by Glenn Siegel

It’s been over two years since pianist Lucian Ban has toured. Personal health issues, caring for his ailing mother, and, of course, the pandemic, have conspired to keep him off the road. For a working artist like Ban, that’s a lot to endure. As Ban told Larry Blumenfeld of the Wall Street Journal in a recent article, Ban started to wonder if he could still play. I’m here to report that the answer is a resounding “yes”.

Ban performed solo for 45 lucky souls at the Wistariahurst Museum in Holyoke, MA on Friday, April 27. He took full advantage of the gorgeous  acoustics in the Museum’s Music Room, which he filled with ringing affirmation of music’s power to transcend the man-made ugliness of this world. His largely improvised, hour-long recital, mirrored his latest release on Sunnyside and his first ever solo record, Ways of Disappearing.

The music, which was organized into discreet pieces, encompassed many moods and styles. There was a fractured, Bud Powell-like bop fusillade taken at an impossibly fast tempo. We heard gorgeous, full bodied Romantic sections that, save for the modern harmony, would not have been out of place in a 19^thcentury European salon. There were spontaneous compositions that spoke of the blues, and periods of dense, chromatically ambiguous chords juxtaposed with single notes that reverberated against the marble walls of the hall. Throughout, Ban posed more questions than he answered, only sometimes resolving the tensions he laid out.

Between each piece he paused for upwards of 15 seconds, seeming to contemplate his next move, deciding which idea would guide his impending improvisation. He performed two compositions: Annette Peacock’s, “Albert’s Love Theme” and Carla Bley’s, “Ida Lupino”, both of which have simple, beautiful melodies played at ballad tempo. They took my breath away.

Ban knows the music of the great musicians that precede him, including Paul Bley, who in the early 1960s began recording definitive versions of many Carla Bley compositions. To my ears, “Ida Lupino” stands with her “Jesus Maria,” as two of the most haunting melodies I’ve heard. We talked about the curious version Carla recorded on her album Dinner Music (1977),  featuring a smooth, breezy, up tempo arrangement, replete with a silky Eric Gale guitar solo. As much as I’ve come to dig that version (and the whole album), I agree with Ban that the piece becomes more ravishing as the tempo slows. Over dinner, we discussed some of his other favorite pianists: Andrew Hill, Sun Ra, and Abdullah Ibrahim, all of whom stress emotion and ideas over speed and flash.

Ban was accompanied on the trip by his wife, Cristina Modreanu, a renown Romanian scholar and theater artist, who like her husband, splits time between Transylvania and Brooklyn. This was the first time in 25 years she has toured with him. She and theater scholar/Jazz Shares Vice President Priscilla Page talked “shop”, and Page was gifted Modreanu’s handsome book about the last 30 years of Romanian theater history. Another fine example of artists extending webs of connection and building community.

The music of his homeland figures large in Ban’s work. His last visit to western Massachusetts came in 2016, on the heels of his riveting duet release with violist Mat Maneri, Transylvanian Concert (ECM). Through his Enesco Re-Imagined project (released on Sunnyside in 2010), Ban brought renewed interest to the music of Romanian composer George Enesco (1881-1955). One of my favorite recordings of the last few years is Ban’s Transylvanian Folk Songs (The Bela Bartók Field Recordings), featuring Maneri and the respected British saxophonist John Surman. The music we heard on Friday, however, only hinted at those folk roots; it was infused into the fabric of the music, but subtly expressed.

Ban is back. After this 7-stop northeast tour (supported by a South Arts’ Jazz Road grant), the pianist spends most of June in Romania, to continue his solitary barnstorm heralding Ways of Disappearing. But Ban is not disappearing at all; he is an active presence in modern music, carving his own path through jazz’s evolving landscape. 

by Glenn Siegel

A fabulous April 22 concert by the Caroline Davis Quintet concluded an eventful two-week sojourn for this writer. On April 10, for the first time in my career, I missed a concert I produced. Home recovering from a mild bout of COVID, with the equally ill Priscilla Page by my side, producing duties fell to Jason Robinson and other members of the Jazz Shares board of directors. By all accounts, the concert by bassoonist Sara Schoenbeck and pianist Wayne Horvitz was thoroughly enjoyed by the 55 folks who filled the barn at the Institute for the Musical Arts. After multiple postponements because of the pandemic, it was ironic that the virus prevented me from experiencing it.

