson.

*As a P.P.S., I should note that I sent a few live-Tweet dispatches from this show, as well as from a performance by the great Texan black-metal band Absu, which I also caught last night, via the Time Out New York Music Twitter page. I'm still getting the hang of this practice, but I encourage you to follow our channel to check out further on-the-spot concert impressions from me and my esteemed colleagues.

Mandance: Tarbaby at Undead Jazzfest

I spent the first couple hours of Undead Jazzfest 2011 channel-flipping. I took advantage of the staggered set times and jumped between venues to catch about 15 minutes of several different acts. I enjoyed watching Tyshawn Sorey deploy the gravity blast in his sparse, cryptic trio with Kris Davis and Ingrid Laubrock; hearing the often mercilessly abstract Nate Wooley play a straightforwardly beautiful solo with Harris Eisenstadt's Canada Day quintet; eavesdropping on Marc Ribot's ragged and poignant unaccompanied set. But then Tarbaby started playing and there was no need to think about OPTIONS, the blessing and the curse of the Jazzfest experience (whether Winter or Undead). I put the remote down.

I had heard this collective—pianist Orrin Evans, bassist Eric Revis (who sounded incredible alongside Peter Brötzmann at Vision Festival XVI) and drummer Nasheet Waits (for my money, one of the greatest living jazz drummers), augmented with various guests such as alto hero Oliver Lake, who fronted the group last night—on its 2010 sophomore album, The End of Fear. I'll admit to having initially been baffled by Tarbaby's conceptual/satirical slant (the record features a lot of overdubbed voices, speaking on the topic of jazz convention—and by extension, race— and creating a strange push-and-pull with the music); in short, it's the kind of record with a good deal of fuss and context, which tends to turn me off. As so often happens, I set the album aside intending to give it a second chance, but that chance never came about.

I can see now that no matter how good the record was, it wasn't going to prepare me for the shock (I think that's a fair word) of seeing Tarbaby live. The combined power of these musicians was damn near scary: I felt like I was watching Led Zeppelin, where every player can detonate on their own, but together they were simply volcanic.

The first piece built slowly, with Evans worrying an impish high-register phrase while the rhythm section got its bearings. Lake strode to the mic and began zipping off his trademark turbo-avant-bebop lines, and the music swelled. The band was like a tiny creature drawing air into its lungs and doubling in size with each breath, until—by the middle of this initial number—it was a writhing, hulking beast.

I wish I could put before you the loudness and the weight these four gave off during the course of the set. It's that creeping feeling of "Wow, these players are obviously playing at about 1/10 their full strength right now—if they let it entirely off the leash, we're going to be in some serious trouble." And soon, we were, and it was glorious. This was classic inside-outside jazz, sliding in and out of swing time, always inviting the turbulence while courting the form. And all four players projecting such mightiness, just at the border of macho and yet imbued with so much soul and wit and graciousness. Postbop, I guess I'd call it, though a particularly boisterous and totally un-arty strain of it.

I remember Evans's whirlwind piano flourishes, delivered with classic showman's flair, thundering-herd-of-elephants solos from Waits, Revis's cathartic shout in the middle of what I think was the piece "Brews" (the band quickly fell in line, punctuating the end of every phrase with a collective vocal outburst). Energy-wise, the performance reminded me of any number of free-jazz blowouts I've witnessed, but the crucial difference was that there was a SHAPE and an architecture at play. The quartet worked with relatively brief pieces, a repertoire it knew cold—mostly originals, I believe, in addition to an awesome version of "Awake Nu" from Don Cherry's Where Is Brooklyn?—and as it pushed and pulled and pummeled and caressed these compositions, you felt a guiding logic underneath. A point to it all.

As recently as last week, Ethan Iverson of the Bad Plus reiterated that "The future of jazz lies in bands." Tarbaby is definitely, definitely what he meant, and I really hope they get their due soon (someone please book them for a week at a club!) because they are every bit as impressive as TBP, the Bandwagon (of which Waits is also a member) or any of the other more high-profile collectives. That irreverent energy that left me cold on my initial brush with The End of Fear, as though the band were sharing a joke I didn't get, made perfect sense live; it translated as a rare camaraderie. Not the annoying in-jokeyness ("See what I did there?") that sometimes haunts outside-the-box jazz, but a very genuine sense of play—playing with fire really.

It's quite possible that Tarbaby is the most virile jazz band on earth. Again, that flirting with machoness, that cutting-contest mentality, but instead of just stringing solos together, these men were building something, sharing in their own gloves-off kind of way. What a joy to see Oliver Lake, a man who will turn 70 next year, romping around alongside three considerably younger players (their median age is about 40), and there being no sense of tedious reverence for the old guy. Everyone was scrapping together, trading blows. It's enough to make you sad that some older players don't test their mettle against younger generations, and the same goes with younger players who don't get in the ring with older ones. I've definitely written this before (I remember singling out the example of Darius Jones, who was brave enough to tap Cooper-Moore and Bob Moses for his Aum Fidelity debut), but it's such a crucial thing in jazz. It's risky, sure—for the old as much as the young—and not everyone is ready for it. But Oliver Lake is currently playing at an astonishingly high level. Make no mistake, he is a living master, and since he gigs in New York all the time—he'll be back at Undead on Sunday with his Organ Quartet—you are remiss if you don't go check him out. If at all possible, check him out with Tarbaby.

I hope someone makes a live record of this band, or better yet a live DVD. I'm frantically wanting to demonstrate to my friends who weren't at last night's show how great they are. I know I'm going to go back to The End of Fear with fresh ears, but when you get down to it, Tarbaby exists in an undocumentable realm. Regarding it on record is like playing with an action figure of a T-Rex. This is the kind of sweet, jovial thunder that you have to hear in nature.

P.S. Hypocritical as it may seem, here's a Tarbaby + Lake live clip that gives you a little taste of the wildness.

P.P.S. Here's Tarbaby's self-titled 2009 debut (which I haven't heard yet) on CD Baby.