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When Festivals Collide and Freethinkers Meet
By default and by design, there is no firm center of avant-garde jazz culture. Its music can be freely improvised or densely plotted, ecstatic or brooding, concussive or tranquil. So on some level it was fitting that an accident of timing brought an overlap of the New Languages Festival, in its fifth year, and the Clean Feed Fest, in its fourth. Both present a cavalcade of independent-minded artists, but neither makes any comprehensive claims. Skip to next paragraph Enlarge This Image Rahav Segev for The New York Times Avram Fefer led a trio at the Connelly Theater on the Lower East Side on Friday as part of the Clean Feed Fest, which overlapped with the New Languages Festival at McCarren Hall in Brooklyn. Blog ArtsBeat The latest on the arts, coverage of live events, critical reviews, multimedia extravaganzas and much more. Join the discussion. More Arts News The Clean Feed Fest took place this year at the Connelly Theater, an acoustically favorable hundred-seat auditorium in the far East Village. Running from last Wednesday through Sunday, it had a lineup consisting entirely of groups (and in one case a solo improviser) from the roster of the prolific Portuguese record label Clean Feed. On Friday night the closing set belonged to the saxophonist Avram Fefer, who has a ruggedly appealing new album, “Ritual,” with Eric Revis on bass and Chad Taylor on drums. The same working trio had been scheduled to perform, but Mr. Fefer took the stage instead with the bassist Michael Bisio and the drummer Reggie Nicholson. Their opener was “Testament,” the same prayerful piece that begins the album, with a jangling motif evocative of Ornette Coleman. Mr. Fefer has a forceful, astringent sound on alto and a robustly husky voice on tenor, and here he enlisted both instruments to strong effect. Playing alto on “Testament” and “Club Foot,” a vamp-based tune, he strung his notes together in silvery arcs. His tenor work on “Ripple,” a free-jazz processional, and “Shepp in Wolves’ Clothing,” named after the firebrand saxophonist Archie Shepp, was weightier and more measured. His rapport with the other players — especially Mr. Bisio, whose roomy tone and percussive attack were invigorating — felt nakedly direct.
(Photo by Rahav Segev for The New York Times)
Wednesday, september 16th
8:00 – Luis Lopes / Daniel Levin / Reuben Radding
Luis Lopes – guitar
Daniel Levin – cello
Reuben Radding – double bass
8:00 – Luis Lopes / Daniel Levin / Reuben Radding
Luis Lopes – guitar
Daniel Levin – cello
Reuben Radding – double bass
9:30 – Harris Eisenstadt “Canada Day”
Nate Wooley – trumpet
Ellery Eskelin – tenor saxophone
Chris Dingman – vibraphone
Eivind Opsvik – double bass
Harris Eisenstadt – drums, compositions
Thursday, september 17th
8:00 – John O’Gallagher Trio “Dirty Hands”
John O’Gallagher – alto saxophone
Masa Kamaguchi – double bass
Jeff Williams – drums
9:30 – Daniel Levin Quartet “Live at Roulette”
Daniel Levin – cello
Matt Moran – vibraphone
Peter Bitenc– double bass
Nate Wooley – trumpet
Friday, september 18th
8:00 – Julio Resende Group
Julio Resende – piano
Dave Ambrosio – double bass
Joel Silva – drums
9:30 – Jorrit Dijkstra Solo
Jorrit Djikstra – alto saxophone, lyricon, electronics
10:30 – Avram Fefer Trio “Ritual”
Avram Fefer – tenor and alto saxophones, clarinet
Eric Revis – double bass
Chad Taylor – drums
Saturday, september 19th – Co-sponsored by the Festival of New Trumpet Music (FONT)
8:00 – Kirk Knuffke Quartet “Big Wig”
Kirk Knuffke – trumpet
Brian Drye – trombone
Reuben Radding – double bass
Jeff Davis – drums
9:30 – Darren Johnston “The Edge of the Forest”
Darren Johnston – trumpet
Sheldon Brown – tenor
Oscar Noriega – clarinet and bass clarinet
Trevor Dunn – double bass
Ches Smith – drums
Sunday, september 20th
8:00 – Charles Rumback Quartet “Two Kinds of Art Thieves”
Charles Rumback – drums
Jason Ajemian – bass
Joshua Sclar – tenor saxophone
Greg Ward – alto saxophone
9:30 – Fight the Big Bull “All is Gladness in the Kingdom”
Steven Bernstein – trumpet
Bob Miller – trumpet
Bryan Hooten – trombone
Reggie Pace – trombone
Jason Scott – tenor saxophone, clarinet
John Lilley – tenor saxophone
Matthew White – guitar, tunes
Cameron Ralston – bass
Brian Jones – percussion
Pinson Chanselle – trap set
Tickets at the door
$15,00 for two sets
Clean Feed Fest NY IV at Cornelia Connelly Center
(220 East 4th street, Lower East Side)
Critic’s Choice Recommended The List (Music) All AgesCharles Rumback Quartet
When: Sat., Aug. 15, 10 p.m.
