by Glenn Siegel

When I asked Daniel Levin if his Trio needed music stands for his Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares gig on October 26, he replied, “Music is all in our heads and hearts, so no need for stands.”

For over an hour on Thursday, tenor and soprano saxophonist Tony Malaby, drummer Randy Peterson, and cellist Daniel Levin improvised without a road map, charting a path without charts or formula. The concert, which took place up 69 stairs at Studio4 in Northampton, had few signposts, and no clichés to guide our listening. Devoid of well-worn constructs, sustained melody and rhythmic certainty, we were left to our own devices to create meaning and pleasure.

That can be daunting for many listeners used to having their art delivered in predictable portions, with elements like song-form, key signatures, beginnings, middles and ends. But for those who can deal with uncertainty and disrupted expectations, the rewards can be thrilling.

I’m not sure how easy it is for the uninitiated to tell novice from master in this terrain. Judging virtuosity can be challenging in a ‘free’ jazz setting. “Are they still tuning up?” was my mother’s favorite quip, who for some reason was concerned that the musicians couldn’t replicate the music they just made. “My five year old could make that,” is the common refrain from puzzled viewers of abstract art.

But those who have spent time listening to non-idiomatic music can separate the wheat from the chaff. Let me tell you, we were dealing with wheat at Studio4.

These three musicians are skilled and practiced, and can play music convincingly in all kinds of idioms. Randy Peterson told us over dinner that he can imitate Elvin Jones’ drumming style so well we wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. “But what’s the point of that?” he asked.

As we relaxed into the music, what at first sounded random and disconnected, began to take shape. We realized how deeply the musicians were listening to each other and what control they had over their instruments. We soon abandoned the prospect that Levin’s cello would fall into a familiar walk, for instance, or that Tony Malaby would settle into sustained melody. We gave up thinking in terms of compositions, time keeping, and right notes, and we started to think about color, texture, shape, dynamics, and mood.

When we meditate, we try to suspend judgement and merely observe what is happening inside and outside our bodies. We concentrate on what is before us: our breath. We watch our thoughts come and go as we quiet the mind. This mindset was helpful as I dealt with this fleeting, evanescent music.

During the performance I found myself shifting focus from one instrument to another. My eyes were closed for most of the concert so I could concentrate without distraction. But sometimes an unidentifiable sound, like Levin’s crumpling of a piece of paper or Malaby’s blowing of air through his horn, would require a peek.

The sounds they made: Levin whipping his bow through the air to make a subtle whoosh, using his bow to hit the endpin of his cello, were certainly unique. But it was their ability to listen and respond that was truly amazing. The Trio did not engage in typical call-and-response or play complimentary lines.

Their communication was sly, oblique, related to what was going on around them, but not obviously so. Their music was commanding and demanding. But as Charles Ives asked, “Is not beauty in music too often confused with something which lets the ears lie back in an easy chair?”

by Glenn Siegel

When one approaches a novel situation – say like encountering a different way of producing and organizing sound – with an open mind, the results can be disorienting, or they can be exciting, even liberating.

The Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares audience, being generally open to new ideas, spent almost 90 minutes wrapping their heads (and arms) around the Mike Baggetta Trio at Hampshire College on Saturday, October 14. Baggetta, guitar and electronics, Jerome Harris, bass guitar and Billy Mintz, drums, were in the Valley on the last stop of a seven concert tour.

The wall-to-wall sound, coming in complex waves of beauty and uncertainty, put this listener in an exhilarated, altered state. Baggetta, who grew up in Agawam and was mentored by Ted Dunbar and Yusef Lateef at Jazz in July, relocated from New York to Knoxville a couple of years ago. Perhaps being so close to the center of country music has pushed him to explore what some now call “Americana.” But his was not the straight-forward, stripped down version we associate with Bill Frisell, but a thicker, multi-dimensional, ecstatic roots music. Not the flat paintings of Piet Mondrian or Jasper Johns, but the highly textured, impasto of Vincent van Gogh and Willem de Kooning.

With its simple melodies, elemental energy and emphatic beat, at points it also felt like rock music. Is this what Cream might sound like if they were today?

Baggetta played a custom guitar made by one of the world’s leading luthiers, Portland, Oregon’s Saul Koll, played through a new Aether amplifier by Fryette Amplification. In Baggetta’s own words, “the live sampling/looping and sound processing revolved around a short-length randomized phrase sampler and another longer-length, deeply manipulatable, sampler/looper that was being controlled from a mounted iPad via Bluetooth.”

