The Buck and a Quarter Quartet: A Party in a Box in an Unexpected Spot

It’s been estimated that a quarter of this city’s 2019 population left in the months following the 2020 lockdown. Whatever the actual percentage is, it stands to reason that those who could afford to get out, did.

Beyond the Cuomo regime’s throttling of music venues when the disgraced former governor criminalized indoor live performances, the resulting brain drain has no doubt exacerbated the closure of so many former hotspots, both from the demand and the supply side. It also helps explain why an unorthodox 20s hot jazz band like the Buck and a Quarter Quartet would be playing a pseudo-honkytonk like Skinny Dennis, where they’ll be at 9 PM on Feb 6.

Prior to March of 2020, they were a familiar presence in what was left of the Americana scene here, at places which have since fallen victim to the “you comply, you die” trap. Ultimately, it may be a blessing in disguise for this irrepressibly upbeat crew to find a new following off their old turf, because they’re a lot of fun: there’s more room for dancing where they’ll be next week than there was where they used to play.

This band – who seem to be a rotating cast of devoted oldtimey swing players – make 78 RPM records and keep a pretty low profile online. Although their greatest love seems to be obscure and odd treasures from the 20s and 30s, the live clips up at their youtube channel are mostly well-known tunes. But it gives you a good idea of what they’re about.

The quartet expand to a sextet on their take of When I Take My Sugar to Tea, which they do as a pretty straight-up string band shuffle until they leap into doublespeed. Violinist John Landry provides a stark intro and then sings It’s Mating Time, an innuendo-fueled tune undulating along on the beat of John Bianchi’s tenor banjo, Angus Lauten’s baritone uke, Carl Luckert’s National Steel guitar, Ben Mealer’s uke and Brian Nalpeka’s bass.

They strut nonchalantly through a ramshackle version of If I Had You, then Lauten switches to glockenspiel and Nalepka bows his bass to mimic a tuba on a wry, steady take of Deed I Do. Bianchi switches to clarinet for an expansive, upbeat but unexpectedly lush swing through The Very Thought of You, the last of the youtube clips. These guys don’t let you forget for one second that a hundred years ago, jazz was the default party music throughout much of the world, some Williamsburg bars included.

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A Magical Microtonal Album and a Lower East Side Gig With Violin Innovators String Noise

The 2020 lockdown didn’t stop violin duo String Noise. Over the past couple of years, avant garde violin luminaries Conrad Harris and Pauline Kim Harris have been releasing albums at an epic pace. Serendipitously, they’re back to playing live again. The duo’s next appearance is a somewhat unusual but aptly wintry one, on Feb 4 at 8 PM at the Clemente Soto Velez communithy center at 107 Suffolk St off Rivington. It’s a collaboration with singer/sound artist Stine Janvin and composer Cory Arcangel, where the two violinists will play scores to accompany an audiovisual performance based on the knitting patterns for traditional Norwegian sweaters. Which might mean cozy, or abrasive – or both. Cover is $20; take the F/J/M to Delancey.

The group’s latest album, Way, comprises a trio of texturally delicious microtonal works, streaming at New Focus Recordings. They open with Alex Mincek‘s magically disquieting, microtonal suite, referencing an enigmatic Antonio Machado poem whose central road metaphor could be either liberation or a huis clos. Interestingly, the composer quotes Samuel Beckett in the liner notes.

They begin with muted puffing white noise, up to a steady stride with increasingly acidic microtones and harmonics as the music reaches toward horror. Artful approximations of a minor chord and a tritone shift ever so slightly. Slowly, the two voices begin to diverge and follow separate paths, the harmonies growing warmer and more diverse. There’s a second movement that starts with an approximation of a drifting snowstorm, which builds momentum even as the music becomes more spacious, the steps spaced further apart along with the harmonies. The slow procession eventually reaches an ending that may take you by surprise. It’s as entrancing as it is hypnotic: what a way to open the record!

Up next is Lou Bunk’s five-part suite, Field. The first movement has spritely microtonal flickers that build, fall away and drift delicately into the ether, only to spring back into action, finally up to a slashing peak and then gracefully back down. The duo end it with a series of gently sirening glissandos.

Movement two is more wispy and sepulchral; the next more spacious and surprising, with the occasional doppler effect. The violinists follow a tightly spiraling interweave in the fourth movement and wrap it up with a brief coda that flits by almost imperceptibly.

