by Glenn Siegel

Avram Fefer is a low-key dude off the bandstand, but an impassioned musician once on stage. The reed man’s  Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares performance at the Shea Theater on Saturday, November 20 provided a jolt of energy that catapulted us from rural Turners Falls, MA to grittier urban environs.

His trio, featuring Adam Lane on bass and Michael Wimberly on drums, gave a spirited 90-minute concert of Fefer originals. When all was said and done, our standing ovation served as a spontaneous thank you for their emptying of the proverbial tank.

Many of the pieces had a rugged nugget of melody that was explored in the best traditions of John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. There was an intensity to the proceedings that conveyed a seriousness of purpose, as well as a higher calling. Fefer is one of those musicians who returns again and again to certain themes, just as some prayers are recited at every service. Four of the compositions we heard are found on Testament, Fefer’s celebrated 2019 Clean Feed release that garnered best of the year honors from NPR, Rolling Stone, Downbeat, and others.

Fefer brought his alto and tenor saxophones and bass clarinet to the Shea. (He also plays soprano and baritone sax, clarinet and flute.) While playing, he sometimes moved around the stage, walking to the back and sides. At one point he even disappeared into the wings. I found the vanishing notes and the swells in volume quite compelling, adding drama to his testimony. Perhaps the movement was an outgrowth of his ongoing Resonant Sculpture Project, a series of solo musical interactions with the large scale works of legendary sculptor Richard Serra, where he moves around and through the pieces.

Adam Lane was a strong presence throughout the evening, taking full advantage of his solo opportunities. He maintained a well-defined melodic stance, full of crowd-pleasing devices. None of the jazz jokes about too many bass solos applied to this concert. It was good to see Lane, who hadn’t been to these parts since a 2016 appearance with the Darius Jones Trio. He’ll be back to the Pioneer Valley on December 10 with William Hooker’s Trio.

Drummer Michael Wimberly has been teaching at Bennington College for a decade, following in the footsteps of the late percussion master, Milford Graves. He also has extensive credits composing and creating sound design for dance (Urban Bush Women, Alvin Ailey, Philadanco) and theater (National Black Theatre, Classical Theatre of Harlem). His playing was forceful and direct: no brush work, no pitter pattering, just powerful declarative statements that gave the music a ritualistic, non-western flavor. He was super helpful carrying and setting up the drums, which of course endeared him to the concert’s producers. 

Fefer has led a wonderfully eclectic career. He is part of Greg Tate’s Burnt Sugar Arkestra and Adam Rudolph’s Organic Orchestra, and has worked with The Last Poets, David Murray, Bobby Few and Butch Morris. On stage and off, Fefer talked about his transformative interactions with Ornette Coleman, his theater experience with Ivo Van Hove and Melvin Van Peebles, his time in Boston as a student at Harvard, Berklee and the New England Conservatory, and his early jazz encounters in western Massachusetts with Steve McCraven, Archie Shepp and Tom McClung. He delivered all of it with an off-handed coolness that contrasted with the ferocity of his playing. In the words of writer/photographer Valerie Wilmer, it is inspiring to be in the presence of musicians who take their work “as serious as your life.”

by Glenn Siegel

There are plenty of important jazz musicians who have scant discographies as leaders, artists who have made lasting contributions to the form without a spotlight and with little fanfare. Bass trombonist and tubaist Bill Lowe is one of them.

Lowe stepped out of his role as valued sideman and revered teacher to lead a septet at the Community Music School of Springfield on Wednesday, November 10 as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ 10^thseason rolled along. 

Lowe, who has lived in the Boston area since the 1990s, was joined by fellow Bostonians Kevin Harris (piano), Luther Gray (drums) and Naledi Masilo (voice), along with Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet), Hafez Modirzadeh (tenor saxophone) and Ken Filiano (bass). The ensemble, known as Signifyin’ Natives, gave a spirited, 90-minute performance of eclectic compositions filled with lustrous solos and interesting arrangements.

