Slavic Soul Party! Brings the Magic

When music inspires both feet and minds, the spirit can soar. The nine-piece band of merry makers, known as Slavic Soul Party! (yes, the exclamation point is part of their name), travelled to Amherst, by way of Brooklyn, by way of Skopje, to revel with 350 appreciative listeners at Bowker Auditorium, on Thursday, November 16, as the 29th season of the UMass Fine Arts Centers’ Magic Triangle Jazz Series marched on.

Led by percussionist Matt Moran, SSP! is a quintessential 21st century band, a hybrid, comfortable in a variety of settings. According to their biography, over 17 years they have performed “from pasha’s palaces to dive bars, Carnegie Hall to Serbian schoolyards, festival stages to prison courtyards.” Their concert on the elegant Bowker Auditorium stage was followed the next evening by a performance at the Williamsburg Grange (Massachusetts, not Brooklyn), playing in the middle of a spongy floor with dancers all around them.

The band’s ease of being was matched by Moran’s informative, easy-going engagement with his Magic Triangle audience. Throughout, he gave thoughtful, concise context for the selections, showing a real grasp and a high regard for the rich world of Balkan music. When he asked if there was anyone from the Balkans in the audience, there was a smattering of applause and shouts. He responded with a “welcome” and a thank you (the same in all Slavic-based languages), then played a traditional Macedonian lesno (a dance in 7/8.)

We know Moran as a fantastic vibraphone player, who in the last couple of years has performed in the Pioneer Valley with Nate Wooley’s Quintet and John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet. With SSP! he plays a bass drum with a small cymbal on top, known variously throughout the region as tapan (Serbia), toba (Romanian), davul (Turkey) or dhol (Armenia). The harnessed drum, produces two very distinct tones: a bass tone made with a mallet and a higher pitched sound made with a thin stick that easily cut through the band’s dense sound. Moran moved inside the slight semi-circle formed by the eight musicians, directing the ensemble with feints and choreographed drum accents.

SSP! began in 2000 and has had a slowly rotating cast of first rate instrumentalists. Four of the nine musicians in Amherst were not on their most recent release, the celebrated 2016 Ropeadope recording of Duke Ellington’s Far East Suite. Their weekly Tuesday gig at Barbès, an intimate night spot in Park Slope, Brooklyn, gives the band ample opportunity to break in new members and new material. The Far East Suite was recorded live at Barbès.

What separates SSP! from other extraverted, good-time brass bands is the sheer virtuosity of its members. John Carlson, Kenny Warren (trumpet), Tim Vaughn, Beserat Tafesse (trombone), Eddie Barbash (saxophone), Kenny Bentley (tuba), Peter Stan (accordion), Jake Shandling (snare drum) and Matt Moran are all accomplished musicians with a wealth of varied playing experience. Their solos on the Ellington material, traditional Balkan tunes and Moran originals brought extra energy to the room.

Special mention must be made of accordionist Peter Stan, a Roma musician from Serbia. His unaccompanied solos were filled with rich, arpeggiated runs and, as the only chordal instrument on stage, his comping added a piquant modernity to the proceedings.

As the satisfied throng was leaving the theater, I heard people reference the heft of Tower of Power, the infectiousness of New Orleans marching bands and the dance-ability of a James Brown revue. This music – of, for and by the people – was distinctly East European, yet accessible to all who love music with a social purpose.

Let’s Get Lost: Daniel Levin Trio at Studio4

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?”

Mike Baggetta Trio Moves and Inspires

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.