An Auspicious Live Improvisational Series in Prospect Park
As musicians are busting out all over the place to play, there’s an intriguing new series of early Tuesday night shows in Prospect Park, close to the 11th St. entrance at the top of the slope. The theme is conversational improvisation. This isn’t free jazz for people who like awkward bursts of spastic noise: this is for people who want to see tunes being pulled out of thin air. On April 14 at 5:30, the series features the cross-generational trio Becoming and Return with veteran Daniel Carter, most likely on sax, trumpet and maybe clarinet too, with Roshni Samlal on tabla and Dan Kurfirst on drums. It’s a good lineup because Samlal is just as much about subtlety as she is about fire, and Kurfirst is a colorist with a mystical, Middle Eastern side. There may be a point where the whole band turns into a quietly shamanic drum circle.
Carter has appeared on a million albums over the years. The most recent one, it seems (although you never know) is Telepathic Mysteries Vol. 1, by the aptly named Telepathic Band, streaming at Bandcamp. This group is similarly cross-generational, with Patrick Holmes on clarinet, Matthew Putman on piano and electric piano, Hilliard Greene on bass and Federico Ughi on drums. The level of interplay and calm imagination here is stunning, the group slowly conjuring a vast panorama of tunes.
They open the record with Nun Zero, a steady, swinging ballad that begins springing leaks and then the center gives way. The effect is irresistibly funny, too good to give away. The rhythm drops out for brooding piano and a pensive twin-clarinet interlude before an impatient pulse returns. There are swirls and ripples and a quasi-qawwali groove with spacy keys as Carter gently holds fort. Holmes’ clarinet returns to shadow Carter’s sax, then heads skyward, falling away for waves from the drums washing the shore. The creepy, tinkly, echoey electric piano makes a comeback, Carter a morose microtonal ghost in the background, until a long, bell-like, minimalistically insistent interlude with a relentless chill, Carter switching to trumpet. They take it out with calm echoes and flutters. Wow!
Track two, SignGhost Theatre, opens with what sounds like a lustrous allusion to Mood Indigo. Holmes leading the way, Carter’s trumpet shadowing him, the harmonies follow a lingering, rubato descent: that slow clarinet glissando over Ughi’s cautious tumbles will take your breath away.
Greene’s sly bends contrast with Putnam’s glittery piano and soaring clarinet in the barely two-minute While You Snap. The band go back to epic mode for S-Cape Cinemagic, opening with desolate twin clarinets over Ughi’s misterioso toms and Greene’s spare, solemn bass. Putnam’s steady, echoey Rhodes enhances the mystical, kaleidoscopic ambience, Holmes fueling a big rise to a steady, enveloping sway. The way Greene brings back the rhythm is just plain hilarious.
They close on a more hypnotic note with Lore Levels, clarinets wafting with the keys, bass and toms looming quietly in the distance. Putnam’s piano springs into action as Holmes leaps around, Carter’s trumpet signaling a clustering forward drive that goes out in a shimmering sunset. Who needs compositions when you have a crew who can improvise like this?
Lucid Culture 