2013 In Review: Great live music

Bells≥ at the Tiger Lounge, May 4. Chris Ernst, Zach Barocas, Stephen Shodin. Photo by D. Robert Wolchek.

As a New York dwell­er who’s often vir­tu­ally con­sumed by the exi­gen­cies of mak­ing a liv­ing, I fre­quently worry that I don’t par­take suf­fi­ciently in the Cultural Advantages the city ostens­ibly has to offer. Some of this anxi­ety is of course off­set by the fact that the afore­men­tioned liv­ing is largely made writ­ing about cul­ture, and yes, I know I get to see motion pic­tures such as Inside Llewyn Davis way, way ahead of many of you. Still, I worry. I haven’t seen the Vermeers at the Frick nor the Magrittes at MOMA and those are like my favor­ite artists, guys. 

In 2013 I did man­age to make it out to a fair num­ber of live music events, though,  and some of them were, in the word of I think Shelley Duvall’s char­ac­ter in Annie Hall, “tran­sc­plendent.” Here, some brief accounts of a few of them. 

William Parker’s “Alphaville Suite” at Roulette, Brooklyn, February 14

Master bassist, com­poser and impro­viser Parker has been per­form­ing this unusu­al work since mid-decade, I think. On paper, it sounds like one of those alternative-soundtrack things that are sort of in fash­ion in avant-garde or cult circles, espe­cially since the piece is per­formed, yes, as a ver­sion of Godard’s film Alphaville is pro­jec­ted. Except it’s not really that. Perker’s work does­n’t attempt a scene-by-scene cor­res­pond­ence, and by using not only repeated melod­ic leit­mot­ifs but also songs, recit­a­tions, and impro­vised pas­sages it presents a very African-American-defined com­ment­ary on the movie’s themes of ali­ent­a­tion, dehu­man­iz­a­tion, love, and poetry. In a cul­tur­al atmo­sphere that’s so thor­oughly dom­in­ated by white appro­pri­ation of African or African-American modes and works, it is entirely refresh­ing to see an African-American appro­pri­ation of what is at least incid­ent­ally a very Caucasian-identified piece. Also, the music itself cooks. 

Bells≥ and Pauses at Tiger Lounge, Brooklyn, May 4

The Tiger Lounge is not really a prop­er ven­ue but rather a low-ceilinged rehears­al space under a bar in Williamsburg that occa­sion­ally hosts private or semi-private shows, or so I under­stand. In any event, it’s got the poten­tial to be a pun­ish­ingly intim­ate place, as I learned with the top of my head nearly graz­ing a ceil­ing pipe. On this even­ing the know­ingly naïve and not-entirely-fecklessly win­some song­craft of Pauses made a pro­voc­at­ive appet­izer for the irres­ist­able force of Bells≥, an instru­ment­al quar­tet anchored and driv­en by mon­ster drum­mer Zach Barocas who, full dis­clos­ure, is a friend. I’d like this combo quite a bit even were that not the case, giv­en the volume at which they play; the Park Avenue Armory would be chal­lenged to con­tain its wall of sound. The music is dif­fi­cult to describe: ima­gine if Polyrock ditched its key­board play­er and spent a sum­mer drop­ping mush­rooms and listen­ing to AC/DC and that hits a part of it, maybe. Intricate but remark­ably unfussy, swinging even, the music, played without bar­ri­ers between the band and the audi­ence, was almost lit­er­ally trans­port­ive. Taking out my neces­sary earplugs after­wards, I thought maybe I’d been inside the Large Hadron Collider. 

Robert Fripp and the League of Crafty Guitarists, St. Mark’s Church, Manhattan, May 26 

This account of the show by one of the musi­cians is an evoc­at­ive win­dow into an event that moved its per­formers and spec­tat­ors equally, I reckon. 

Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell, Rubin Museum, Manhattan, June 14 

Christian Wallumrød Enemble, Rubin Museum, Manhattan, June 21

The Rubin Museum of Art, a beau­ti­fully laid-out and friendly haven of Himalayan and Buddhist cul­ture, con­tin­ues to spon­sor an ever-intriguing series of jazz con­certs, and last sum­mer I saw two shows by artists who record for the ECM label. The recit­al by bassist Gary Peacock and pian­ist Marilyn Crispell, tied to their recent excel­lent release Azure, was a mar­vel of instru­ment­al com­mand, music­al “tele­pathy” achieved through years of inter­play, and con­cen­trated med­it­a­tion. The New York debut of the Christian Wallumrød Ensemble, from Norway, show­cased music of a more imme­di­ately archi­tec­tur­al struc­ture, with the music­al inter­link­ings per­formed by some­times unusu­al instru­ment­a­tion (toy piano, Hardanger fiddle, har­moni­um) giv­ing way to impro­visa­tion that was con­stric­ted by design, but nev­er felt restricted. 

The Feelies, Maxwells, Hoboken, New Jersey, July 6

I am sure I’ll be able to see the band play at Brooklyn’s Bell House soon, but I’ll always miss the ritu­al trek to my old old stomp­ing grounds. I wrote about the show here. 

Michael Hurley, City Winery, Manhattan, July 29

The legendary Vermont-based artist and folkie snuck into Manhattan as an open­ing act for Black Prairie, a Decemberists off­shoot. I bought a seat at the end of the bar closest to the stage to wit­ness the white-haired, frail-looking but strong-voiced (rel­at­ively speaking—even in his early years he was nev­er what you’d call a belter) Hurley reel off, with a young, game, and dis­tinctly unshowy band, a batch of his quirky but not par­tic­u­larly silly tunes, sub­jects ran­ging from the lusts of were­wolves to the depra­d­a­tions of Monsanto. It was while he and band­mates were reel­ing, lucid but slightly indol­ent, through the outro of one of his classics—it might have been the tipsy “I Paint A Design”—that I felt I really finally under­stood the idea of “psy­che­del­ic folk.” Anyway, it ruled, and I did not stay for Black Prairie, but I thank them, if indeed it was their idea for Hurley to open. 

Fred Frith, The Stone, Manhattan, Aug 28–30

I had only ori­gin­ally inten­ded to catch a set or two, ended up going to five. I wrote about them here. 

Steve Gunn and band at Pioneer Works. 

Steve Gunn, 75 Dollar Bill, Bobb Trimble’s Flying Spiders, Omar Souleyman, ISSUE Project Room/Pioneer Works, August 31, 2013

This show, a beau­ti­ful indoor/outdoor event in not-quite deep­est Red Hook, was the open­ing event of a ten-year-anniversary series cel­eb­rat­ing ISSUE, a ven­ue and concept foun­ded by the late Suzanne Fiol, who I had been honored to call a friend since 1985. I kind of drif­ted in and out of the show, get­ting caught up in social­iz­ing in the Pioneer Works yard, buy­ing some pretty excel­lent food from a vendor whose name escapes me, so I can­’t speak with a great deal of author­ity on the music—I have almost no memory of Trimble’s ensemble. I dug Gunn’s spin on raga-rock, enjoyed the semi-busking styl­ings of 75 Dollar Bill fea­tur­ing No Wave stal­wart Rick Brown and gui­tar­ist Che Chen, and  boy can Syria’s Omar Souleyman move a crowd. I am gen­er­ally skep­tic­al of events that provide enter­tain­ment for Hipsters And Their Children but I have to admit that the sense of com­munity this day finally acheived was rather moving. 

John Prine, Beacon Theater, Manhattan, September 6

A pair of tick­ets to this was thrown into my lap by my friend and one­time dir­ect­or Preston Miller, and my wife and I were instantly con­ver­ted from dis­tant admirers of Prine to hard­core fans. Roseanne Cash and her hus­band John Levanthal opened, beau­ti­fully. I was par­tic­u­larly impressed by the way Prine and his bassist and gui­tar­ist marched onstage like gun­slingers about to prove a point. I wish Mr. Prine a speedy recov­ery from his recently announced ill­ness, not only because I hope to be able to see him play again. 