The album’s final work is (In) Tone, by Catherine Lamb. Uneasy, slow tectonic shifts drift through the sonic frame and diverge like a raga at one-tenth speed. Notwithstanding the glacial pace, the wary atmosphere seldom lifts; likewise, the shimmering harmonics and otherworldly close harmonies. Fans of music that defies the western scale have a feast to sink their ears into here.

Michael Formanek Plays a Richly Disquieting Brooklyn Album Release Show

Last night at Roulette, bassist Michael Formanek led his Drome Trio with reedman Chet Doxas and drummer Vinnie Sperrazza through two rewardingly acerbic sets to celebrate the release of their new album Were We Where We Were. That title opens up a floodgate of questions: do we romanticize the deeply flawed world we had before the March, 2020 fascist takeover? Are we out of the woods yet? Do Formanek’s stunningly vivid, persistently troubled compositions reflect a present danger? It’s hard to believe that this frequently haunting performance could be as simple as a band merely flexing their chops throughout a set of edgy and unselfconsciously profound new compositions.

Doxas opened the show solo with a simple but spine-tingling series of vaguely Armenian microtonal riffs, Sperrazza quickly rising from a loose-limbed pulse to an increasing storm, Formanek unperturbed at the center, leading the group subtly toward a steady sway as Doxas circled his way through a long, uneasy, Messiaenic passage. Formanek’s allusive solo bubbled and signaled a long, melancholy drift down to a suspenseful handoff to Sperrazza, who then channeled the spirits with a momentary shamanic break. The trio brought everything full circle at several times the energy.

That was just the first 25 minutes or so.

Doxas echoed Formanek’s phantasmagorically-tinged opening solo as Sperrazza’s drizzle gained force in the second number. Wary Jackie McLean-like sax phrases and wispy hints of vaudeville from Sperrazza followed. A coy, wispy sax-drum conversation set off a wistful, spacious solo from Doxas, who’d switched to clarinet. They ended cold.

Pianist Angelica Sanchez then joined them, choosing her spots to bound and ripple with a blithe Monklike swing in the first set’s closing number. Still, a disquiet persisted in her bell-like harmonies. Doxas took over with his muscular tenor lines, Formanek again an anchor with his insistent polyrhythms,

Sanchez opened the second set with an austere, somber solo, elevating to a clenched-teethed, close-harmonied intensity. It seemed she couldn’t wait to lighten the mood somewhat with a series of thorny rivulets. Doxas parsed the lower registers with a sinuous, Charlie Rouse-tinged solo, Formanek taking the song out on a fondly assertive note.

Next, the quartet danced through a catchy, Monkish swing fueled by Sperrazza’s subtle clave and Doxas’ smoky, insistent modal riffage. When he dropped out and Sanchez pulled the curtain back with a catchy if immutably melancholy solo, the effect was viscerally breathtaking.

The number after that made a good segue, with a more brooding chromaticism, through pulses and lulls. A wary mood persisted throughout, even the incisive Monkish riffage and syncopated bounce of the quartet’s concluding tune, with a tremoloing Doxas tenor solo and Sanchez’s eerily lingering incisions. Formanek plays in plenty of groups, but this might be the best of them all. Let’s hope this project continues.

The next jazz concert at Roulette is tomorrow night, Jan 26 at 8 PM, an epic performance where guitarist Joel Harrison leads five different ensembles including his Jazz Orchestra conducted by another fantastic composer, Erica Seguine, plus the New York Virtuoso Singers conducted by Harold Rosenbaum, plus the Alta String Quartet. You can get in for $25 in advance.

Organist Gail Archer Delivers a Breathtaking Concert For Peace at St. Patrick’s Cathedral

Thursday night at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, Gail Archer played what might have been the first organ concert there in almost three years. That’s a crime: the church has some of the richest natural reverb of any building in town, and the Kilgen organ there is a treasure which deserves to be unleashed in all its glory. Archer excels on that instrument, and made an auspicious return with a profoundly relevant program dedicated to peace between Russia and Ukraine, in solidarity with the citizens of both nations.

Lately, Archer has made a career out of exploring specific organ traditions from cultures which aren’t typically associated with the instrument. While even the typical, small European city can be full of old organs, they are conspicuously absent from the remaining churches in Russia and Ukraine. Archer drew her program from material from her two albums featuring repertoire from both countries.

She opened with an electric, aptly majestic take of Glazunov’s Prelude and Fugue in D minor, Op. 98, making maximum use of the church’s upper-midrange brass and reed stops. Cached within her cyclotron swirl was a steady forward drive which as she recorded it came across more sternly than the triumph she channeled here.

