Live Jazz

May 8 2019

Big reason to be in Lexington: Brian Krock’s liddle at J.Gumbo’s Lex on May 15th

It would be a very good idea to be in Lexington, KY on Wednesday night, May 15th.  Brian Krock’s liddle will be hitting town for a 8pm show in the J.Gumbo’s Lex courtyard, located in the North Limestone corridor.  The latest installment of the J.Gumbo’s Lex music series will see Krock performing music from his sophomore release liddle.

The saxophonist’s debut Big Heart Machine was a car chase movie scene as big band ensemble performance.  By way of introduction, it was a bold statement that caught the attention of critics and fans alike.  Krock’s follow-up brings him back full circle to the core quartet that began it all.  The sophomore release liddle generates the frenetic energy and sudden changes that marked the success of his big band debut.

This iteration of Krock’s liddle ensemble includes guitarist Olli Hirvonen, bassist Marty Kenney, and drummer Steven Crammer.  Lexington, KY has recently been host to a number of all-star outfits from the modern jazz scene.  This is yet one more instance of outstanding music hitting town.

Here’s a track off their new album, liddle…

It’s available for purchase on Bandcamp and Amazon.  I imagine that you will also have the opportunity to purchase music from the merch table on the night of the show.

The show is happening along the NoLi corridor, in the J.Gumbo’s Lex courtyard.  Previously the site of art installations, the expanded courtyard now doubles as a performance area.  It should be a great night to have a drink outside and hear some great music.  Tickets are $10.  If a meal is purchased inside at the restaurant, the ticket price is included with the meal.  In addition, the meal-ticket deal comes with a guarantee for outside seating at the show.  Reservations are highly recommended, as previous shows in the music series have sold out, and the venue is currently reporting that open slots are almost all gone.  But don’t worry, there is additional capacity for show-only attendees.

The show details:

  • Who:  Brian Krock’s liddle
  • Where:  J. Gumbo’s Lex, 808 North Limestone, Lexington, KY 40505
    • Free parking is available right around the corner from the venue at 127 Loudon Avenue, in the parking lot of Grace Baptist Church.
  • When:  May 15th, 2019.
  • Time:  Doors open at 7pm
  • Price:  $10.00, or free with a dinner purchase.

The Brian Krock site:  https://www.briankrock.com/

The J.Gumbo’s Lex site:  https://jgumboslex.com/

If you ‘d like to read more about the band and their music, check out Water Tunis’s interview with Brian Krock for UnderMain.

My write-up of Krock’s liddle has been published The Bandcamp Daily.  It was included in my latest Best Jazz on Bandcamp recommendations column.  In the meantime, here’s a write-up of his big band debut, Big Heart Machine.  You should definitely go scoop that one up.  It’s pretty amazing.

And here’s a couple live performance videos, the first at NYC’s Cornelia Street Cafe…

… And the second at Freddy’s Bar in Brooklyn.

By • Announcement - Music, Jazz in Kentucky, Jazz Recommendations - 2018, Live Jazz • 0 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Apr 30 2019

Your Tuesday night plans suck if they don’t include catching The Chicago Plan at the Niles Gallery

 

There’s no letup with the great music coming through Lexington, KY in 2019.  Tomorrow night, it’s an excellent double bill with The Chicago Plan and Keefe Jackson‘s quartet both performing at The Niles Gallery on the UK campus.

The Chicago Plan is a quartet of trombonist Steve Swell, saxophonist Gebhard Ullmann, percussionist Michael Zerang and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm (who also adds a dose of electronics).  This’ll be the kind of music that turns jazz on its head, but even flipped upside down, there’s a clear view of a familiar sound.  It might not swing like your classic jazz albums, and the bounce of its bop will take some sharp, unexpected angles and spins, but the quartet plays with the energy and enthusiasm and a nod to the blues that makes all the different sounding music not so different after all.

Here’s a track from their 2016 self-titled release (on Clean Feed Records).

You can purchase the album at the Clean Feed Records store.  Amazon, too.

And last year, this site gave a warm reception to another album from the trombonist Steve Swell, but with a slightly different kind of sound.  His 2018 release Music for Six Musicians: Hommage à Olivier Messiaen is ten shades of fascinating.