Then on, April 21, the final curtain came down on the Magic Triangle Jazz Series, the upstart annual event I helped found in 1990. The Series was a collaboration between the then-vibrant student and community radio station, WMUA-FM, and the University’s Fine Arts Center. It’s first home was Hampden Theater, a professionally staffed, jewel of a black box theater in the southwest residential area of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, shuttered in 1998. The Magic Triangle (and its sister program, the Solos & Duos Series) produced 151 concerts in its lifetime, the last one on Thursday at Bowker Auditorium with a performance by Adam Rudolph’s GO: Organic Orchestra and Brooklyn Raga Massive. I was moved by the outpouring of appreciation for all the music we have brought to Amherst over the years, and we were rewarded with a transcendent performance by Rudolph’s band of 30, which included large percussion, flute and string sections. With assurance and a sense of adventure, Rudolph’s ensemble pointed us toward a musical future influenced by Indian, Latin and jazz improvising traditions.

Which brings us to Friday’s concert at the Community Music School of Springfield, featuring alto saxophonist and composer Caroline Davis. Her group: Jonathan Finlayson, trumpet, Julian Shore, piano, Chris Tordini, bass and Alan Mednard, drums, stopped in Springfield on their way home from a residency at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY. 

Their performance featured material from last year’s release, Portals, Volume 1: Mourning (Sunnyside), dedicated to Davis’ late father. The music was dense, but not heavy, the compositions complex, but lyrical. Modern harmonies and precise rhythmic shifts were everywhere, leavened by a focus on melody and form. The young veteran, Jonathan Finlayson replaced Marquis Hill for our Jazz Shares concert; the rest of the band is on the record. (The recording also includes a well-utilized string quartet.)

Despite the exacting nature of the compositions, the band was relaxed on the bandstand and off. Over a homecooked meal before the show, Tordini recounted a tough early gig at the Newark Airport, which necessitated a subway ride, to a PATH train, to a car ride, all for the pleasure of playing for a distracted airport restaurant audience. Not to be outdone, Shore reminisced about a gig that required a plane ride from New York to Cleveland for an annual gathering honoring police who died in the line of duty. In a giant arena, thousands of under-rehearsed amateur bagpipers and snare drummers (along with twirling young girls in identical dress and wigs), created such a din that Shore and the rest of his rhythm section spent the performance with their hands over their ears. Nobody seemed to notice they weren’t playing.

The storytelling continued on stage, as Davis shared her experiences creating this beautiful body of work from her loss. The music was full of drama, with a soaring quality that was taut, expressive and profound. This was my first opportunity to hear Mednard, a young drummer who plays with Jeremy Pelt and Ben Allison, among others. He read down the heads with the skill of a classical percussionist, then proceeded to fill and accent his way through the evening with riveting clarity. He never got a chance to solo, but was so on point all evening, it hardly mattered.

Caroline Davis gives me confidence about the future of our music. She is well prepared and serious about her craft. Before the gig I saw her off to the side meditating, her way of “getting right” before engaging in a vital activity. The facility in her playing, the emotional impact of her compositions, and her easy command as a bandleader, all point to a musician poised to make a real contribution in the decades ahead.

by Glenn Siegel

It’s not always possible to see a star rise in real time. It is often only in hind sight that we can ascribe importance to an emerging talent. But in the case of James Brandon Lewis, the jazz world has reached a consensus, and we can now say with certainty that the Buffalo-born tenor saxophonist is a legitimate force in the field. We got first hand confirmation as Lewis and his Trio: Christopher Hoffman, electric cello and Max Jaffe, drums, performed at the Shea Theater in Turners Falls on Thursday, March 10 in a concert produced by Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

Lewis, now 39, is serious about everything he does. That includes writing prose and poetry, conversing, researching and playing the tenor. His performance at the Shea established the point. The 70-minute set was filled with simple, direct statements delivered with power and conviction. Lewis’s music had a spiritual effect on this listener, as small nuggets of melody were woven in endless variation. Much like the preacher who seizes on a theme then spins corollaries, Lewis emphasized his point with run after dazzling run, using the declarative power of the blues to do it. He stood grounded, with feet shoulder width apart, sermonizing in broad brawny tones, delivering combinations of emotion-packed punches. That searching quality we associate with Coltrane and Ayler is also present in the music of James Brandon Lewis. 