Next on the bill were a couple of preludes by Rachmaninoff nemesis César Cui. His Prelude in G minor had echoes of Mendlessohn balanced by a rather opaque chromatic edge. Archer’s take of his Prelude in Ab major proved to be another opportunity for her to revel in the vast range in the available registers, this time a little further down the scale.

She flawlessly executed the rapidfire phrasing and torrential crescendos of 20th century composer Sergei Slonimsky’s Toccata. The last of the Russian pieces was another 20th century work, Alexander Shaversaschvili’s Prelude and Fugue: again, Archer’s registrations were a feast of dynamic contrasts, through a judicious processional, more muted phantasmagoria and a determined if persistently uneasy drive forward into a fullscale conflagration.

Turning to Ukraine, Archer focused on 20th century and contemporary composers before closing with the High Romantic. The Piece in Five Movements, by Tadeusz Machl showcased the organ’s many colors, from close harmonies in uneasy counterpoint, to more spare and distantly mysterious, to a more insistent, melodically spiky radiance and a stormy interlude fueled by challenging pedal figures.

Archer couldn’t resist unleashing every breath of portentous intensity in Mykola Kolessa’s defiantly disquieted Passacaglia, through some subtle rhythmic shifts. Likewise, the Chaconne, by 21st century composer Svitlana Ostrova came across as a radiant if dissociative mashup of familiar classical tropes and modernist acerbity, with some spine-tingling cascades.

Archer closed the program with Iwan Kryschanowskij’s epically symphonic Fantasie, ranging from a simmering blue-flame fugue, to a long climb with more than an echo of the macabre. A dip to more restrained, swirling resonance was no less intense; Archer worked briskly from there up to a deliciously descending false ending and a surprisingly understated coda.

The next concert at St. Pat’s, on March 9 at 7 PM, is a reprise of the annual series of Irish folk music performances which were interrupted by the lockdown. This one is dedicated to the memory of Mick Moloney, who died suddenly last year and had been a fixture of those shows.

Stunning, Haunting New Compositions by One of New York’s Most Adventurous Bassists

Good bass players are like good singers: they get enlisted for a wider range of projects than most musicians. Bassist Max Johnson is probably as well known for his work in Americana as he is with jazz. He’s playing the latter, leading an intriguing trio with tenor saxophonist Neta Ranaan and drummer Jason Nazary on Jan 28 at 7:30 PM at the Django; cover is $25.

But Johnson has another side, as a composer of new classical music. On his latest album When the Streets Were Quiet – a reference to The Trial, by Kafka – he appears only as a conductor, leading a chamber ensemble of violinist Lauren Cauley, violist Carrie Frey, cellist Maria Hadge, clarinetist Lucy Hatem and pianist Fifi Zhang.

The opening number on the album – streaming at New Focus Recordings – is Minerva, for clarinet, violin, cello and piano. After a spacious introductory reference to Messiaen’s Quartet For the End of Time, the ensemble work a simple, increasingly emphatic, steadily acidic counterpoint. Quartet for the Beginning of Time, maybe?

Johnson switches out piano for viola for the quartet on the title track. Hatem’s clarinet moves broodingly over an uneasy, close-harmonied, organ-like sustain from the strings. A couple of shivers and subtle swells further indicate that trouble is brewing. Frey leads the strings deeper into otherworldly microtonal territory, as minutely modulated tremolo effects signal the clarinet’s mournful return and a solemn, slowly drifting procession out. Franz Kafka would be proud to have inspired music this spellbinding.

Next up is Johnson’s String Trio for violin, viola and cello. The more somber, sustained moments of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 spring to mind, Cauley leading a slow but ineluctable upward trajectory toward horror. Hadge leads the group into more calming terrain, with distant echoes of what could be a Britfolk ballad mingled within the unease. The trio take their time moving between a jaunty bounce and portentous swells on the way out.

Hatem, Frey and Zhang play the final piece, Echoes of a Memory, again echoing Messiaen at his sparest. Pianissimo highs against stygian lows give way to a cautious, icy pavane of sorts, part Federico Mompou, part Bernard Herrmann. This doesn’t sound anything like what Johnson will likely be playing with the jazz trio on the 28th but it’s often transcendent. Is it fair to be talking about one of the best albums of the year when we’re not even done with January yet?

An Auspicious Trio Show and a Rewardingly Surreal Album From the Protean Brandon Seabrook

Brandon Seabrook is one of the most fascinatingly mutable guitarists in jazz. He can be competely feral and unhinged one minute – notably with his wryly named Seabrook Power Plant – and then hit the stage and play gorgeously and lyrically in Cecile McLorin Salvant’s band. He’s playing what could be a similarly lyrical gig with the Sexmob rhythm section, Tony Scherr on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums at Bar Lunatico on Jan 23 at 9 PM.