Also performing this night is the quartet of multi-reedists Keefe Jackson and Christoph Erb, bassist Jason Roebke and percussionist Tim Barnes.  Jackson has contributed to a bunch of excellent recordings receiving praise on this site (and elsewhere).  While many of the albums representing Keefe’s body of work fall under the general category of post-bop, what he and his compatriots represent is the boundless creativity emblematic of the modern scene.  This show could pretty much sound like anything.

This is the 15-year anniversary, and Event #212, of Ross Compton’s Outside the Spotlight series.  Ross is one of those local music scene heroes who devotes a ton of sweat work bringing great music to his community.  There have been a ridiculous wealth of talent from the experimental and jazz pool that has performed in Lexington because of Ross’s efforts.  And most of those shows, like this one, is free to the public.

The show details:

When:  Tuesday, April 30th, 2019 at 7:00pm

Where:  Niles Gallery (inside the UK Fine Arts Library), 160 Patterson Dr, Lexington, KY 40506

It’s a free show.

The Facebook Event page-> LINK

The Chicago Plan’s site-> LINK

Keefe Jackson’s site-> LINK

And a shout-out of thanks to the local student-run radio station 88.1 FM WRFL for their part in helping bring this music to town.

By • Jazz in Kentucky, Live Jazz • 0 • Tags: , , , , ,

Apr 25 2019

Thumbscrew at Big Ears Festival 2019: This is really happening

 

I adore Thumbscrew‘s 2018 double release Ours and Theirs.  It earned this site’s Best of 2018 #4 slot, and garnered a mention in my Best Bandcamp Jazz in 2018 column.  The trio of guitarist Mary Halvorson, bassist Michael Formanek and drummer Tomas Fujiwara possess a cryptic sound, something that incorporates each musician’s distinct individual form of expression that, also, somehow, almost unexpectedly, meshes perfectly into a single, crisp perspective.  And it’s an equation whose success proves out whether they’re composing their own odd sonic machinations or covering works from jazz legends of a wayback era.  It’s quite magical.

And seeing it happen live…?  It was surreal.

Thumbscrew’s Saturday afternoon show at The Standard was pretty straight-forward.  The trio nested themselves on the stage behind their music stands and just played along to whatever was written down in front of them.  Held up to the electricity flowing between musicians and audience from the Fire! trio on that same stage the night before, this performance was tame by comparison.  But just seeing the trio recreate the music of Ours and Theirs in the moment was like peeking behind the face of the universe at the clockwork mechanisms within.  It was riveting.  There is something almost alien about Thumbscrew’s sound, even when it radiates an unmissable familiarity, that to witness the human beings responsible for it… and to see proof that, yes, it’s three beating hearts and three calculating minds that set that strange and alluring music in motion, it hit me with the sensation of The Big Reveal.

Some or all of that might not make any sense.  Obviously I never doubted the music of Ours and Theirs was created by human beings.  But so much of our interface with the music we connect with on a daily basis is through the impersonal mediums of digital files and CDs and vinyl, and it’s not difficult to lose sight of the humanity behind it all.  This sort of detachment is further compounded by the personalization triggered by and in each of us, as we attach meaning and imagery and consequence to everything we hear as part of the process of making the music a part of who we are.  It’s why seeing this music live is so invaluable.  Because on top of the wonderful surprises and fascinating deviations that inevitably result from a live performance, and the sensory mainline of experiencing the music live and feeling it as much as hearing it… there’s also the communal nature of the concert, of reconnecting the music to the artists creating it while simultaneously tethering that connection to all of the people in the audience doing the exact same thing at the exact same time.

And we take that back home with us.  That sense of community and connection are revived when next listen to that music again on our stereos, alone and in the privacy of our homes, but not quite the solitary act it once was.

The music of Thumbscrew is no less strange and enchanting than when first I heard it, but having seen and heard it in Knoxville at the Big Ears Festival 2019, that magic resonates on a much more human level than it once did.

Be sure to check out Thumbscrew’s excellent 2018 double release Ours and Theirs, released on Cuneiform Records.

I wrote about this album for The Bandcamp Daily.

