When trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and pianist Angelica Sanchez played duo at Greenwich House Music School (April 6), there were zones of deep concentration and silence, but also an outburst or two from car horns on the small West Village street just outside. Smith’s horn, too, shattered the calm, but with high musical intent and creative control. Three of the six untitled improvisations began with Smith solo, commanding the room with triple-fortissimo shouts, relaxed and poetic legato lines, coarse multiphonic timbres, breath tones and fast blurry runs. Receiving all this inspiration from a few feet away, Sanchez showed a great virtuosic reach, favoring a dark language with 20th-century echoes. At one point she strove to drown out the car horns with a dissonant crescendo, but in quieter moments one could hear her voice, singing the notes and melodies as they emerged. Her sparse rubato passages and harp-like string strumming had a way of bringing out Smith’s lyricism and introspection. “More,” called out one listener after the fifth piece, but Smith grinned and turned the request around: “How much more?” Then began the stormy encore, with rumbling rhythms and patterns and a huge, long-decaying bass note from the piano as its final gesture. The rich harmonic bed of this collaboration sets it apart from Smith’s other recent duos with Louis Moholo-Moholo, Anthony Braxton, Adam Rudolph, Jack DeJohnette and others. There will in fact be more: Smith and Sanchez entered the studio the next day to record. (David R. Adler)
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With the band name Voyager emblazoned on his bass drum head, drummer Eric Harland appeared at Jazz Standard (April 13) and played five powerful extended numbers straight through. In this second of three sets, the leader spoke only at the end to introduce his colleagues: tenorist Walter Smith III, guitarist Julian Lage, pianist Taylor Eigsti and bassist Harish Raghavan. Each of these mammoth musicians could have played a full solo set and left the crowd happy, but what they did was a sequence of unaccompanied virtuoso spots to introduce or transition the tunes — “Intermezzos,” as Harland termed them on his 2011 debut Voyager: Live By Night (Sunnyside). Following a bright and challenging opener with the provisional title “New Song,” Lage brought a ragged experimentalism and strategic effects-pedal tweaking to his intro on “Voyager.” Raghavan was nimble and deeply expressive as he segued into the lyrical waltz ballad “Trust the Light.” Eigsti destroyed at the piano but also brought a cool and glowing harmony to the band, taking the spotlight right before the irresistibly soulful “Eclipse.” Smith battled a little harder to be heard, but he shred the music to pieces consistently. Harland’s show-stopping solo before “Play With Me,” the catchy groove-based finale, might have topped the energy of all previous intermezzos combined. But Harland doesn’t seek to dominate: he picks players who can do what he does, transforming the moment in their own highly personal way. (DA)
This Sunday at 11:30am, at B’nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side, I’ll be talking with bassist Daniel Ori and guitarist Dan Nadel about Israeli jazz, New York jazz, international jazz, hybrid jazz and not-jazz, and whatever else crosses our minds. Looking forward to it. They’ll each perform afterwards. The event is sponsored by Congregation Romemu in honor of Yom Ha’atzmaut, but of course I’ll be adding plugs for Jazz Appreciation Month, International Jazz Day (April 30) and the #JazzApril campaign.