Phone: heavengallery.com
Price: Donation requested
An exceptional musician with a knack for adapting selflessly to the needs of a wide variety of bands, drummer Charles Rumback plays in a slew of local jazz and rock combos, including the Horse’s Ha, Via Tania, L’altra, Colorlist, and Leaves. He favors understatement, devoting himself to supporting his partners with steady rhythm and shifting color. He’s finally releasing his first recording as a leader, the forthcoming trio date Two Kinds of Art Thieves (Clean Feed), and though he’s responsible for all the composed material and is clearly directing the proceedings from behind his kit—even on the carefully measured group improvisations that make up about a third of the album—he never hogs the spotlight. Fortunately saxophonists Greg Ward and Joshua Sclar seem to pick up on Rumback’s humility, and don’t simply flatten him with unrestrained blowing. They often improvise simultaneously, and because there’s usually no bassist (former Chicagoan Jason Ajemian guests on just two tracks), they have a lot of freedom to experiment harmonically. But instead of sounding like they’re working out some sort of eggheaded music-theory exercise, they seem to be pair dancing, meticulously shadowing and caressing each other’s tuneful postbop gestures—and the drummer holds everything together, content to play precisely what’s needed and no more. For this show Rumback will be joined by Sclar, bass clarinetist Jason Stein, and bassist Matt Lux.
When: Sat., Aug. 15, 10 p.m.
Phone: heavengallery.com
Price: Donation requested
An exceptional musician with a knack for adapting selflessly to the needs of a wide variety of bands, drummer Charles Rumback plays in a slew of local jazz and rock combos, including the Horse’s Ha, Via Tania, L’altra, Colorlist, and Leaves. He favors understatement, devoting himself to supporting his partners with steady rhythm and shifting color. He’s finally releasing his first recording as a leader, the forthcoming trio date Two Kinds of Art Thieves (Clean Feed), and though he’s responsible for all the composed material and is clearly directing the proceedings from behind his kit—even on the carefully measured group improvisations that make up about a third of the album—he never hogs the spotlight. Fortunately saxophonists Greg Ward and Joshua Sclar seem to pick up on Rumback’s humility, and don’t simply flatten him with unrestrained blowing. They often improvise simultaneously, and because there’s usually no bassist (former Chicagoan Jason Ajemian guests on just two tracks), they have a lot of freedom to experiment harmonically. But instead of sounding like they’re working out some sort of eggheaded music-theory exercise, they seem to be pair dancing, meticulously shadowing and caressing each other’s tuneful postbop gestures—and the drummer holds everything together, content to play precisely what’s needed and no more. For this show Rumback will be joined by Sclar, bass clarinetist Jason Stein, and bassist Matt Lux.
DARREN JOHNSTON On Wednesday, Bay Area trumpeter Darren Johnston will lead a band of locals through tunes from his swell new album, The Edge of the Forest (Clean Feed). Tonight he’ll demonstrate his versatility in a freely improvised set with bassist Jason Roebke and Nate McBride. They’ll play first, followed by Mind vs. Target, aka guitarist Shane Perlowin, bassist Joe Burkett, and drummer Michael Libramento. 10 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, 773-935-2118, donation requested. —Bill Meyer
wednesday12 DARREN JOHNSTON Darren Johnston is a consummately versatile trumpeter who sounds just as comfortable wrapping grainy ribbons of sound around a funk groove as he does steering perfectly pitched bop phrases through a landscape of swing or Latin beats. He’s recorded New Orleans-style parade music and Angolan protest songs with the United Brassworkers Front and free improvisations with Fred Frith and Larry Ochs, but it’s his original compositions, which both challenge and reward his sidemen with their elaborate rhythmic and harmonic settings, that make his new album, The Edge of the Forest (Clean Feed), so great. On “Broken,” Johnston uses the aforementioned combination of coarse blowing and heavy grooves to set up a series of thrilling contrapuntal exchanges with clarinetist Ben Goldberg and tenor saxophonist Sheldon Brown, then resolves with a fearsomely intricate but immaculately executed unison coda. Tonight he’ll lead four local players—trombonist Jeb Bishop, vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz, bassist Nate McBride, and drummer Frank Rosaly—through two sets that will include material from The Edge of the Forest. McBride will DJ before and after. See also
Critic’s Choice Recommended The List (Music)
Herculaneum (CF 140)
When: Sun., July 12, 10 p.m.
