A little more than ten years ago, during a period of semi-self-(un)employment between P.R. gigs, I found myself spending a beautiful late-summer (or early autumn) afternoon at The Grey Dog's Coffee on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village with Jeff Gauthier and G.E. Stinson, two Los Angeles-based musicians. I can't recall the specifics of what we discussed that day, although I'm sure it had to do with strategizing ways in which these grossly overlooked west coast players might attract more attention here in New York City.
What I do remember, vividly, is the sound of a gunning engine and screeching brakes -- over and over. Finally, we got up and peeked outside, where we saw Danny Aiello racing a sexy little convertible up the tiny length of Carmine, then skidding around the corner onto Bleecker, repeatedly. Then we saw the cameras. At the time, Aiello was starring in Dellaventura, a short-lived television detective series on CBS, and apparently, it was shooting on Carmine Street that day. Somehow, it seemed an altogether appropriate accompaniment to a meeting with two musicians from L.A.
That I was sitting there with Gauthier and Stinson had everything to do with Vinny Golia. Back in college, the radio station I worked at received a handful of LPs issued by maverick reedist Golia's label, 9 Winds. That seminal left-coast imprint documented California's unsung creative-music underground, issuing records by countless artists whose work hardly subscribed to the presumed west-coast ethic of cool, easy-listening jazz.
I latched onto a number of these players and followed them elsewhere. Eventually, from my office at Koch International circa 1993, I struck up a correspondence with guitarist Nels Cline, whose first few albums as a bandleader appeared on the Koch-distributed Enja label. Contact with Nels eventually led to my being in touch with his twin brother, drummer Alex Cline, who'd played on Tim Berne's Fulton Street Maul and made a gorgeous record of his own for ECM. Later came contact with Gauthier, who played in a group called Quartet Music with the Clines and bassist-pianist Eric von Essen, and Stinson, a renegade from the pioneering Windham Hill world-fusion band Shadowfax.
It was a heady time, to say the least. Whether Gauthier was already laying plans for a label of his own at the time of that meeting, I can't say for certain. He probably was: less than two years later came the first two releases on Cryptogramophone, by Alex Cline and Jeanette Wrate.
Gauthier's new imprint featured some of the same players previously heard on 9 Winds. But where that label had been run on the proverbial shoestring, Gauthier invested in top-notch sound, beautiful packaging and a serious Internet presence from the start. Impressive records from Gauthier, both Clines, Alan Pasqua, Mark Dresser, Erik Friedlander, Don Preston and others followed, as did a valuable and deeply moving three-disc series in which artists interpreted the compositions of von Essen, who died prematurely in 1997.
This week, Gauthier and a sizeable portion of his Cryptogramophone stable have taken over the Jazz Standard on East 27th Street for "Cryptonights," an eighth-anniversary blowout. Gauthier opened the series tonight (March 26) with his Goatette, augmented by guest cellist Friedlander. Drummer Scott Amendola plays with Nels Cline, violinist Jenny Scheinman and bassist John Shifflett on Tuesday night. The following night, pianist Myra Melford leads her quintet, Be Bread, with trumpeter Cuong Vu, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, bassist Stomu Takeishi and drummer Elliot Humberto Kavee. On Thursday and Friday nights, Nels Cline presents his Andrew Hill project with a sextet that includes Goldberg, Amendola, cornetist Bobby Bradford, accordionist Andrea Parkins and bassist Devin Hoff. Rounding out the series on Saturday and Sunday nights is reedist Bennie Maupin, who leads a quartet with bassist Darek Oles, drummer Michael Stephans and percussionist Munyungo Jackson.
(Small irony number one: You can actually catch Andrew Hill himself leading a trio at Trinity Church on Thursday afternoon at 1pm Eastern Standard Time for a mere two bucks -- or view a live webcast for free -- then hear Nels Cline play Hill's music the same evening. Small irony number two: The only time I've previously caught Bennie Maupin live was at the Knitting Factory in 1996, when he was a sideman in a quartet led by... Andrew Hill.)
Tonight, Jeff Gauthier and his Goatette (with keyboardist David Witham, bassist Joel Hamilton and Los Bros. Cline) kicked off the first set of "Cryptonights" with "Ahfulat," the breezy opening track from Gauthier's latest CD, One and the Same. Proving, perhaps, that intensity doesn't necessarily depend upon violence, Nels snapped his high E with his opening strums, and played the duration with five strings. He ducked off to change strings during a spacy keyboard solo, which led to a splattered free-time section over which Gauthier pulled broad, patient strokes. Nels returned with a manic solo of bleeps, burps and swirls, controlled as much with his right hand on a small effects box as by anything he did on his instrument.
Nels managed to snap the same string in the opening bars of the following tune, Ornette Coleman's "L'Enfant," which opened with a rollicking head, simmered down to a slow rhapsody and regained steam after a series of slow-motion trades between Hamilton and Alex Cline. As Nels retreated to replace his string yet again, the remaining quartet played an older Gauthier tune, "Astor," which evoked the romantic side of titular tango master Astor Piazzolla's oeuvre without overt mimicry, and included a majestic solo from Hamilton. During Witham's solo, the music combined a cinematic scope with working-band concision. Another Piazzolla tribute, "That Little Tango," was sharper and harder: all elbows and knuckles to the preceding tune's waist and hips. Nels joined midway through, plucking manic 16th-note runs in which his strings somehow miraculously remained intact.
Erik Friedlander joined the group for the set closer, "Olivier's Nightmare," dedicated to Messiaen. The piece opened with the cellist's fleet-fingered runs over Alex Cline's rolling gongs and cymbals; a writhing melody led to a lengthy electric-Miles percolation on a single chord and a cataclysmic, effect-laden solo from Nels that simultaneously evoked Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo and Sonny Sharrock before climaxing in a theremin orgasm. On a Sunday night at Tonic, this would have earned intense nods; on a Friday night at the Lion's Den it would have driven the 'heads into a frenzy. Here, the response was reasonably hearty, if perhaps shellshocked. All told, it was an intense, lively introduction to what should prove an enlightening, energizing week.
Playlist:
Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson - String Quartet No. 1, "Calvary" - New Black Repertory Ensemble String Quartet (Cedille)
Jody Redhage - All Summer in a Day (New Amsterdam)
Missy Mazzoli - Shy Girl Shouting Music; These Worlds in Us; Orizzonte; Lies You Can Believe In; Between Heaven and Headlights; In Spite of All This (MP3 streams)
Bethany & Rufus - 900 Miles (Hyena)
David Toop - Sound Body (Samadhi Sound)
Rush - Hold Your Fire (Mercury)
Yes - Tales from Topographic Oceans (Elektra/Rhino)
Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 3: Pembroke Pines, FL, May 22, 1977 (Grateful Dead)
Electric Light Orchestra - Flashback (Epic/Legacy)
Fred Frith and Chris Cutler - The Stone, Issue Two (Tzadik)
Dept of Good and Evil feat. Rachel Z - Dept of Good and Evil feat. Rachel Z (Savoy Jazz)
Amy Winehouse - Back to Black (Island)
Grateful Dead - Dick's Picks, Vol. 5: Oakland, CA, Dec. 26, 1979 (Grateful Dead) and Live at the Cow Palace - New Year's Eve 1976 (Grateful Dead/Rhino)
Quartet Music - Summer Night (Delos)
Jeff Gauthier Goatette - One and the Same (Cryptogramophone)
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