It’s clear right away that pianist Fred Hersch’s “My Coma Dreams” is not a typical concert experience. Hersch premiered the “jazz theater” piece in New Jersey in 2011; the new production at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre (March 2) was altered but substantially similar. Narrator-vocalist Michael Winther portrayed both Hersch and his partner, Scott Morgan, describing the composer’s near-death experience from complications of AIDS. When he sang, Winther brought us inside the dream world that Hersch inhabited while unconscious for six weeks. Hersch played with a calm and luminous authority, fronting a midsized ensemble of reeds, brass, strings and rhythm conducted by Gregg Kallor (with standout solos from tenorist Adam Kolker, altoist Bruce Williamson and trumpeter Ralph Alessi). The music floated largely free of genre, although bassist John Hébert and drummer John Hollenbeck ensured that it swung when needed on episodes such as “Dream of Monk” and “Jazz Diner.” Winther was drowned out a couple of times by the band — something that didn’t happen at the premiere — but otherwise the sound was pristine. Hersch’s solitary piano on “The Boy” and Joyce Hammann’s viola feature on “Brussels” were simply stunning. In detailing a medical trauma, the show arrived at moving insights on life, love and the human condition. One haunting line in “The Knitters” took on multiple meanings as it was repeated: “We end as we begin.” (David R. Adler)
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From the loopy, elliptical way that drummer Billy Hart addressed the second-set crowd at Dizzy’s (March 14), it was easy to see how at home he feels with the members of his working quartet — tenor saxophonist Mark Turner, pianist Ethan Iverson and bassist Ben Street. Continuing in the exploratory vein of All Our Reasons, the band’s extraordinary 2012 debut for ECM, Hart shifted his focus to new music — some of which could appear on a follow-up for ECM in the works. “Yard,” based on the Charlie Parker blues “Cheryl,” was wide open harmonically (after his venturesome turn, Iverson got off the bench and let Turner solo without chords). Hart’s “Amethyst,” radically reworked from its early ’90s origins, grew from slow atmospheric rubato to raging dissonance, at last falling into tempo for an elegant written theme and finish. “Motional,” another earlier Hart composition, took on an easygoing Caribbean lilt, while Iverson’s “Neon,” from the 2006 HighNote release Quartet, closed the set in a 12/8 feel full of urgency and tension. Turner and Iverson showed a fearsome rapport on the pianist’s “Big Trees,” trading full choruses on rhythm changes, mostly without bass. Turner’s contribution, the lyrical midtempo swinger “Sonnet for Stevie” — “dig that,” remarked Hart when he said the title — highlighted the leader’s ability to reorient the conversation with a perfectly placed accent, a drop in ride cymbal volume, just the right thing in the moment. The time ebbed and flowed but never wavered. (DA)
It can’t be easy to say the words “2013 could be my last year.” But that’s what the audience heard when Fred Ho’s Green Monster Big Band performed at Ginny’s Supper Club in Harlem (Feb. 9). Ho seemed in good spirits and conducted the band with vigor, but he played no baritone sax (a role given to Ben Barson, the club’s co-manager). The early set erupted from the start with Ho’s first big band piece, “Liberation Genesis” (1975), which took on new meaning in light of the composer’s cancer fight. Keyboardist Art Hirahara, bassist Ken Filiano and drummer-percussionist Royal Hartigan laid the foundation for an edifice of reeds and brass, including the paired altos of Bobby Zankel and Marty Ehrlich and the bass trombones of Earl McIntyre and Dave Taylor. The band was obstreperous yet tightly coordinated, marrying modernist harmony and raw groove, breaking away on occasion to free-improvising duos (one of them led off the Ellington ballad “In a Sentimental Mood”). Ho took a moment before “Iron Man Meets the Black Dog Meets Dave Taylor” to recount how he met the remarkable Taylor, during his days as a sub with the Gil Evans Orchestra. Aspects of Gil’s approach, Ho explained, have decisively impacted his own. “Float Like a Butterfly, Sting Like an Afro-Asian Bumblebee,” a movement from Sweet Science Suite, found Ho speaking about future plans in spite of his illness: the “music and martial arts extravaganza,” as he described it, will be staged at BAM in the fall of this year. (David R. Adler)