Available at: (Ours) Bandcamp | Amazon and (Theirs) Bandcamp | Amazon

By • Live Jazz, Other Writing • 0 • Tags: , , , , , , ,

Apr 22 2019

Fire! at Big Ears Festival 2019: Way down in your bones

 

I’ve enjoyed some Brötzmann recordings in my time.  Hell, the discovery continues into the present day.  But I never truly appreciated the man’s artistry or the absolutely power of his sonic delivery until I saw him live.  It occurred in a small church in Lexington, KY, out on North Limestone and years before that neighborhood became the darling of the real estate industry.  Peter Brötzmann teamed up with vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, and the way the icy tones of that percussion clashed and melted into the searing heat of Brötzmann’s saxophone was like nothing I’d experienced before.  There was an immediacy to his sound that the recorded medium never could accurately relay in its totality.  But it was revelatory of more than just pure power.  Hearing this music live also illuminated how nimble Brötzmann could be, even on an instrument like bass clarinet, whose sound typically shines as displays of heavy soul, not delicate turns of phrase.  That being said, all of that still came secondary to Brötzmann’s ability to brutalize the laws of physics with his saxophone, like he was ripping apart reality at the seams or threatening to obliterate the walls and bring the whole building crashing down.

These thoughts were bouncing around in my head as I watched Fire! perform at The Standard on Friday night.  This was my first opportunity to see them live.  The raw strength and driving intensity displayed by the trio didn’t come as a surprise.  I have a far greater familiarity with the music of Mats Gustaffson and his various Fire! ensembles than I do Brötzmann.  Fire! Orchestra is a fixture of my listening routine.  I knew what I was getting into when the trio of saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, bassist Johan Berthling and drummer Andreas Werliin took the stage at midnight.  But the live setting meant I would feel the music, that it would pound away at my heart at the same time it was bleeding into my ears.  It’s an entirely different experience.  And it’s about more than the trio’s devastating power.  At times, they enter fugue-like states when the music grows more moody than manic.  Their sonic barrage can take on a trance-like quality, a high-intensity hypnosis where volatility becomes the catalyst of expectation and resolution.  But, yeah, the best part is feeling when the music shakes the earth beneath the feet.  And a packed house at The Standard on Friday night got shook that way, very late into the night.

Fire! released a new album last year.  The Hands was a return to the core sound that eventually expanded into their Fire! Orchestra recordings, and it was what they brought to the stage at the stroke of midnight.  The Standard is actually a very bright and airy type of venue, one where the sunlight can lead to some pretty opportune ambiance depending on what kind of event is going on.  But the festival had no difficulty retrofitting the sonic intensity of Fire! into the space.  They partitioned off one section and gave the stage a deliciously claustrophobic feel, making it so that no matter where you stood, the trio’s sonic blows could reach out and smack you.  The lights sliced through the air, leading to some strategizing on the best place to stand so they didn’t fry your pupils.  Gustafsson, Berthling and Werliin began with a display of patience, slowly building up to the moment when they’d explode into flight.  And, eventually, after some electronic effects from Gustafsson ended and his saxophone began, they unleashed everything they had inside.  It was as thrilling as their trio recording promised, but, damn, you could feel it in your bones.

This trio’s music gets slotted in the Jazz category for any number of reasons, but, seriously, for any reason you go see a rock concert, those same reasons apply to the Fire! trio.  Their show in Knoxville was Exhibit A.

If you’re not familiar with the Fire! Orchestra recordings, get started now.  2013’s Exit and 2014’s Enter are birds-of-a-feather recordings, with the former being a live performance recording and the latter a studio session.

Enter was also this site’s 2014 Album of the Year.

By • Live Jazz • 0 • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Apr 19 2019

A Big Ears Festival 2019 interlude: More than just fuel

 

Big Ears Festival is pretty much entirely a downtown thing.  By most measures, it’s a walking distance event.  And while a bit of pre-trip research revealed some pretty neat places to eat, drink and hang that were located in the neighborhoods outside of the city center, if you’re going to be at the festival and try to see as many shows as you can pack into a day, it’s a pretty easy decision to stay right in downtown and never leave.  Let’s talk about some places I ate, because, damn, there were some very fun places I took a seat in between all of the shows.

