New Configurations: Magic Triangle Jazz Series in Northampton

After I contacted drummer Gerald Cleaver last year about bringing Farmers by Nature to the Magic Triangle Jazz Series, we waited in vain for Craig Taborn to respond. With a deadline looming, Cleaver asked pianist David Virelles to play alongside him and bassist William Parker. Farmers by Nature is one of the premier piano trios in jazz; adventurous, telepathic, and commanding. How would the new configuration work? Virelles and Cleaver have limited shared playing experience. Virelles and Parker none at all.

On Thursday, February 27, a packed house of over 130 people at the Northampton Arts Trust Building found out. Over the course of 100 scintillating minutes, the three wove idea after idea into an evening-length tapestry of improvisatory magic. There was no pause for applause, no set list, no recognized melodies, no pre-concert conversation about the contour of the evening, just three master musicians listening and responding to each other with intensity and creativity.

The musicians represent three generations and three regions steeped in music history. The 68- year-old Parker is a life-long New Yorker. Cleaver, 56, grew up in jazz-rich Detroit, while Virelles, a youthful 38, was raised in Santiago de Cuba, on the island’s eastern end. Together they demonstrated the unique blend of laser attention and open mind required for free improvising to soar and transcend.

The music unfurled in spirals, constantly changing with a logic and continuity that held our attention, despite the free nature of the interaction. In place of strict meter, the band provided pulse and momentum. During one segment late in the proceedings, Parker repeated a driving rhythmic pattern that threatened to blow the roof off 33 Hawley St. At another moment, Cleaver dove into his bag of funk and produced hooks we could almost hang our hats on. For his part, Virelles probed and counterpunched, confounding expectations and keeping us on our toes.

William Parker, who has performed in the Valley dozens of times over the years, has been called the “philosopher king” of New York. He is a trickster, always at the ready with humor and a story. He wore overalls with bright red patches on both knees, clearly a farmer by nature. Despite moving a little more slowly than the last time I saw him, his playing was inventive and spritely. He used a good amount of slap bass technique and bowed while fingering the very top of his strings. He’ll be back on March 13, performing with Steve Swell’s Kende Dreams.

How would Virelles fit into a trio of his elders? He was humble and deferential off the bandstand, but not at all intimidated playing with these accomplished veterans. After all, he’s had substantial playing and recording experience with drum masters like Andrew Cyrille, Román Díaz, and Milford Graves, and has studied and performed with icons like Henry Threadgill, Wadada Leo Smith, and Steve Coleman. Virelles showed no hesitation, contributing strong, independent threads of sounds, creating more tension than release. Virelles belongs to a generation of Latin American pianists that play and improvise in many styles. The notion that Latin pianists only play in clavé went out with Hilton Ruiz, and the idea seems even more antiquated today.

Gerald Cleaver belongs to a small group of great jazz drummers in constant demand. I would love to see a year’s list of his gigs; it would provide a good overview of the current state of jazz. Although he nominally leads Black Host, Farmers by Nature and this trio, he has made his mark as a highly inventive, very dependable sideman with Chris Lightcap, Roscoe Mitchell, Joe Morris, Ellery Eskelin, Charles Gayle, Michael Formanek, Enrico Rava, Joe Lovano, Ivo Perleman, Mat Maneri, Jeremy Pelt and dozens more. When a drummer with chops dedicates himself to advancing every musical situation, you get an evolving aesthetic in a healthy scene.

Jazz musicians have long participated in the “gig economy;” most live the freelancers’ life. That can make scheduling difficult, and bands with stable personnel almost non-existent. But what the music loses in continuity, it gains in new configurations that deepen relationships between musicians, excites listeners with new sounds and pulls the music in unexpected directions. It’s novel by nature.

Mind Meld: Satoko Fujii-Joe Fonda Duo with Natsuki Tamura

One of the most remarkable things about the musicians we work with is the sheer number of miles travelled in service of their art. Part of the reason they traverse the globe is because the market for creative music is small and dispersed. If a musician could make a decent living performing exclusively near their home town, there would be less imperative to deal with airports, time changes, onerous visa policies, carbon footprints, and wear and tear.

But the flip side means we here in rural western Massachusetts get the opportunity to hear international artists ply their craft. Such was the case on Monday, February 10, when Japanese pianist Satoko Fujii joined with bassist Joe Fonda and trumpeter Natsuki Tamura to deliver a 90-minute master class on improvisation. The concert at the Northampton Center for the Arts marked the half-way point of season eight of Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares.

The first two-thirds of the evening featured Fujii and Fonda exploring multiple moods and sonorities. Their playing ranged from loud to soft and mellifluent to discordant. They produced sounds conventionally and unconventionally. Fujii pulled what looked like a guitar string against strings inside the piano to produce eerie sounds that were echoed by Fonda’s arco bass playing.

The level of simpatico between the two was remarkable. I felt slightly voyeuristic, as if listening in on an intimate conversation between two accomplished musicians playing without ego, with nothing to prove, just an interest in engaged exchange. As he readied to reenter after a solo piano interlude, Fonda pulled out his bow, listened, smiled, then put it away without playing a note. Nothing more needed to be said.

Fujii is a diminutive powerhouse of a pianist. She came through the Valley in 2011 and 2012, performing as part of the Northampton Center for the Arts’ A World of Piano solo piano series, and then in duet performances with her husband, Tamura, and violinist Carla Kihlstedt as part of the UMass Solos & Duos Series. In 2018, in celebration of her 60th birthday, a milestone known as Kanreki in Japan, she produced one recording a month for a year.