Phone: 773-935-2118
Price: donation requested
Solid, consistent connections between Chicago’s indie-rock and free-jazz communities have existed for nearly two decades now, and no group embodies them like Herculaneum, a jazz band led by drummer Dylan Ryan—whose other projects include Icy Demons, Bronze, and Michael Columbia. Saxophonist Dave McDonnell, Ryan’s bandmate in Michael Columbia, also cofounded Bablicon; flutist and reedist Nate Lepine, a recent addition to the group, has played for Cursive, Manishevitz, and Head of Femur, among others. But they’re not just farting around with jazz when they don’t have rock shows to play, and they prove it with the superb new Herculaneum III (Clean Feed). Ryan’s tunes have never been more elegant, and his resourceful arrangements make the band sound much larger than it is—which is saying something, since the current lineup is a sextet, rounded out by trombonist Nick Broste, trumpeter Patrick Newbery, and bassist Greg Danek. The four front-line players all make excellent use of their solo space—particularly the hot-blowing McDonnell, who’s something of a wild card, and Broste, who’s got a fat tone, a lyrical style, and a broad knowledge of the instrument’s history in jazz. But just as rewarding (and more impressive) is the dense ensemble writing, which not only helps propel the soloists but gives each piece a multifaceted richness, with different sections in the same tune drawing on traditions as disparate as postbop and contemporary classical.
Le Sud-des-Alpes balayé par des airs de légèreté Venu tout droit de Berlin, le Peter Van Huffel & Sophie Tassignon Group a présenté son CD vendredi soir. Le Peter Van Huffel & Sophie Tassignon Group. (Photo: J.-C. Hernandez)Judicieusement appelé «Hufflignon», il a laissé muette d’admiration une assistance composée en majorité de musiciens. Pas étonnant au vu de la qualité musicale offerte par ce quartet composé du facétieux tromboniste suisse Samuel Blaser, du fameux contrebassiste new-yorkais Michael Bates et de ses deux talentueux piliers que sont le saxophoniste canadien Peter Van Huffel et la vocaliste belge Sophie Tassignon. Les compositions des leaders étaient souvent inspirées par le thème de la nature. Telle un ruisseau limpide, la voix printanière et pénétrante de Sophie Tassignon menait les splendides mélodies et improvisations des instrumentistes dans un style jazz baroque. Le point culminant a été une version magistrale du «Cum Dederit», d’Antonio Vivaldi. Grâce à cette formation très complice et originale, un vent de légèreté et de liberté a soufflé sur le Sud-des-Alpes de l’AMR.
http://www.20min.ch/ro/sortir/nightfever/story/23209421
Photo by Rodrigo Amado
November 25th - Apolo, Barcelona, Spain 21:30h
November 26th - San Juan Evangelista, Madrid, Spain 21:00h
November 27th – CCC Caldas da Raínha, Portugal 21:30
November 28th – Culturgest, Lisbon, Portugal 21:30
November 29th – CAP Portalegre, Portugal 21:30
November 30th – Casa da Música, Porto, Portugal 22:00
Tour promtoted by Arco Y Flecha and Clean Feed.
Special thanks to Olga Abalos.
Clean Feed Festival
The Living Theatre
September 19-24, 2008
Last year, the Clean Feed festival was housed at The Cornelia Street Cafe, but for 2008’s six-day stretch this crucial Portuguese label has now moved to the slightly more formal environs of The Living Theatre in the Lower East Side. It was local beatnik poet Steve Dalachinsky who connected label with space, so he gets to emcee each night, encouraging folks to purchase discs, gobble olives and consume wine that just happens to originate from Portugal itself. Every night of the festival seems to bring a new piece of scaffolding to the surroundings, as set construction evolves for the next Living Theatre production. The stage lighting is quirky, too. Glowing washes bloom at seemingly inappropriate moments, then are quelled into dimness. After a few nights, this unpredictability takes on a strange charm.