And that’s not easy, by the way.  The Big Ears Festival performances were packed in pretty tight.  With only one exception, all of the places I ate at were joints I passed by as I walked over to a show venue and made a note to stop back along the way and grab a meal.  This really isn’t an ideal decision making approach, but it was all I had. And I either got very lucky or it’s difficult to find a bad place in downtown Knoxville to eat, because I had some great food in some very fun and welcoming spots.

Kaizen was the standout meal of my trip.  I had the good fortune of passing by there as I scrambled over to see Ralph Towner perform at a nearby church.  The lighting and the outdoor patio spoke to the way I’m wired, and a quick glance at the menu posted outside the door promised the kind of food that typically floats my boat.  I made the decision right then to stop back for dinner as soon as Towner was done bringing heaven down to earth.  I’m so glad I did.  Kaizen has an Asian-inspired menu.  Their various rice and noodle bowls and steamed buns were the highlights of that menu.  I ordered two items.  One was the oyster fried rice, a bowl of goodness filled with delicately fried oysters, kimchi, fried egg, tamarind-chile syrup, fried shallots and fresh herbs.  It had that perfect balance of being a filling dish without it making me leave feeling heavy.  Those fried oysters were delightful.  The breading delivered a nice crunch, but it was as light on the palette as anything else in the dish.  The house-made kimchi was amazing.

I have a complicated relationship with kimchi. I don’t really like it that much.  But I associate it with these big bowls of stew I’d get at the Joong Boo Market‘s dive-y little snack shop in the back of their grocery store.  They serve these huge bowls of stew with veggies and seafood, and they are delicious and will fight off all the maladies one can get from a typical Chicago winter.  Those bowls were served with a couple small sides… of which kimchi was one.  I’d eat the damn stuff even though it tasted weird, like the garnish equivalent of sour patch kids candy, because I knew if I ate everything that place served me, my body would feel healthy as it ever did.  So, I look at kimchi as taking my medicine.  That might not make any sense to you, and, honestly, I wouldn’t fault you your confusion.  But that’s where we find ourselves.

The thing of it is, it seems like a lot of restaurants these days are having a field day toying with kimchi as a component of a dish, and so it’s been fun to keep encountering it in new contexts.  The house-made kimchi at Kaizen shook my world.  It was arguably the best kimchi I’d ever had.  And it made this impression as part of a dinner that was hitting me on all cylinders.

The steamed buns were the other item I had that evening at Kaizen, and they were as fun as they were delicious.  I sometimes shy away from those steamed bun dishes because too often it’s more stick than steam, which I find an unpleasant texture.  Thankfully, Kaizen got it right.  And much like the breading on the fried oysters, these were seriously light in the best way.  I chose two of them:  The “Thai Sausage,” with Chiang Mai sausage, peanut sauce, herbs, and pickled ginger, and the “Eggplant Bun,” with crispy fried eggplant, hoisin sauce, citrus mayo, cilantro and scallions.  Cheers to the waitperson who recommended the eggplant.  There were so many choices on the menu speaking to me, and I was able to narrow it down to a few, but I was still indecisive.  Y’see, I know the things I like and I can recognize the things that interest me, but then there’s an additional consideration when on the road… there’s the likelihood I might never be back to that particular town again, and so what I really want to order is the thing that I don’t want to miss… the dish that the restaurant does special and unlike any other place.  The eggplant steamed bun was it.  It’s so nice to be able to ask the waitperson which item on the menu would I be doing myself a disservice if I didn’t try, and for them to know right away which choice to make.  The eggplant was outstanding.

Speaking of waitstaff and personnel, that same person also recommended the Dogfish SeaQuench Ale to go with that meal, and damn that was an excellent recommendation.  I told him what I was looking for, and he delivered it.  I’m also really grateful for Kaizen getting me a seat out on that patio.  It’s not a large place.  The interior has a small bar people can eat at, ideal for solo diners like myself, plus seats packed in tight.  It’s intimate, and doesn’t feel crowded.  Well, it was a very busy night, and they had a running wait list, and even though I was riding solo, instead of making me sit at the bar (which would’ve been understandable), they sat me a table outside on that patio… the spot that, visually, drew me in as I passed by it on the way to see the Towner show.  I’m very aware they could’ve sat me at that bar and flipped the patio table that much quicker by seating a couple there instead.  That they accommodated me like that was appreciated and also representative of my entire Kaizen experience.