John Zorn’s Masada Marathon, Skirball Center, Manhattan, September 15

Advertised as a three-and-a-half hour show, it came out to four-and-a-half, and I would not have missed a minute. About a dozen or so per­muta­tions of per­formers lay­ing out a cor­nu­copia of Zorn-composed themes, in styles ran­ging from klezmer to speed met­al to elec­tric Miles and bey­ond. Too many high­lights to name, but man, what a priv­ilege it was to see Marc Ribot just sit down and spit out the best gui­tar solos you’ve heard all year, or maybe even ever, from twenty feet away. Also a treat to watch Zorn egg on Ikue Mori and her laptop. 

Fred Frith per­form­ing Gravity, Roulette, Brooklyn, September 20

Frith is not one for the nos­tal­gia trip so I was a little sur­prised that he had formed a large band to per­form his 1980 dance record (I, and he, use the most expans­ive form of the term “dance”) Gravity for selec­ted audi­ences around the world. It’s a test­a­ment to his mod­esty and gen­er­os­ity of spir­it that he did not com­pel this band—made up largely of Bay Area pro­gress­ive musi­cians includ­ing what I pre­sume to be a sub­stan­tial num­ber of Frith’s Mills College stu­dents, former and current—to slav­ishly recre­ate the record’s par­tic­u­lar drive. (Gravity, recor­ded with two dif­fer­ent sup­port bands, one per LP side, was a kind of declar­a­tion of inde­pend­ence for a newly envig­or­ated Frith, who had recently depar­ted both the band Henry Cow and his nat­ive England.) On cer­tain songs (“A Career In Real Estate,” and the encore “Killing Time,” which ori­gin­ated with Frith’s proggy power trio Massacre), the excel­lent drum­mer Jordan Glenn’s dis­in­clin­a­tion to lower any kind of son­ic boom was notice­able; these were not neces­sar­ily tunes that wanted the kind of breath­ing room a softer touch provided. But the pre­vail­ing humane­ness of the bandlead­er meant the music got across any­way. It was a par­tic­u­larly poignant gig, as news of the death of Frith’s former band­mate Lindsay Cooper had come down that day; Fred’s voice broke as he ded­ic­ated the show to that great musician. 

Steely Dan, Beacon Theater, Manhattan, October 4

When they reformed  their group for live gigs and later record­ing in the late 1990s, Steely Dan founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had the great good for­tune to be able to draw upon a gen­er­a­tion of musi­cians who had grown up with, and learned to rep­lic­ate, the Dan music of the 1970s. (A not­able excep­tion in the cur­rent band is bassist Freddie Washington, a near-contemporary of Fagen and Becker well-tempered in jazz and funk.) This helps make the combo one of the most reli­able tick­ets around, provided you can afford the tick­et. To see this band whip out “Aja” with a per­fectly bal­anced mix of pre­ci­sion and hard-hitting aban­don remains a won­der, and any night that Keith Carlock is play­ing drums with this par­tic­u­lar ensemble is a night on which the Best Drummer In The World com­pet­i­tion is stiff indeed. The increas­ingly vol­uble Becker takes droll pleas­ure in his self-appointed master-of-ceremonies role. I don’t think I’ve missed them on any of their homet­own Beacon stands, and I’ve always had a blast des­pite being seated close to a dif­fer­ent vari­ety of jerk each time. On this occa­sion my wife and I were obliged to get up from our on-the-aisle orches­tra seats about nine times for a trio of former frat broth­ers going back and forth from the bar and/or the pissoir. I’m not sure if this was the same group whose head alpha pro­claimed out­side the ven­ue, “No, really, ‘Steely Dan’ is the name of the favor­ite dildo of the heroine of some 19^th cen­tury nov­el they got into in college!”