In discussing the electronic manipulation of conventional instruments, cornetist Rob Mazurek recently told Jazz Times, “You want to get to the point where it just sounds like one instrument, not like something being done to something else. You want it to sound like one strange entity moving through air.” I’d say that perfectly captures what Baggetta achieved.

The results were hypnotic, cumulative. There was no silence, no breaks between sections, no place for applause and very little unaccompanied soloing. But despite all that sound, you could easily hear very subtle grace notes and bent tones. Periods of abstractness made the sections that were beautiful, even more beautiful.

Bass guitarist Jerome Harris was making the first of three Jazz Shares appearances this year. He’ll be back in February with the Ricky Ford Quartet and again in March, playing with his old friend Marty Ehrlich. (They were roommates at NEC, and have appeared frequently on each other’s records.) He provided the perfect grounding for Baggetta’s fanciful flights, anchoring the band while constantly shifting its center.

Like Jerome Harris and yours truly, drummer Billy Mintz was born in Queens, NY. Now back in New York after a long period in Los Angeles, Mintz had the introspective nonchalance befitting a veteran who had played all kinds music in all kinds of settings (Merv Griffin Show, Vinnie Golia, Gloria Gaynor, Alan Broadbent.) Although not effusive, you could tell how much he enjoyed this context. He was able to hold it down and color the sound. There was a point early on, during a real rise in intensity, when Mintz was full out bashing his cymbals, creating cascades of colliding overtones that mixed with the two electric strings to create a feeling of floating on a sea of overwhelming.

When you present music that is organized in an original way, with a particular palette and orientation, you’re bound to leave some behind, while enchanting others. That was the case at Hampshire College (a few found it too loud.) But many I talked to afterwards were genuinely moved, actually transported from one place to another.

by Glenn Siegel

The spirit of Yusef Lateef was in the air on Monday, October 2 as the Magic Triangle Series debuted at the newly refurbished Old Chapel on the UMass campus. All three performers – Adam Rudolph, Hamid Drake and Ralph M. Jones – had deep and longstanding relationships with the late Pioneer Valley icon, who passed in December of 2013 at the age of 93. And there were many in the audience, including Batya Sobel, Matt Waugh, Norman Blain and Aisha Lateef, who studied, worked with and lived with the great reed player and composer.

After the performance, Aisha Lateef, who was married to Yusef at the time of his passing, joked to Rudolph that she had not granted permission to have her soul stolen for an hour. Such was the vibe in the room, which more closely resembled a prayer meeting than a concert. From Drake’s recitation of Koran and Jones’ array of non-western wind instruments, to the spontaneous composition that emerged throughout the evening, there was communion with the divine.

Rudolph and Drake, who have been playing together since they were 14, have each performed in the area many times in various configurations. Ralph Miles Jones, however, has not been in western Massachusetts since he concertized with Rudolph, Drake and the dancer Oguri at Hampden Theater in 1997. The Detroit native, who now teaches at Spelman College in Atlanta, brought his flute and tenor and soprano saxophones, but spent an equal amount of time playing a half-dozen wind instruments from throughout the world, some of which belonged to Lateef.

Early on he unveiled a hulusi, a Chinese vertical flute with three bamboo pipes which pass through a gourd wind chest. It produces three simultaneous notes and conjured the work of George Braith and Rashaan Roland Kirk, who would play three saxophones at once. Often Jones would finger his instruments without blowing, producing subtle rhythms and turning the ensemble into an all percussion group.

Hamid Drake has not been to the Valley since 2010 when we turned over all three Magic Triangle concerts to him and bassist William Parker. Although he “limited” himself to trap drums, he produced a variety of textures using broom brushes, mallets and sticks. Perhaps because he did not bring tabla or frame drums, he spent a lot of time playing with his hands. His dialogue with fellow hand percussionist Adam Rudolph produced fireworks at many levels of intensity.

Rudolph utilized his typical four-conga array, as well as a slew of flutes, bells and little percussion. He also utilized electronics that provided washes of sound.

The soundscape was in constant flux, with elements in a perpetual state of coming and going. There were periods of open playing devoid of fixed melody or rhythm. There were other times when the groove could bore through solid earth.

With its penchant for hypnotic layering, the band brought to mind the experiments of Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society and Rob Mazurek and Chad Taylor’s Chicago Underground Duo. Built on the shoulders of Don Cherry and Yusef Lateef, citizens of the world with no use for boundaries, these bands pull from many traditions in service of the ultimate goal: to summon the deities, and uplift the people.

“The Magic Triangle series has been just that,” wrote William Parker during the 25th anniversary of the Series, “a magical gathering of creative musicians coming from all over the world to share their music on a high level. Bringing together those with big ears and spirits, both listeners and musicians participate in what is essentially a healing ceremony.”