The program began with “Simone” by Frank Foster and also included two pieces by Bill Barron, both important saxophonists who greatly influenced Lowe as a young musician. Lowe in turn has impacted generations of artists both on the bandstand and as an educator at Wesleyan, Columbia, Penn, Brown, Williams and MIT. The idea of passing down knowledge seemed important to Lowe, who explained from the stage his thinking about his predecessors, his band name and the state of race relations in the U.S.

The evening began with an extended drum solo by Gray, an unusual opening gambit, but one that served as an invocation and a reminder of the central role rhythm plays in African-derived music. When the rest of the band entered, it sounded full, magisterial even. Gray’s solo turned out to be one of the longest of the evening as most of the solos that followed were limited to one or two choruses. 

I’d met the West Coast saxophonist Hafez Modirzadeh in 2016 when he co-led a UMass Magic Triangle Series concert with the legendary trumpeter Bobby Bradford. Modirzadeh was mentored by Lowe as a graduate student at Wesleyan University and there was good reason why Lowe insisted on flying him across the country for this tour. His inclusion of Middle-Eastern scales and his use of both a toy horn and a home-made double reed instrument (a trombone bell and a bassoon reed) gave a tart and unexpected flavor to the music.

Cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, another former student of Lowe’s who helped organize this tour, has enlisted Lowe in many of his mid-sized ensembles over the years, including a 2012 Sextet concert in Jazz Shares’ inaugural season. Using a variety of mutes, Ho Bynum gave us a full account of his stylistic range, using overt blues and swing elements to make his characteristic smears and blurts even more provocative. He’ll be back in the Pioneer Valley in June with Illegal Crowns (Mary Halvorson, Benoit Delbecq, Tomas Fujiwara).

This was everybody’s first chance to hear Naledi Masilo sing. The South African vocalist has a powerful voice and an improviser’s spirit. A 2021 graduate of the New England Conservatory  of Music, Masillo is poised to make her mark on the theater world, playing a leading role in Dreaming Zenzile, a play by Somi Kakoma, based on the life of Miriam Makeba. The play makes its Off-Broadway premiere at the New York Theatre Workshop in the spring. In Springfield she nailed fleet unison lines with Ho Bynum, scatted with assurance when it was her time to shine, and recited words from Jean Toomer’s classic “Cane” with an actor’s edge. Don’t be surprised if many more people know her soon.

Every time I hear Ken Filiano perform, I think there can’t possibly be a better bass player in the world. His arco playing is especially breathtaking. He has so much technique, such a creative and collaborative mind set, and such an impish spirit that he raises every bandstand he’s on. He obviously loves to play, and his openness to engaging with others means he works a lot.

Luther Gray held it down all night. He didn’t hardly solo after his opening salvo, but he steered and shaped the music in direct and subtle ways. Gray has been one of Boston’s most accomplished drummers for years. (Read Jon Garelick’s 2014 portrait of him in the Boston Globe.) Boston has always had lots of great musicians in its midst, and that number continues to increase. Maybe that can be the impetus to create an East-West Massachusetts railroad.

Bill Lowe has had a remarkable career, performing with Dizzy Gillespie, Eartha Kitt and Clark Terry, as well as Muhal Richard Abrams, Henry Threadgill and Cecil Taylor. He has performed and written music for the theater, (including the late Ed Bullins), organized concerts and has had an extensive teaching career. But the whole of Bill Lowe’s discography as a leader includes two co-led recordings with pianist Andy Jaffee and saxophonist Phillipe Crettien. That is about to change. The ensemble will end their tour at Firehouse 12 in New Haven, and record there the next day. If the results mirror the moving concert they provided listeners in Springfield, the jazz world will have an auspicious, and long overdue debut. 

by Glenn Siegel

A 1995 CD release by the Orrin Evans Trio featuring Matthew Parrish and Byron Landham, and the tour in support of that recording, was 26 years in the making. The pianist Orrin Evans made The Trio (reissued in 2001 as Déjà Vu) with bassist Matthew Parrish and drummer Byron Landham, but the career paths of these three active Philadelphians took them in disparate directions, and gigs never materialized. Incredibly, the Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares concert we heard at the Community Music School of Springfield on October 30^th was part of their first ever tour.

