Qualm Before the Storm: Steve Swell’s Kende Dreams

A patina of anticipation hung over 40 intrepid music-lovers on Friday the 13th, as Pioneer Valley Jazz Shares assembled at the Northampton Arts Trust to witness the last concert of a small tour by Steve Swell’s Kende Dreams. The typical pre-concert buzz of excitement was overlaid by mild dread in the face of the uncertain arc of the gathering pandemic. As we awaited the performance of Swell (trombone), Rob Brown (alto saxophone), William Parker (bass) and Michael T.A. Thompson (drums), there was a dawning realization that this might be the last live music any of us would hear for some time. For someone whose passion and purpose is bringing together world-class artists and open-minded audiences, it was an evening filled with swirling emotions. Perhaps it was that sense of impending qualm, mingled with our love for the music, that produced the palpable intensity and beauty we heard on stage.

When Silkheart Records offered Swell the opportunity to record an homage to Béla Bartók in 2014, his research led him to Hungary and the kende, the spiritual leader of the Magyars, who lived in the region before the founding of the Hungarian state. The kende served in a dual-monarchy with the gyula, or war-chief. (Unsurprisingly, all power was later usurped by the gyula.) When Kende Dreams performed at Hampshire College in September, 2016, the band was reeling from the recent death of their beloved pianist, Connie Crothers. This time, the musicians were staring into a future of canceled gigs and lost income.

In 1997 Fred Ho told us to Turn Pain into Power! (OODiscs), and Swell’s quartet did just that. They played with the conviction that comes from decades on the front lines of cultural production; they advanced the music with a righteous authority. Their 80-minute set brimmed with feelings of all kinds.

Brown and Swell have played together regularly since 1994, when they met in Parker’s famed Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra. They have built an amazing rapport, not only finishing each other’s sentences, but able to talk and listen at the same time. Their interplay was so seamless I sometimes heard them as one instrument. During recurring moments of high energy, when I sat inside their throbbing cacophony, I was convinced it was the calmest place in the world.

We saw Michael T.A. Thompson at Augusta Savage Gallery last year, in a delicate recital with violinist Jason Kao Hwang. This March 13th concert provided a fuller picture of Thompson’s impressive drumming. He was given lots of solo space, which he filled with forceful intelligence. The drum solos I like best have a clear scaffold of motifs to serve as points of departure, signposts used to tell the story. Thompson’s solos had that architecture. His brief use of harmonica lent a soothing, slightly mysterious air to the proceedings; when Swell joined playing plunger mute, the passing colors had a cleansing effect.

The compositions were all Swell’s and they guided us through moods of deep reverence, agitated indeterminacy and off-the-ground elation. Their full throttle, swinging unison passages were thrown into even greater relief by earlier periods of muted introspection.

Seeing William Parker so soon after his Feb. 27 appearance with Gerald Cleaver and David Virelles was a joy and a comfort. Over dinner, the droll godfather of the avant-garde reveled us with stories of his colorful Lower East Side neighbors, including Horizontal Man and Hot Dog. His anecdotes and his unflappability boosted my spirits, and maybe my immune system. His unaccompanied bass solo was impressive, not for its technical brilliance, but for its slow unfurling of a resonant sound world that enveloped us, and, if only for a moment, made us forget the madness.

It just so happens this Northampton concert, and earlier ones at Rhizome (Washington, DC), Keystone Korner (Baltimore) and Bop Shop (Rochester, NY), were supported by Jazz Road, a major new grant program administered by South Arts. Swell likened the four stops to “European style touring,” meaning the musicians could make some actual money. The irony that this brief taste of decent pay will be followed by a precipitous, virus-induced drop in income is cruel. This will cause real harm to artists and the citizens they serve. But jazz musicians, having always existed in the gig economy, are rarely surprised when things go from bad to worse.

There are organizations like Equal Sound and Freelance Artist Resource that are raising funds to give money to musicians who have lost work.

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.