Lewis’s father is a minister and he grew up in the Church, where “he found out what it meant for music to brush against the holy spirit,” as Giovanni Russonello wrote in the New York Times. That spirit-infused attitude has been a constant as Lewis has emerged into the limelight.

Seeing Lewis’s Trio with Luke Stewart and Warren Trae Crudup III at the Vision Festival in 2016 was a stop-in-my-tracks moment. Two years later, Lewis was back at New York’s Vision Festival, sharing the stage with legends Dave Burrell, Kidd Jordan, William Parker and Andrew Cyrille. The symbolic torch passing was hard to miss. 

Last year, he was voted the top rising tenor saxophonist by critics in Downbeat. This year he earned the top tenor player award by critics in Jazz Times, and his release Jessup Wagon, was recognized as the record of the year. Whatever that all means, Lewis’s star has clearly risen.

Although the Trio is relatively new, they have already gelled. Jaffe said playing in the trio is natural, “like breathing.”  We are awaiting the results of a completed studio recording.

Jaffe earned his Masters from Cal Arts last year and was a long-time member of Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones and the experimental rock collective, JOBS. The drummer has been on the road with Ava Mendoza, Peter Evans and Rubblebucket, among others, and was through these parts in October, playing in Steph Richards Quartet. He pushed the band into ecstatic territory without playing loudly, using dynamics and the lower sonic end of his drum kit to provide all the energy the band needed.

Hoffman is an in-demand cellist and who is into his second decade as a member of Henry Threadgill’s Pulitzer Prize winning ensemble, Zooid. He is also part of Anat Cohen’s Tentet and Rudy Royston’s Flatbed Buggy, and has performed at Jazz Shares concerts led by Tony Malaby (2015) and Josh Sinton (2019). He can be heard (along with Kirk Knuffke, William Parker and Chad Taylor) on Lewis’s celebrated Jessup Wagon. Hoffman’s electric cello, played while standing, looked like the stick bass favored in lots of Latin bands. His use of pedals brought another dimension to the proceedings, changing timbre and attack to anchor and provoke.

James Brandon Lewis is a curious soul, who draws inspiration from many sources. Jessup Wagon channels the myriad accomplishments of George Washington Carver, who designed the wagon that brought his innovative farming techniques to poor Black southern growers.

In his wonderful liner notes that accompany the recording, Robin D. G. Kelley summed up an attitude shared by both Carver and Lewis: “The lesson is clear,” Kelley wrote, “remember the old ways, learn the new ways.”

by Glenn Siegel

Although they perform in business suits, Mostly Other People Do the Killing are a subversive ensemble, upending expectations with an impish attitude. Led by bassist and composer Moppa Elliott, MOPDtK is a 19-year old band that includes Ron Stabinsky, piano and Kevin Shea, drums. They entertained 40 people on Saturday, February 19 at Newhouse Hall at the Community Music School of Springfield, as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares began the second half of their 10^thseason.

The band, which began in 2003 with trumpeter Peter Evans and saxophonist Jon Irabagon alongside Shea and Elliott, takes the whole of jazz history, puts it through a blender and spits out a mélange. Reminiscent of John Zorn’s jump-cut collages, these modernists add humor and mischievousness while pin-balling from style to style. Despite the change in personnel and instrumentation in 2017, MOPDtK has not deviated from their method. In fact, with Stabinsky and Shea playing Nord electronic keyboard and Nord drum synthesizer, they have added a space-age vaudeville vibe to the proceedings. Stabinsky told me they call it the “revenge of the Nords”.

But their tongue-in-cheek character did not distract from the musicality and inventiveness of the trio. Playing pieces from their brand-new recording, Disasters, Vol. 1, they moved from open, atonal sections to deep swing, from a shmaltzy dirge to classical concision, all within minutes. The effect could make you dizzy, and there were times I wished they would have settled into a groove for longer than they did, but then we’d be listening to a different band. 