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By tradition, the winner of the annual Thelonious Monk Competition is the first to play in the Tribeca Performing Arts Center’s annual Monk in Motion series. Jamison Ross, the 2012 victor, obliged with a strong showcase of his Joy Ride sextet (Feb. 2), paving the way for runners-up Colin Stranahan (Feb. 16) and Justin Brown (March 2). Ross’s swing feel was spry and deeply interactive; his take on the postbop language of Harold Mabern, Cedar Walton and Joe Henderson was without flaw. But this Florida native and current New Orleanian had a swampier rhythmic element, a deep affinity for the blues, at the heart of his sound. He opened the first set with the funky “It Ain’t My Fault,” by legendary New Orleans drummer Smokey Johnson, and closed with a stirring vocal rendition of Muddy Waters’ “Deep Down in Florida.” The funk surfaced in a different way on “Sandy Red” (Ross’ variation on “Cantaloupe Island”), a feature for fired-up percussionist Nate Werth. Trumpeter Alphonso Horne and tenorist Troy Roberts were consistently solid in the front line, although the most interesting moment was the slow trio reading of “Stompin’ at the Savoy,” featuring just Ross, pianist Chris Pattishall and bassist Corcoran Holt. One could call it an anti-orchestration, sparse as can be, with Ross’ delicate breaks on brushes replacing parts of the main melody. It was clear enough what wowed the competition judges: Ross knows the jazz tradition cold and uses what he loves from every time period, every genre, to bring his own voice into focus. (DA)
Having endured as a working band for nearly a decade and a half, The Bad Plus doesn’t lack for material. The first Sunday set at the Village Vanguard (Jan. 6) featured pieces from the trio’s latest Made Possible but also others stretching back to Give (2004) and Suspicious Activity? (2005). It’s a repertoire of great distinction, and all of it in this set was original, with each of the bandmates (pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Reid Anderson, drummer Dave King) contributing tunes. No deconstructed rock-pop-disco-electronica covers for now — but note that originals have made up the bulk of the band’s work from the start. Iverson’s “Mint” led it off, stormy and rubato, pushing toward chaos and yet unmistakably precise. King’s “Wolf Out” followed with insistent polyrhythm and faster, higher precision — a strong example of the band’s willingness to foreground composition entirely, leaving improv temporarily to the side. Yet there were solos as well, and powerful ones: King’s commanding statements toward the end of Anderson’s “You Are” and Iverson’s “Reelect That” brought the energy in the house to a high. The playing was extraordinary, the musical language inimitable: melodically pure and pop-like, “swinging” in the broad sense, at times as dense and intricate as the most modern chamber group. Anderson took to the role of banterer between tunes, winding the audience up in deadpan fashion with tales of body sprays, science fair volcanoes and a tabla-playing E.T. (David R. Adler)
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Pianist Gerald Clayton told his audience at Smalls (Jan. 9) that he had to “work up the courage” to call tenor saxophonist Mark Turner when putting together the band. It was Clayton’s first gig there in some time, and the quartet, with Turner, bassist Matt Brewer and drummer Obed Calvaire, offered something different from Clayton’s celebrated working trio. They started simply, with the midtempo Charlie Parker blues “Relaxin’ at Camarillo” serving as a launch pad into space. No matter how far they stretched, however, they swung, and Brewer maybe most of all: his solos held the room rapt with their rhythmic authority, lithe technique and pure soul, especially on “Under Mad Hatter Medicinal Group On,” Clayton’s homage to Billy Strayhorn’s “U.M.M.G.” Calvaire brought something indispensable to Dizzy Gillespie’s “Con Alma,” maintaining a tight, staccato triplet feel and using every percussive detail of the drum kit. With “Vibe Quota,” the set ended in a quieter way: first came the bass/tenor unison theme in a low register, then contemplative tenor and piano solos, then a brighter vamp with a smoking drum sendoff from Calvaire. Turner seemed the most cerebral and restrained of the group, but the fact that he projected plenty of sound, with no mic, in front of a rhythm section as driving as this was remarkable. His compositional voice was also in the mix: the second set opened with an intriguing, uncommonly slow interpretation of “Myron’s World.” (DA)