Listening to this cohesive trio, one would never have guessed this was their first live go-round. Performing a mix of Evans originals and reconfigured standards, they were highly compatible and in perfect sync as they transfixed 70 intent listeners for over an hour on Saturday. Their Springfield concert was the last of a small tour, so they had some time to reacquaint themselves with the material. (A final show the next day at The Falcon in New York’s Hudson Valley was cancelled due to the sudden passing of Tony Falco, the club’s founder.) 

The Robyn Newhouse Hall at the CMSS is the perfect setting for a piano trio: great sound, elegant venue, good sight lines, beautiful piano. And we heard a perfect piano trio, relaxed and ready to stretch out.  There were fleet, up tempo burners like “Big Jimmy”, with the band’s bop chops on full display, and the evening’s finale, a poignant reading of Mr. Rogers’ “Good Feeling”, with Evans singing Fred Roger’s life-affirming lyrics. Because the melody was Evans’ own, the song’s identity only slowly dawned on us. Jazz Shares Vice President, Priscilla Page, reported tearing up.

Evans’ wonderful career includes Tarbaby (Eric Revis and Nasheet Waits), The Bad Plus (Reid Anderson and Dave King), his Captain Black Big Band and 28 recordings as a leader for Criss Cross, Posi-Tone, Smoke Sessions and his own Imani label. He exudes surety and style, and his piano playing has an infectious forward motion. I could see his shoulders and head moving with the music, allowing me to hear his ideas with even more clarity. He was dancing sitting down.

In the audience were Amherst College faculty members Darryl Harper and Sonia Clark, decades-long friends of the pianist, he from their Rutgers’ days. Also in the crowd was Fred Goodson and Margot Davis, old friends of Evans from Philly, resulting in a post-concert hang at Dewey’s on Worthington Street filled with the kind of comradery that makes it all worthwhile.

The trio we heard at CMSS is not as high-profile as some of Evans’ other bands. But profile has little to do with musicality, and Matthew Parrish and Byron Landham are living proof that there are great jazz musicians you never heard of in every large city in America. The trio’s long, if discontinuous, shared history was clear from the get-go, not only while swinging their asses off, but during numerous precipitous changes in tempo and mood. They were playing and listening.

Parrish, who teaches bass and leads ensembles at Princeton, took advantage of his ample solo space with articulate dexterity and a storyteller’s arc. His time and the ease with which he negotiated the music’s twists and turns were impeccable, and the sound he got from his instrument was rich and heard easily throughout the hall. (Kudos to sound engineer Steve Moser for a beautiful mix.) Byron Landham is spending the better part of November with organist Pat Bianchi’s Trio, opening for Steely Dan in concerts throughout the northeast, including the Orpheum Theatre in Boston. His drumming was crisp and rife with unexpected fills that propelled the music. Percussionists often use mallets to warm up ballads or provide atmospherics, so it was very exciting to hear Landham use them to make a full-scale solo statement with so much personality and variety.

Thanks to Orrin Evans for introducing us to two fabulous musicians, and for reminding us that friendship, long-term relationships and serious musicianship are the building blocks of a creative community. Those qualities were all front and center in Springfield on Saturday, and we were the lucky recipients.

by Glenn Siegel

The mere fact that a team has an all-star at every position does not insure success. Ask the San Francisco Giants, Los Angeles Dodgers and Tampa Bay Rays, the three major league baseball teams with the most wins this year. Like the rest of us, they are watching the 2021 World Series on television. The same goes for music. Having the biggest names does not always translate to making the most convincing music. But when the best jells, as they did at the Northampton Arts Trust on Friday, October 15, the results can be transcendent.