Gary Lucas, “The Edge of Heaven,” BAM Fisher Theater, Brooklyn, October 5

My friend Gary Lucas recor­ded his vis­ion­ary album The Edge of Heaven back in 2001, and because it’s a com­pen­di­um of music he loves from a cul­ture and peri­od he reveres, he revives it fre­quently, but these shows at BAM’s recently opened quasi-cabaret rep­res­ent his most elab­or­ate recent real­iz­a­tion of the mater­i­al in the U.S. Working with his band Gods and Monsters (bassist Ernie Brooks, drum­mer Billy Ficca, saxa­phon­ist and key­board­ist Jason Candler) and Chinese vocal­ists Sally Kwok and Mo Hai Jing, Gary applies his fear­somely kmotty gui­tar pyro­tech­nics to amaz­ing, plaint­ive Asian melod­ies; the band arrange­ments coax the mater­i­al west­ward while nev­er over­whelm­ing it. Sublime. 

American Symphony Orchestra, Elliott Carter, Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, November 17

A bra­cing dose of music­al poly­chro­mat­ics, well-chosen by Leo Botstein. Drawing from all over Carter’s career, a sense of pur­pose­ful play made the pro­gram less severe than it oth­er­wise might have been; a high­light was Anthony McGill’s palp­able sense of delight in hand­ling the soloist’s hurdles of Carter’s Clarinet Concerto. 

15−60−75 The Numbers Band, Bowery Electric, Manhttan, December 5

“Imagine Captain Beefheart crossed with Johnny Cash and your shop teach­er.” This was an old hand at the Bowery Electric bar try­ing to explain Numbers Band founder Robert Kidney to a new­bie. That’s apt, but it’s not the whole story, as this rare New York gig for the Ohio band proved. On the way in a proud older fel­low boas­ted to me, “I used to see these guys when they were the house band at Kent State University,” and that tells a story too. In any event, over the course of a mag­ni­fi­cently incan­tory 90-minute set, singer/guitarist Kidney, his multi-instrumentalist broth­er Jack (“a whole band in him­self,” Chris Butler, once a bass play­er with this unit, and later, well, Chris Butler, observed to me), alto sax play­er and key­board­ist Terry Hynde (who’s just a mon­ster on the horn), bassist Bill Watson and drum­mer Clint Alguire, coiled and uncoiled and lashed out like a single organ­ism: a rattlesnake, maybe. Magnificent, haunt­ing, uncat­egor­iz­able music. 