The new record, on Elliott’s own Hot Cup Records, details various disasters that have befallen Pennsylvanian cities. Disasters, Vol. 1, continues Elliott’s tradition of naming all his tunes after places in the Keystone State. (He was born in Scranton.) On Saturday, he gave us thumbnail histories of those tragedies, which ranged from floods and fires to mine and nuclear accidents. “Centralia”, for instance, which is now largely a ghost-town, has had an active underground coal mine fire burning since 1962. Elliott’s tune, a feature for the supremely talented Ron Stabinsky, had a barrelhouse early rock feel.  

The music was frenetic at times, with a mad-cap quality achieved by speeding up and slowing down the tempo, or having one of the musicians playing at cross-purpose. Often that person was Shea, a masterfully busy drummer who played with precision and a rock mentality. While piano and bass were playing music right out of a top-hat waving, 1930s musical, the drums were bashing away at twice the tempo and twice the volume. Other times Stabinsky would seem to be soloing on a different tune, only to finally tip-toe towards the established groove. The electronics greatly expanded their sound palate, creating moments of cartoon comedy or otherworldly universes. 

Elliott played the straight man, often maintaining the pulse and dictating the changes in direction. The bassist, now in his mid-40s, presents as a conventional, law-abiding musician. But there is something audacious in his unceremonious mash-up of jazz history. In 2014 he created a firestorm of controversy when MOPDtK released, Blue, recreating Miles Davis’ iconic Kind of Blue with a level of faithfulness that fooled experts and lay listeners alike. The liner notes include a reprint of Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”, where the fictitious Menard immerses himself so thoroughly in Cervantes’ work as to be able to actually “re-create” it, line for line.

The band takes its name from a quote from the inventor Leon Theremin, who after spending years in a Soviet gulag, excused Stalin’s behavior, saying “mostly other people did the killing”. Elliott’s wry humor and irreverent attitude is further reflected in early MOPDtK album covers that parody important records like Ornette Coleman’s This is Our Music and Roy Haynes’ Out of the Afternoon. It’s all part of his rebellious, punk-inspired impulse to “kill yr idols”.

But it’s clear that his post-modern sensibilities are rooted in his love and mastery of the jazz tradition. Throughout the 70-minute set, we heard snippets of ragtime, swing, rock, “lounge”, bop and the Afro-future. The band’s total command of so many jazz dialects can only come from musicians who have studied seriously, practiced diligently and revere the tradition. 

Elliott told me he is about 30 discs shy of owning all 300 records featuring veteran bassist Sam Jones.

by Glenn Siegel

Drummer William Hooker certainly has more energy than your average 75-year old. Hooker made the trip from New York City to Greenfield, Massachusetts and back again in a single day. In between, he and his Trio pinned back the ears of 55 listeners with a recital of high intensity music that lasted for over an hour.

The December 10^th concert at Hawks & Reed, which served as an unveiling of Hooker’s new release, Big Moon, was the 9^th Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares production since September. There are 8 more concerts are on tap through June. The wall of sound produced by Hans Tammens on guitar, Adam Lane on bass and Hooker, might have unnerved some, but this listener was able to get inside the eye of the maelstrom to revel in the undulating cacophony. 

The evening began with the musicians making their way on stage as Hooker produced a spiritualized hum. Soon enough, the trio was firing on all cylinders, fortissimo and then some. After about 15 minutes with no let up, Hooker and Lane left the stage. Tammens unleashed a 10-minute solo that started with some warped, Fahey-inspired folk sounds, but soon picked up energy. Lane followed with his unaccompanied tour de force that included some advanced bow techniques. Hooker took the last solo turn, starting his portion playing sticks on stairs and intoning a poem before ascending to his drum throne. The band returned en masse for the final section, picking up the ferocity where they left off. It was an exhausting and exhilarating evening of music.

Fred, the sound and lighting technician at Hawks & Reed was also feeling the music and took creative license with the visuals. Hooker’s solo, for instance, began with the entire stage in the dark. The effect gave the music a heightened sense of drama. Elsewhere during the show, the lights would dim, then return and move, highlighting the large, red abstract paintings behind the musicians. I felt like I was at a rock show. Hooker told me afterwards he dug the effort.

Lane was making a return engagement to western Mass, having anchored the Avram Fefer Trio at the Shea Theater a month ago. On Friday, Lane went full bore, running his fingers up and down the fingerboard in a successful attempt to match the power and volume of his bandmates. The speed with which he churned out notes was felt, if not precisely heard. But the exercise had the desired effect: creating a palpable energy that was visceral and spontaneous. 