Saxophonist Jason Robinson, who is a dear friend and a Board member of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares, led a quartet of serious musicians in an evening of his compositions. This Jazz Shares concert, delayed over a year because of COVID-19, celebrated the release of Harmonic Constituent (Playscape, 2020). The four musicians on the recording: Joshua White (piano), Drew Gress (bass), Ches Smith (drums, glockenspiel) and Robinson, assembled at 33 Hawley St. to wow 65 rapt listeners.

The 70-minute set included most of the material on Harmonic Constituent, an album filled with intricate compositions and improvised magic. Robinson made the right call to convene a rehearsal the day before, giving everyone’s muscle memories a chance to refresh, and letting Joshua White catch his breath after travelling from San Diego. The music was composed by Robinson on a trip to the northern coast of his home state of California, inspired by the power of the Pacific Ocean. “Harmonic constituent” refers to the complex interaction between the sun, earth and moon that influence tides at different locations.

The music was a spirit-filled amalgam of knotty, swinging, provocative and melodious sounds that crossed multiple stylistic boundaries, all played with off-the-charts virtuosity. 

Joshua White excites me more than any other pianist I can think of (Matt Mitchell, notwithstanding.) His approach is fresh and seemingly without limit, not tied to any “school” or style. “Jug Handle”, Robinson’s dedication to his grandfather, ended with a beautiful solo summation by White. His touch on this gorgeous lullaby was so delicate we all got quiet with him. On “Mountain in Your Mind”, White romped with be-bop intensity. At other points he used parts of his hands to create waves of sound. 

Ches Smith is another all-star with extremely catholic tastes. He has experience in rock-inspired projects like Mr. Bungle and Mark Ribot’s Ceramic Dog, has worked with revolutionaries like Terry Riley, John Zorn and Wadada Leo Smith, and has led recordings like The Bell (ECM, 2016), an exquisite chamber-like work featuring Craig Taborn and Mat Maneri, and Path of Seven Colors (Pyroclastic, 2021), a ground-breaking mix of jazz and Haitian drum traditions. His playing on Saturday precisely framed each of the compositions and gave shape to the solos and I was impressed he left dinner early to work on some of the tricky sections. His accents on glockenspiel made the music pop, much like a few drops of bitters add complexity to a drink. 

Bassist Drew Gress has played on all of Robinson’s various-sized Janus Ensembles over the last decade. On more than one occasion I’ve heard Jason remark what a comfort it is to have Gress behind him. Despite seven releases as a leader, (I’m especially fond of Spin & Drift and The Irrational Numbers), Gress has made his living as a sideman with Steve Lehman, Angelica Sanchez, John Hollenbeck, John Abercrombie and dozens of others. The concert was performed without sound reinforcement and Gress’ bass provided all the heft we needed. His resonant tone and his understanding of the composer’s aims were right on. He served as spotter for the evening’s musical gymnastics.

As trying as the last 18 months have been, Robinson has accomplished a lot. Along with finishing a three-year stint as Chair of the Amherst College Music Department, he released three different recordings, all of them outstanding. In addition to Harmonic Constituent, 2020 also brought us The Urgency of Now, a largely improvised set featuring Bruno Råberg and Bob Weiner, and Two Hours Early, Ten Minutes Late: Duo Music of Ken Aldcroft, featuring guitarist Eric Hofbauer. He is one of the few scholars who is also a monster musician. (Our mutual friend Michael Dessen is another.) Robinson played tenor saxophone almost exclusively and masterfully explored the instrument’s sonic possibilities, from roar to whisper, shrieks to cat purrs. After repeated listens to Harmonic Constituent, I’ve grown to love the writing as much as the playing. Each composition is individually crafted to evoke a particular mood, while referencing some part of the massive jazz legacy Robinson clearly cherishes. 

The best teams are guided by a manager who has a plan, is clearly in command and gives his charges room to be themselves and to influence the outcome. Jason Robinson has hit a home run, turning this collection of all-stars into a winning aggregation.