One of them, Mizu, was a duo with Joe Fonda. Their latest, 4, is, as the title implies, their fourth together. Within five short years the two have developed a natural telepathy, anticipating each other’s direction and exploring a full range of jazz expression.

Joe Fonda lived in the Pioneer Valley for about a decade starting in the mid-1970’s and has been a regular visitor since. As I remarked to a friend after the concert, I have never heard him give a less than inspired performance; he lifts every bandstand he’s on. His body language, facial expressions and the sounds he produces are genuine manifestations of a blithe musical spirit.

During the concert, played without pause or applause, Fonda delivered a semesters-worth of bass lessons. His liberal use of arco playing worked especially well in this context, providing a plaintive vocal quality that upped the emotional ante. At times his pizzicato playing was so quiet, and so clearly articulated he sounded alone in the room.

About an hour in, a new, beautiful strand of sound emerged. Looking back and forth from Fujii to Fonda to try to identify the source, we realized a third voice had joined the fray. After a few minutes, Tamura ambled out from behind the black baffle and joined the duo on stage. The fact that we could not identify the mysterious sound as trumpet-based is not surprising. Along with Peter Evans, Nate Wooley, Axel Dörner and a few others, Tamura has revolutionized sound production on his instrument. His duet with Fonda on flute (sans mouthpiece) was a study in innovation.

Joe Fonda will be back in May with the Michael Musillami Trio +2 and again next year with Marilyn Crispell’s Trio. We might have to wait longer for Fujii and Tamura to circle back. By that time, they will have played countless concerts, made many more recordings, and logged thousands of miles on multiple continents.

Uncharted: Fay Victor’s SoundNoiseFUNK

A fearless creativity lies at the center of Fay Victor’s artistic life. The vocalist, composer, and lyricist lays claim to an expansive sonic territory, which she explored with humility and self-assurance on Friday, January 24 at Hawks & Reed in Greenfield, as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares’ 8th season rolled on.

Joined by guitarist Joe Morris and drummer Reggie Nicholson, Victor’s 90-minute set was a meditation on uncompromised, unencumbered improvising. “It’s been ages since I’ve played that long a set being so unaware of the time,” Victor told me the next day. “Felt some Zen moments last night for sure!”

Victor’s SoundNoiseFUNK visited the Valley after spending a couple of days at Dartmouth College, where Taylor Ho Bynum hosted. Soprano saxophonist Sam Newsome, a regular member of the ensemble, was unable to make these gigs. Thankfully, we had a chance to hear Newsome play a solo concert last month in Holyoke.

SoundNoiseFUNK has been a unit for a couple of years and the rapport shows. “Every night is completely different,” Morris said afterwards. But what I imagine doesn’t change is their real-time pursuit of communion, as well as their willingness to embrace the unknown. Without a chart in sight, the trio dove in, three independent minds feeling each other out, much like the early rounds of a party chat, poking around until you settle on a subject to delve into.

It wasn’t until half way through the program that Victor sung a lyric. Her wordless vocals, produced from all parts of her instrument, challenged our assumptions of what a “jazz singer” is. The way she abstracted sound and interacted with her bandmates allowed me to hear her, not as a singer with the band, but as another member of the band. At one point, I saw her left hand fingering an imaginary saxophone.

Her original lyrics were simple, but moving and out of the ordinary. Her piece about the state of the world and the destruction of our environment had the refrain, “No atmosphere, no air,” which she hissed and twisted in many directions. We are all Eric Garner, I thought to myself.

Her song, “Creative Folks!” was a joyous manifesto for life affirming action. “Keep creating/Creating is connection/The contact feels like love/Remembering what is true in all of us/We need each other/We are the last revolutionaries.” Victor repeated the words until they dissolved into pure sound.

Joe Morris and Victor have a special connection. Their interaction was alive, brisling with risk and have-your-back support. He is one of today’s most creative guitarists. At times, he used electronic effects to create dense washes of sound that Victor would parachute through. Other times they skittered hand in hand in abstract conversation. Morris has lived in New Haven and Boston for much of his life, and has produced hundreds of concerts and recordings over his 40-year career. He has educated generations of students at New England Conservatory, played guitar (and bass) at the highest levels, and enlivened the music scene wherever he has been. He is a New England treasure.

I was so glad to have my first in-person visit with Reggie Nicholson. I knew him through the spectacular recordings he made with Amina Claudine Myers and Henry Threadgill in the 1980s, and Ernest Dawkins and Myra Melford in the 1990s. Like fellow Chicago drummer Hamid Drake, Nicholson’s playing was relaxed, and constantly advanced the conversation; both smile a lot. He played at just the right volume, with just the right amount of groove and openness. Nicholson recently retired from a career teaching music at Evander Childs High School in the Bronx, where he lives. Hopefully he’ll be on the road more in the coming years, including western Massachusetts. I heard him tell someone he was mentored by one of my favorites: Hal Russell. I need to ask him about that.

The story goes that Fay Victor was a more conventional jazz singer in New York, struggling to gain her footing, when she decided to move to Amsterdam in 1996. Seven years later, after working with Misha Mengleberg, Wolter Wierbos and other European iconoclasts, she returned to New York with an expanded approach to singing. She calls it “freesong.” I have to ask her about that transformation, too.