Tammens has spent a lifetime developing his richly processed, specially prepared instrument he calls Endangered Guitar, and indeed I have never heard anything quite like it. His rapid strumming and his doctored instrument produced shards of melody in a torrent of sound. I felt inundated, but it had a paradoxically calming effect, like the cascading tumult of a waterfall. Tammens was a late replacement for violinist Charlie Burnham. It is hard to imagine how the concert would have unfolded with different instrumentation, but I’m glad to have had the opportunity to hear an original voice on guitar.

William Hooker has played with a number of creative guitarists, including Nels Cline, Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, so I’m sure he was happy to have Tammens in the band. Hooker plays with force and spirit, and his thwacks on the kit brought me to attention. Hooker loves to play alongside silent films and has lots of experience in multi-media settings, so he has a natural affinity for narrative structure. His trio performance in Greenfield unfolded as a story of untamed impulses, full of catharsis and new possibility. That’s no mean feat for a musician of any age, let alone one with lots of laurels to rest on. 

by Glenn Siegel

The duo recording just released by drummer Dan Weiss and guitarist Miles Okazaki, has been 20 years in the making. That’s how long these two middle-age masters have been keeping musical company. Their tour in support of a new release, Music for Drums and Guitar, kicked off on Wednesday, December 1 at Hawks & Reed in Greenfield, MA.

Although Weiss, 44, and Okazaki, 46, have performed as a duo, played in each other’s bands and been featured on each other’s recordings since the beginning of their careers, this is the first time they have recorded as a twosome. The rapport they have established since they met at the Manhattan School of Music was readily apparent to 65 lucky listeners swept away for over an hour.

The music unfolded in great spools of sound that carried this listener on a shifting bed of melody and cross-rhythms. They performed two pieces, Okazaki’s “The Memory Palace”, which took up the first part of the show, and Weiss’ “MiddleGame”, which concluded the concert. That’s the same format as their double-LP and single CD that serves as the debut release on their new label, Cygnus Recordings.   

Each piece had recurring themes and motifs that morphed constantly, but rooted us and gave us our bearings. Okazaki’s composition had blues and rock elements, but there were hints of Brazilian rhythms and swing woven in, as well as periods of profound indeterminacy. Weiss’s written contribution was built upon a couple of simple melodies that regularly changed tempo and rhythmic feel. I heard allusions to Indian music, which makes sense given his fluency on tabla.  All evening, I had the sensation of existing in a constant state of “in-between”, betwixt unnamed grooves, holding multiple musical truths at the same time. It was a nice place to be.

There was intermittent applause, but the only interruption was by Okazaki just past the half-way mark to thank us for being there, introduce themselves and to attribute the compositions. Otherwise, it was all flow. 

There was a high degree of anticipation and connectivity between the performers, making this more than just a recital by two very talented musicians. This was an actual band, albeit a very small one. Okazaki wove bass lines into his playing, using his thumb to play the bass strings while playing the melody on the higher strings using his other fingers. He also used pedals to maintain a drone or otherwise add to the sound mix.We didn’t actually miss a double-bass. And Weiss played the drums with melody in mind, creating “tunes” on his toms and lessening the need for a second melody instrument. There were sections that displayed the two’s obvious virtuosity, but in the main, their chops were not the primary attraction; what drew us in was their rapport and the musical logic unfurled over the course of the night.

Weiss and Okazaki are in full creative ascendency. Not surprisingly, they are both associated with Pi Recordings, which produces some of today’s most consequential music. (Saxophonist and composer Anna Webber, who also records for Pi, was in attendance.) 

Okazaki leads a great quartet called Trickster, recently recorded the complete works of Thelonious Monk for solo guitar, and is an accomplished educator at the University of Michigan and Princeton. (One of his prized students, trumpeter Davy Lazar, was also in attendance.)

Weiss has a forward leaning 14-piece ensemble that has made two critically acclaimed recordings, while his newest project, Starebaby, blends metallic jazz, prog and post-rock. He has studied tabla with Pandit Samir Chatterjee for 25 years and recorded Indian classical music on both tabla and drumset.

Dan Weiss and Miles Okazaki are serious players and thinkers, poised to create at a high level for decades to come. We’re glad to be in their orbit.

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.