Keith Jarrett Trio, Carnegie Hall, Manhattan, December 11

I won­der if there was­n’t some selfish motiv­a­tion in my decision to take my mom to this Carnegie Hall show for her 74^th birth­day. My mom had got­ten to know Keith Jarrett a bit when she ran a video store in Washington, New Jersey in the mid-1980s. Somehow it had got­ten out that I was some kind of video crit­ic, and so it tran­spired that I lent Jarrett a couple of laser discs by proxy. He was par­tic­u­larly keen on see­ing Roger Vadim’s Dangerous Liaisons ’60, I sup­pose because Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers (here bassist Bobby Timmons, French sax­ist Barney Wilen, search­ing ten­or man Clifford Jordan, and the spec­tac­u­lar Lee Morgan on trum­pet) appeared in the film. My mom came to enjoy Keith’s music, and when I heard tell of this con­cert at Carnegie cel­eb­rat­ing the 30^th anniversary of the stal­wart “Standards” trio he leads with bassist Gary Peacock and drum­mer Jack De Johnette, I jumped, because I’d nev­er seen the group live before. So I thought. My mom remembered oth­er­wise, and cited a Carnegie Hall show I’d brought her to twenty years pri­or, tak­ing her to din­ner at Trattoria Dell’Arte before­hand. This can­’t be right, I insisted, because surely I’d remem­ber hav­ing seen this band play, and I had no recol­lec­tion of such a thing, although I DO remem­ber tak­ing my mom to that res­taur­ant once. Horrors: what if I saw the trio in a black­out? It would not have neces­sar­ily been out of the ques­tion but I don’t think so. In any event, we agreed to dis­agree and went for­ward, and my mom loved the show, as did I. Jarrett was in a chip­per, chatty mood; his little grand­daugh­ters were see­ing him play for the first time, so he opened with “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town.” Ballads were of course plen­ti­ful; their “It Never Entered My Mind,” based around Red Garland’s treat­ment of the theme in the legendary 1950s Miles Davis Quintet record­ing of the tune, was par­tic­u­larly breath­tak­ing. The group was also down­right funky at time, with an aggres­sion I rarely hear on the record­ings of their con­certs. An encore reck­on­ing with “God Bless The Child” had Jarrett’s play­ing hark­ing back to not just the Scandanavian quar­tet with Jan Garbarek but the Fort Yawuh years with Dewey Redman and Charlie Haden. Peacock and De Johnette were immacu­late through­out. At the micro­phone by the side of the stage Jarrett related some­thing that happened before this sig­ni­fic­ant show; Peacock, show­ing in Jarrett’s estim­a­tion the effect of one espresso too many, implored his band­mates, “Let’s knock ’em dead tonight.” Jarrett countered that he’d be happy just to play one or two good notes. I found it almost inex­press­ibly mov­ing that Peacock, now almost 80 and hav­ing come into prom­in­ence play­ing music (with Albert Ayler and Paul Bley among oth­ers) that in some ways con­sti­tuted a dir­ect chal­lenge to the jazz audi­ence of the time, is still so engaged in that pre­cise way. In any event, his mis­sion was accom­plished that evening. 

Improvising combo Plymouth. From left, Jamie Saft, Gerard Cleaver, Chris Lightcap, Joe Morris, Mary Halvorson (seated).

One and Plymouth, Shapeshifter Lab, Brooklyn, December 13

I saw two-thirds of the RareNoise Records night at this friendly, spa­cious Gowanus ven­ue. Aside from the raw vital­ity of the music, there was a bit of an object les­son in what a dif­fer­ence a drum­mer makes. The first group was One, a trio led by the adven­tur­ous ten­or sax play­er Ivo Perlman. On elec­tric bass was the gui­tar­ist Joe Morris, on drums Balázs Pándi, an avant-garde guy who has been, among oth­er things, the live drum­mer for synth-noise ter­rors Merzbow. Where Perlman’s default mode can be described as a knotty lyr­i­cism, in this ensemble he’s the lead play­er in a power trio, and at times the music did indeed feel more like impro­vised rock than jazz, largely because of the way the fero­cious Pándi was push­ing both his fel­low play­ers. It was pretty cleans­ing. Following their per­form­ance was Plymouth, an ensemble I’m not sure is one-time-only or semi-permanent or what. Now the lineup here seemed like a more rock-oriented one: two gui­tar­ists, a key­board­ist play­ing both acous­tic and elec­tron­ic instru­ments, bass and drums. The gui­tar­ists were Morris and Mary Halvorson, both superb play­ers with dis­tinct per­son­al­it­ies (although Halvorson seemed a trifle intim­id­ated by Morris, which was too bad); the key­board­ist was Jamie Saft, a poly­math of prodi­gious inven­tion, and the bassist, Chris Lightcap, is also an eclecticist who’s worked with The Swell Season and Regina Carter. But because the drum­mer was Gerard Cleaver, who plays jazz in a way that does not encom­pass rock sens­ib­il­it­ies or rock beats—which isn’t to say that he does­n’t play hard, for he can play very hard indeed—the music that came out of the group, for all its psy­che­del­ic col­or­ings, was more “Sun Ship” than “Dark Star.” I had to split before the final group, the aggress­ively bluesy Slobber Pup, which fea­tures Saft, Morris, Pándi and bassist Tim Dahl. But I knew that they would rock.