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)
Pianist Dan Tepfer has absorbed untold wisdom through his many duo engagements with alto great Lee Konitz, but at Cornelia Street Café (April 9th) it was time for the young Tepfer to face another giant, bassist Gary Peacock. (Konitz was on hand to hear it.) “I’ll Remember April” made for an exploratory warm-up, with a strong but loosely felt tempo and streams of harmonic depth and fullness, qualities that spilled into the original material that followed. Inspired by long conversations at Peacock’s rural home, Tepfer wrote several new pieces with titles drawn from the bassist’s actual words. “If You Fail” was a hovering waltz with dark melodies and free-form episodes, rich in dialogue. “He Just Takes the Sticks and Plays,” a reference to Paul Motian, had a saucy midtempo swing bounce, harking back to the interplay of the opening standard. “The Gratitude That I Can Still Play,” an oddly configured ballad, gave Peacock one of many opportunities to show that yes, he most certainly can; his commanding solo spots and pithy responses to Tepfer held the room in rapt silence. The duo also tackled two of Peacock’s compositions: “Moor,” recorded as far back as 1963 with Paul Bley, began with weighty solo bass and grew from spacious lyricism to some of the night’s freest, most unsettled playing. “Lullabye” was the high point, however: a slow-crawling web of arpeggios and unisons and orchestrated give-and-take, ominous yet somehow delicate, proof that this pairing can do magic. (David R. Adler)
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Ascend to the bandstand with pianist Martial Solal, relentless as ever at 83, and you’re going to have a challenging time of it. But bassist François Moutin faced the unusually daunting task of playing duo with Solal for a week at the Village Vanguard. At the outset of their Thursday late set (April 14th), Moutin stayed out the way while Solal got into Rodgers & Hart’s “There’s a Small Hotel,” but their swinging chemistry ignited soon enough. For all of Solal’s lightning runs and flurries, he pinned his ideas to the main melody to a remarkable extent. At full steam, however, Solal will change keys at will in the middle of a section, or quote whimsically at length, then return to the tune he left behind and have it make sense. “All the Things You Are” and “Tea for Two” found themselves commingled. “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” somehow became “Stardust” and then ended, abruptly. Ditto “Caravan” and “Prelude to a Kiss.” Moutin’s reaction time through all this was swifter than anyone could rightly expect, and his solos were often as captivating as Solal’s. The two have a similar sort of wild proficiency, and the duo format gave them a unique space to roam — although Solal’s recent trio discs NY1 and Longitude show the focusing effect a drummer can have. Here tempos were taken up and cast aside, whether on ballads like “Lover Man” and “I Can’t Get Started” or romps like “I Got Rhythm” and the jubilant encore “The Last Time I Saw Paris.” (DA)
Martial Solal Sat., Apr. 9, 8pm. $32-$38. Kimmel Center, 260 South Broad St. 215.731.3333 www.kimmelcenter.org
There are only three pianists who’ve had the honor of playing solo for a week at the Village Vanguard: Fred Hersch, Cecil Taylor and 83-year-old Algerian-born Frenchman Martial Solal. With a firm attack, dazzling chops and whimsical but unfailingly logical way of shredding chord changes, Solal is a modern master. But this is a virtuosity informed by deep firsthand contact with masters of old: Solal recorded with jazz founding father Sidney Bechet back in the ’50s, shortly before Bechet’s death. Recent collaborations with Dave Douglas (Rue De Seine), monster bassist François Moutin (NY1, Longitude) and others have kept Solal young at heart. He’ll return to the Vanguard next week with Moutin, but Philly gets him first, unaccompanied. Hear him and you won’t forget him. — David R. Adler