Although stretching out its tentacles from Lisbon, Clean Feed has a strikingly complete understanding of the New York scene, or even, more specifically, the Brooklyn scene. This is underlined by the fact that they can organise a festival that almost exclusively features local combos, most of them throwing out an extreme degree of creative heat. Each evening features a double bill of acts…
Friday 19th: Normally, the opening set by the Drunk Butterfly trio (this is the name of their debut disc) would be a sufficient to produce a warm glow, but reedsman Mark Whitecage, bassist Adam Lane and drummer Lou Grassi end up being easily transcended by the Michael Dessen Trio. This Californian trombonist is just beginning to make his mark, and recently released Between Shadow And Space on Clean Feed. The wonders of that record are thankfully translated to the live stage, with Dessen utilising laptop alterations, but customarily in a subtle manner, organically re-curving his output. This set relishes extreme contrasts between near-silence and dense activity, moving from meditation to mash-up, without any sense of inappropriate behaviour.
Saturday 20th: Brooklyn tenorman Stephen Gauci’s Basso Continuo involves the central concept of twinned basses (Ken Filiano, Mike Bisio) and no drums, with the leader and trumpeter Nate Wooley building the front firing line. Somehow, the delicacy of the quartet’s interactions doesn’t sound as enveloping as on last year’s Ndidhyasana album, particularly as the basses sound quite thinly arrayed within the Theatre’s hard environs. The horns dominate, with their stringent chatter, and the sonic confrontations within the band tend to have a negative effect on the communal result. Fortunately, Gauci helps matters along by being in a particularly concentrated state, throwing himself completely into the music. There’s a different manifestation of power during Dual Identity’s set. These guys are even harder, and before long Damion Reid’s drumming style begins to batter on the cranium, trebly, cutting and militarily insistent. Around halfway though the set, the entire combo locks into a convoluted groove, and co-leader alto saxophonists Steve Lehman and Rudresh Mahanthappa begin a spiralling ascent, attempting to surmount each other’s solos in a totally gripping fashion. This is funk complexity in the post Prime Time anti-tradition.
Sunday 21st: This is the night that FONT Music and Clean Feed unite, with a pair of trumpeters to the fore. The Empty Cage Quartet, from Los Angeles, features Chris Tiner (flugelhorn), joined by reedsman Jason Mears, bassist Ivan Johnson and drummer Paul Kikuchi. Their set is adequate, but is topped by that of Dallas trumpeter Dennis Gonzalez and Brooklyn bassman Rachlim Ausar-Sahu, who necessarily opt for a spacious, thoughtful dialogue, peppered with some of the festival’s most mainstream moments. Effectively, this is the only unremarkable evening in Clean Feed’s kinetic run.
Wednesday 24th: Bassist Sean Conly’s Re:Action begin the evening in striking fashion boasting not only the fine horn thrust of trombonist Joe Fielder and saxophonist Michael Attias, the latter hefting his baritone with Herculean authority. All this, and their drummer is Pheeroan akLaff..! The only way to follow this combo is with the best presentation of this year’s festival, delivered by the mighty Hellbent, a newish quartet led by tenorman Michael Blake. He has a dream line-up convened to play a brilliant set of compositions, employing an instrumentation which is hardly typical in the jazz sphere: Marcus Rojas (tuba), Charlie Burnham (violin) and Grant Calvin Weston (drums). This is a team of fierce individualists, embracing funk and abstraction, employing tuneful riff-themes and disemboweling solo tactics. There’s an inspired confidence to their playing that lends the illusion of a casual engagement with the material. Burnham seethes with amplified power, stroking with liquid friction across his strings. Rojas is a buffeting presence, wobbling with great agility. Weston releases a storm of energy, completely uninhibited in his quest for the ultimate drum explosion. Clean Feed’s Pedro Costa admits that he’s not yet familiar with Hellbent, but it must be a certainty that there’ll be an album on the label’s prolific release schedules in the very near future.
http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=31004
Martin Longley pulls together highlights from the recent NYC fest thrown by Lisbon’s forward-looking jazz label, Clean Feed.