It’s normal to romanticize what it might be like to live in a city or town you’re visiting for a short while.  It’s the kind of daydreaming that’s a fun exercise on its own merits, but it’s so easy a practice to slip into when your life has taken you outside its normal routines and surroundings.  I do that kind of thing all the time.  If I were to move to Knoxville, Tennessee, one reason for that change would be so I could eat at Kaizen whenever I desired (aka all the time).  It’s that good, and if you’re ever in downtown Knoxville and need a place to eat, that’s where you should go.  It’s definitely a reason for me to plan a return trip to Knoxville.

Speaking of kimchi, Kaizen wasn’t my only run-in with that oddly compelling vegetable.  For lunch on Saturday, I stopped at Curious Dog Hot Dogs & Sandwiches… not far from Mill & Mine (where I would see Spiritualized, Sons of Kemet and Makaya McCraven before the weekend was over) and down by the railroad tracks.  It has a classic lunch spot look to it… brick everywhere, wood tables and chairs, wall coolers filled with soft drinks and beer, and chalkboards colorfully listing out the menu in detail.

A hotdog and fries and beer just sounded good to me right then, and something about a place that looks like a deli has such a comforting effect on me… well, I grabbed a seat.  I went with the Curious dog.  I had to go with their classic.  Plus, the potato salad, bacon and house sauce just sounded good.  I don’t regret it.  That being said, they did have a hotdog that had kimchi on it, and I’m gonna have to try that one next time I’m in Knoxville.  There will always be a part of me that regrets not getting it otherwise.  The dog and fries and beer were exactly what I needed before heading up the street to see Thumbscrew at The Standard.

Saturday morning breakfast was at a solid breakfast joint in the Old Town neighborhood.

Old Town actually borders downtown, and you really don’t notice leaving one and entering the other.  Brick lined streets and a mix of modern and old architecture frame winding streets.  OliBea was along one of those streets.

OliBea is a sunny place, and plenty welcoming.  I had the Carnita Tostada, with confit cheshire pork shoulder, frijoles, queso fresco, eggs and salsa verde.  It made my Friday night journey of late night music and drinking inconsequential on my body’s well-being.  I chatted with a friendly guy about the town, the festival and some of the music we’d seen and just music in general.  I answered his request for some jazz recommendations, and one of the names I gave was Mary Halvorson.  Not long after, I finished my meal and made my exit, just to realize that the guitarist was seated at the table directly behind me.  Several people have since commented that this was an almost cliché type of Big Ears occurrence.  I am glad to have made a contribution to keeping that an enduring festival experience.

Sunday morning breakfast was at Tupelo Honey Cafe.  I have no complaints about the food.  I had the Old Skool Breakfast Bowl of two sunny-side up eggs, potato cracklins, salsa verde, black-eyed peas, cheddar cheese, bacon & sausage crumbles, and goat cheese grits.  It sounded like what I’d need after a couple late nights of music and drinking.  I was feeling a bit wore out by this time. The breakfast was very good.  Naturally, I was happy that I liked everything, but what I came here for was a bloody mary and a seat at a patio table.  The restaurant is located in Market Square, just off the main drag of downtown.  Market Square is pedestrian only, a wide thoroughfare of brick and trees and archways and birds fluttering happily about eating the offerings from any one of the restaurants and diners and bars that lined this street.  I walked up and down the stretch several times in between shows, and I’d marked out a couple spots I might like to plant myself on Sunday at the end of the long weekend.

Even with the crowds, there’s something quite serene about this section of downtown… as if the geography recognizes the need to be calm after the nighttime electricity of the area has faded away with the appearance of sunlight.  In any event, some decent food was the bonus for a bloody mary on that patio on that morning.

As I made my way over to the Tennessee Theatre to see Nik Bartch’s Ronin, I was right as rain.

By • Live Jazz, Other Writing • 0 • Tags: , , , , , ,

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