As a student of Lennie Tristano and a noted colleague of Lee Konitz and Warne Marsh, tenor saxophonist Ted Brown provides a living link to the Tristano school — an intriguing area in jazz history, somewhere in the interstices between bop and “cool.” Brown turned 85 the day before his gig at the Drawing Room (Dec. 2), so he arrived ready to celebrate in his calm and imperturbable way. His co-leader for the first set was Brad Linde, a young DC-based tenorist and Brown disciple, who played with distinction on Brown’s “Smog Eyes” and Tristano’s “317 East 32nd Street,” not to mention the standards “Broadway” and “My Melancholy Baby.” Pianist Michael Kanan, who runs the Drawing Room as a rehearsal space and concert venue, joined the band and juiced up the harmony, adding his own inventive spark. After a break, attention turned to Brown with cornetist Kirk Knuffke, bassist Chris Lightcap and drummer Matt Wilson. Harmony was king in this quartet, even with no piano: Knuffke and Brown snaked their way through the changes of “Featherbed” (based on “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To”) and applied the Tristano logic in minor keys (“Jazz of Two Cities”) and waltz time (“Dig-It”), all from their new SteepleChase disc Pound Cake. Knuffke had a way of dancing into his melodies, as if striving to embody each phrase physically. Brown played his trickiest heads without a flaw, and his solos, while not as agile as way back in the day, were stamped with pure individuality. (David R. Adler)
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Though it entailed gathering musicians from various parts of the globe, Canadian clarinet master François Houle did the right thing by playing ShapeShifter Lab (Dec. 2) with the exact lineup from his brilliant Songlines release Genera. The frontline of Houle, trombonist Samuel Blaser and cornetist/flugelhornist Taylor Ho Bynum allowed for endless color mutations and finely rendered written parts. Benoît Delbecq kept a fairly low profile on piano and prepared piano, but he endowed the music with a wealth of harmonic and percussive twists. Bassist Michael Bates and drummer Harris Eisenstadt pointed the way from the airiest rubato abstraction to driving, meticulously placed rhythms. The set began slow, with the dark lyricism of “Le concombre de Chicoutimi,” but Houle was thinking in terms of a long medley: Bates soon segued to the uptempo line of “Essay No. 7,” then joined Eisenstadt for a bass/drums interlude that brought the band into the emphatic, slow-grooving “Guanara.” Houle was blowing two clarinets at once by the time the medley was finished. On the swing-based “Albatros” he played through half a clarinet, connecting his mouthpiece directly to the lower joint. That is the essence of Houle’s approach: wildly unstable, expressionistic elements vie with straightforward and undeniable virtuosity. The dueling plunger shouts of Bynum and Blaser on “Mu-Turn Revisited” offered another vivid example. (DA)
Trumpeter Jeremy Pelt’s quintet, arguably one of the strongest working bands in jazz, has held together long enough to record four albums: November, Men of Honor, The Talented Mr. Pelt and this year’s Soul. There were new faces onstage, however, when Pelt arrived for a special birthday engagement at Smoke (November 11). Pianist Danny Grissett and bassist Dwayne Burno remained in place, bringing characteristic depth and poise to Pelt’s original material. On tenor sax, in JD Allen’s stead, was the inspired Roxy Coss, whose slow-burning and methodical approach paired well with Pelt’s more incendiary solos. Jonathan Barber, occupying Gerald Cleaver’s spot on drums, swung without inhibition and did much to enhance the music’s wide dynamic range. Having begun the second set with the intricate “Dreamcatcher,” Pelt transitioned immediately to Myron Walden’s slow and dreamlike “Pulse,” which elicited bluesy, carefully placed phrases from the leader at maximum volume — as if he were shouting to the streets just outside. On “Second Love,” the most straightforwardly lyrical piece, Pelt was subdued yet just as pointedly expressive. He put Barber in the spotlight after a full rotation of solos on the animated “Milo Hayward,” and closed with “What’s Wrong Is Right,” a forceful midtempo blues with no chordal backing (Grissett soloed with only his right hand). The pacing of the set was superb — Pelt knew exactly what he wanted, and his band was right there to do it. (David R. Adler)
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Dormant for years, the Jazz Composers Collective reunited for a festival at Jazz Standard and closed out the week with the remarkable Herbie Nichols Project (November 11). This sextet’s sole purpose is to showcase the lost music of pianist/composer Nichols, one of jazz’s unheralded geniuses. To that end, pianist Frank Kimbrough, bassist Ben Allison and cohorts opened with “Wildflower,” encored with “Spinning Song” and got loose mid-set over the blazing tempo of “Crisp Day/Blue Chopsticks” — all from the band’s 1996 debut Love Is Proximity. Since then, however, there’s been a startling development: an old trunk containing manuscripts for over 160 Nichols compositions, long rumored lost in a flood, was recently located. The pieces range from the late ’50s to the early ’60s (Nichols died in 1963). “Tell the Birds I Said Hello,” the second tune of the set, was from this lost batch, and it found Michael Blake pondering a simple lyrical melody on soprano sax before yielding to solos from Kimbrough and trumpeter Ron Horton. “Games and Codes,” with Blake and Ted Nash on tenors, was a doleful ballad with laid-back swing passages and tight orchestration. “Blues No. 1” also featured dual tenors up front and a go-for-broke bass solo from Allison as the main focus. “Van Allen Belt,” a showstopper, inspired a fierce outpouring from Nash on alto. While Nichols’ tunes were nothing short of a revelation, the band’s interpretive prowess at every step was equally a thing of beauty. (DA)