Lisbon’s Clean Feed label is a lifeline for jazz players who dangle at the end of the music’s exploratory end, its catalogue stuffed with works by just about every key exponent of free improvisation, controlled improvisation or pre-meditated composition that sounds akin to the act of improvisation. Not so many of the label’s acts are actually Portuguese, and most hail from the US Of America, continuing the venerable tradition of hardcore Stateside music often being nurtured more in Europe, from blues to abstract crunching. Clean Feed’s roster can boast reedsmen Anthony Braxton, Charles Gayle, Steve Lehman and Evan Parker (the latter from the UK), and drummer Paal Nilssen-Love (a Norwegian). A very prolific catalogue has been built up since they began in 2001.
The Cornelia Street Café played host to a four-night mini-fest, featuring three combos on most nights. This Greenwich Village joint has been running for three decades: upstairs a lively three-roomed eatery, downstairs a den of underground iniquity, a long sphincter-walled room, pulsing with amber candlelight, with a tiny stage lurking right down the far end. It’s a fine place to listen, acoustically channelling music within an intimately cosseting tunnel. The Café also hosts a regular poetry evening, the Pink Pony, which has been running for six years, and there are regular platforms for blues and singer-songwriter fare…
Plenty of violins on the Friday night. Mat Manieri was bowing and plucking as a third of Russ Lossing’s Metal Rat, opening the evening with some exceedingly sparse, highly sensitive combinations. New York pianist Lossing released his Metal Rat disc at the year’s beginning. Sean Conly is tonight’s bassist. Together they negotiate delicate, maze-like themes, giving each other plenty of pauses, and relishing the sound of their own spaces. It’s all highly structured, but doesn’t sound overly cerebral. There’ll be another Rat band on tomorrow night, the first sub-theme of the festivities…
The next Friday band boasts two violinists, a second sub-theme, with Tanya Kalmanovich and Christian Howes expanding Indian percussionist Ravish Momin’s usual Trio Tarana to a four-piece. The other player is oud-man Brandon Terzic. Jazz is not surprisingly taken on a journey through the Middle East, to the Indian subcontinent, with Terzic’s strings resonating with a beautifully ringing natural reverb, and Momin playing with a passionate intensity, tenderising his skins with a sequence of constantly surprising rhythmic emphases. He knows how to arrest a booming skin, curtailing his own strikes with a precise stopping technique. Momin will be touring the UK in April 2008…
As a deliberately bombastic contrast, Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra amazingly manage to (mostly) cram onto the stage. Horns are the thing, bolstered only by drums and Lane’s own upright bass. Once again, it’s another outfit with a driving, enthusiastic leader, whipping the butts of his trumpet, reed and trombone front ranks. On cornet, there’s Taylor Ho Bynum, an Anthony Braxton sideman who’s rapidly rising as a solo artist. He mutes cornet with his floppy hat, with his compact disc, and even with his conventional mute attachment, but none of these can fully disguise a stiletto-precise attack. Hard-riffing dominates, with the horn guys cuing tight outbreaks of their own, clusters that are lifted up and dropped down beside the soloist-of-the-moment. Urban nocturnal thrills abound, speeding towards neon seediness.
Saturday night commenced with The Gerry Hemingway Quartet, and really couldn’t get any better thereafter. This percussionist and drummer (here favouring a conventional kit set-up) made his reputation as a longtime Braxton sideman (him again!), but Hemingway’s own work has itself been crucial on the scene. Tonite, he’s in powerhouse mode, but this cannot ever mean meathead knuckling, at least not without attendant grace and complexity. Yes, he’s piledriving like it’s his final appearance on Earth, but can we ever have witnessed such force coupled with this kind of sonic finesse? The quartet cohorts are all equally startling, but even they are casting sidelong glances of amazement at Hemingway’s hypercharged display. Ellery Eskelin and Ron Horton navigate their locked lines on tenor saxophone and trumpet, coolly executed in front of Hemingway and bassist Mark Helias, who seem to have decided on adopting the role of an avant-funk engine room, riffing and pumping whilst the elevated horners ascend overhead. Their 2005 Clean Feed disc, The Whimbler, provides the compositional lodestone throughout.
The tough task of following such brilliance falls to Free Range Rat, with their tussling trumpet, saxophone and bass clarinet, backed by bass and drums. On any other night, they would have seemed more impressive, but straight after Hemingway and crew, they were merely engaging, which, under the circumstances, was sort of good enough.
http://www.spannered.org/music/1256/