Just when you’re expecting an hour of solo electric guitar at Bar 4 (July 2), leave it to Mike Gamble to get behind a drum set. The multi-talented Gamble began on guitar, however, filling the small space with a rough solid-body tone that has earned him gigs with the likes of Todd Sickafoose and Bobby Previte. Though he’s recorded previously with his trio the Inbetweens and other projects, Gamble is in true experimental tightrope mode as a solo act. His recent release Loomer (Engine) captures it well, but his live show allows us actually to see the process unfold. With a sleekly designed effects pedalboard he loops ideas until they generate their own rhythmic momentum. Chord patterns and melodies continue to build intensity and grandeur, even after Gamble stops playing. And that’s where the drums come in: several times Gamble put the guitar down and began improvising fractured beats over the sound palette he’d created. Or he’d do both, chording guitar with one hand while striking a hi-hat or bass drum in time. From the technological haze emerged several themes: a piece from Loomer called “The Age of Analog,” an Inbetweens vehicle called “Yearsnew,” the immersive encore “I’m On Your Side.” There were moments of pure and simple guitar as well: dark and doleful chord-melody passages, even some single-note line playing in the end. Gamble did everything with a view toward orchestral richness and compositional craft, even if he defied convention at every turn. (David R. Adler)
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It was getting near time for guitarist Joel Harrison and sarodist Anupam Shobhakar to co-lead their quintet at Drom (July 13). But first, Harrison sat in the audience and enjoyed an opening set of North Indian ragas played by Shobhakar, Jay Gandhi on bansuri (wood flute) and Nitin Mitta on tabla. For 15 minutes or so there was pure stillness and contemplation as Gandhi and Shobhakar introduced the traditional rag desh out of tempo. Mitta entered the fray and the group launched a 16-beat tintal cycle, spinning variations of ever-increasing complexity and passion. Though Harrison’s set was vastly different, it took an East/West dialogue as its premise and retained certain Indian elements — not just Shobhakar’s twangy sarod but also his compositional voice on the opening “Chakradouns” and the closing “Madhuvanti.” These were pieces with only skeletal harmony; their tricky unison figures tested the skills and communicative energies of pianist Jacob Sacks, bassist Johannes Weidenmueller and drummer Rob Garcia. Harrison, playing a Les Paul and often soloing with a slide, brought rock-club volume to the set, not least on his arrangement of Willie Dixon’s “Spoonful.” But his trading with Shobhakar oddly recalled the bansuri-sarod exchanges of the first set. (Hindustan meets postwar Chicago.) “The Translator” and “Leave the Door Open,” intricate Harrison originals, will likely speak with greater clarity on a forthcoming studio release. (DA)
You might not think there’s room in the universe for another Thelonious Monk tribute. But pianist Eric Reed’s two most recent Savant discs, The Dancing Monk and The Baddest Monk, aren’t retreads in any sense: they’re consistently fresh and insightful, not to mention flat-out swinging. Leading a quintet in a late Saturday set at Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola (June 2), Reed found uncommon routes through Monk’s already uncommon music. Even the stage setup was odd: piano dead center, with the horns (trumpeter Etienne Charles, tenorist Seamus Blake) at stage right behind Reed’s back. This put the leader in closer quarters with bassist Matt Clohesy and drummer Kevin Kanner, and the communication flowed. For the most part, Reed eschewed conventional solo order and split choruses up in different ways: Blake and Charles alternated just the bridges on “Rhythm-a-ning,” stayed mum until the trading with Kanner on “Pannonica” and reveled in continuous trading with the full band on the closing “Epistrophy.” After “Four In One,” featuring a staggeringly inventive Reed solo, Blake and Charles left the bandstand altogether. Reed eased into “’Round Midnight,” modifying the coda into an extended vamp. He segued directly into “Bright Mississippi,” taken at breakneck speed and partially reharmonized. The strategy was simple yet seemingly foolproof: every tune was a study in variation, and every player got right to the point. Surely that’s one mark of a fine bandleader. (David R. Adler)
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Guitarist Julian Lage normally leads a small ensemble with cello and percussion, but the first of his two appearances at the Stone (June 10) featured a pared-down unit with just Jorge Roeder on upright bass and Dan Blake on tenor and soprano saxes. Lage was lightly amplified with a dry and woody timbre — a modest sound that contrasted with the furious pace of his ideas. The set began in a folkish vein with the pastoral “Woodside Waltz” and the brighter “Up From the North,” both of which made clear that Blake and Roeder would be equally spotlighted, and kept on their toes, by the jaw-dropping leader. There were two explicitly jazzy pieces, the dissonant “Raven” and the effortlessly melodic (and provisionally titled) “Fake Standard,” each introduced with snappy rhythm guitar. There were also nods to country and bluegrass with the Merle Travis-inspired “In and Around” and the scorching finale “Greylighting.” Whether caressing a pure and simple line or taking on a treacherous unison passage, Blake and Lage phrased together as one and brought grit and edge to the most tuneful environments. It’s not new to hear chops on the guitar, but articulation as novel and dynamically varied as Lage’s is rare — his improvised counterpoint and cross-register leaps on “233 Butler,” the dark and intricate opener to his latest disc Gladwell, were almost too fast and complex to take in. It seemed well beyond what he could do even a year ago. And yet music, not mere flash, was the result. (DA)
Pianist Craig Taborn has gigged with bassist Thomas Morgan and drummer Gerald Cleaver for a number of years, but it took the trio all this time finally to play New York. The late Saturday set at the Village Vanguard (April 7) moved from deep abstraction and stillness to a kind of beat-based pulsing energy, reflecting Taborn’s far-flung influences from Cecil Taylor to Detroit techno. Large stretches were free, but the precision was unmistakable, a key aesthetic ingredient. Taborn and Morgan, immersed in the densest thickets of improvised sound, would launch suddenly into tight unison passages, some of which seemed to stretch the limits of the possible (Morgan’s contorted fingerings belied the elegance of the ideas themselves). Taborn announced no titles, but some of his repertoire for the week, including “American Landscape,” was from the 2001 trio disc Light Made Lighter, though completely reinvented. Newer pieces had working titles like “Chorales” and “Gal 1.” The leader gave his lyrical, reflective side plenty of room to show itself, yet the rhythms were true puzzlers, marked by hypnotic repetition, aggressive attack and exceedingly subtle shifts over time. Seeds of this approach were sown during Taborn’s period with Tim Berne; there are interesting parallels to be drawn with Vijay Iyer’s Accelerando as well. But the trio’s ECM debut — the follow-up to Taborn’s 2011 solo piano stunner Avenging Angel — will likely defy all comparisons when it’s recorded later this year. (David R. Adler)
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It’s always been the case: Kneebody just has to be experienced live. That’s the logic behind the band’s multi-night residencies hosted by Search & Restore. The last of four evenings at Littlefield (April 14) was appropriately festive. Trumpeter Shane Endsley, tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel, keyboardist Adam Benjamin, bassist Kaveh Rastegar and drummer Nate Wood were visibly thrilled to have bassist and singer-songwriter Meshell Ndegeocello as their special guest (previous nights found the band covering music by Tom Zé, Judee Sill and others). But first Kneebody offered a set of its own, playing music from a forthcoming album, including Benjamin’s “Blorp,” which segued into “Unforeseen Influences” from 2010’s You Can Have Your Moment. There’s no exact name for Kneebody’s music — it’s electric jazz, surely, with wall-shaking beats and a phenomenal intricacy typified by “Trite,” with a killer drum intro from Wood, and “Towel Hard,” the blistering final encore. But Ndegeocello’s set brought out another kind of versatility in these players, as they tackled Gil Scott-Heron’s “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,” Jimi Hendrix’s “Spanish Castle Magic,” and items from Meshell’s 2011 disc Weather including “Dead End,” the P-Funkish “Rapid Fire” and the noir ballad “Crazy and Wild.” Chris Bruce added scratchy Telecaster, and Meshell wielded Fender bass when she wasn’t singing with a rueful tenderness — a sound as hard to pin down as Kneebody itself. (DA)