In keeping with Seabrook’s unpredictable nature, one of his most outside-the-box recent albums is In the Swarm, a trio session with Cooper-Moore on diddley bow and Gerald Cleaver on drums, streaming at Bandcamp. This is the second they’ve done together. Parts of it are a strange and often deliciously noisy theme and variations, sometimes akin to Flowers of Romance-era PiL without the vocals.

They open with the title track. Cleaver lays down a hypnotic, shamanic beat, somebody sends a whistling electronic tone through the mix and Seabrook enters jaggedly on banjo. From there, Cooper-Moore’s loping, muted bassline anchors the forward drive as Cleaver edges outward and the bandleader squirrels around. They take it out on an unexpectedly ambient note.

The second number is Subliminal Gaucheries (Seabrook is good with titles). Spare, sparkling, mobile-like figures linger amid an ambient lustre as Cleaver makes his way in with a quieter, more suspenseful, shamanic pulse. Seabrook dives into orange-flame, distorted skronk and ugly close harmonies before hitting his envelope pedal for an icy warp in Vibrancy Yourself: it wouldn’t be out of place in Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog catalog.

How nocturnal is Crepuscule of Cleaver? It’s not. The rhythm section run a tight but lithe variation on the opening rhythm as Seabrook chooses his spots to squall. The diddley bow is an intriguing texture, somewhere between the growl of an electric bass and the low-midrange pop of a sintir in Adrenaline Charters, Seabrook bowing long sustained tones and then plunking out steady circularities on banjo.

Seething Excitations lives up to its title, Seabrook rising from an ominously distant tremolo to a more cumulo-nimbus attack as Cleaver builds a slowly cantering groove. They wind it out atmospherically.

The album’s big ten-minute epic is Aghastitude, Seabrook flinging out echoes of twangy surf over smoke-off-the-battlefield sonics, then Cleaver gets the waves going with his cymbals as the stringed instruments grow more frenetic. Flickers, skronk and icepick runs from Seabrook figure in from there. They close with a tantalizingly grimy minute-long miniature.

A Revealing Collection of Rare Polish Organ Music and a Concert for Peace by Gail Archer

Organist Gail Archer gets around. She has an unbounded curiosity for repertoire from around the globe and likes to explore it thematically, country by country. This makes sense especially in light of the vast and sometimes confounding variation in the design of pipe organs from various cultures…meaning that just about every individual instrument presents its own unique challenges.

One of Archer’s most colorful albums, drolly titled An American Idyll, is a salute to the composer-performers who were stars of the organ demimonde in the Eastern United States in the 19th century. Her two most recent albums have focused on rare organ works from Russia and Ukraine, each a country where church organs are a relative rarity. Her latest album Cantius – streaming at Spotify – is a fascinating and often riveting collection of rarely heard works by Polish composers. Archer’s next performance is a free concert for peace on Jan 19 at 7 PM at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, featuring both Russian and Ukrainian works. She plays the cathedral’s mighty Kilgen organ magnificently – if you are in New York and this is your thing, you do not want to miss this one.

Archer takes the album title from St. John Cantius Church, whose sleek, French-voiced 1926 Casavant organ she plays here. She opens with late 19th century composer Mieczyslaw Surzynski’s Improvisation on a Polish Hymn, a pleasant processional which gives her the chance to pull out some juicy upper-midrange stops and engage in a little baroque minimalism. Likewise, the brief Pastorale in F# Minor, by another 19th century composer, Wincenty Rychling begins with a stern hymnal focus but becomes more of a stroll.

20th century Polish-American composer Felix Borowski is represented by his Meditation-Elegie, an attractively workmanlike take on Louis Vierne, which Archer plays with increasingly steely grace. Contemporary composer Pawel Lukaszewski contributes his Triptych for Organ, Archer having fun with the brooding, Messiaenic suspense and  fugal crescendo of the fleeting first movement. She then lingers in the opaque resonance of the Offertorium and brings it full circle with mystical, steadily paced minimalism.

The real find here is a Henryk Gorecki rarity, his Kantata for Organ. Epic, sustained, wide-angle close-harmonied chords dominate the introduction. Then Archer wafts up from the murky lows to oddly incisive syncopation in the second movement, concluding with a rather fervent rhythmic attack that distantly echoes Jehan Alain. Did John Zorn hear this and have an epiphany which would inform his organ improvisations?

20th century composer Felix Nowowiejski’s single-movement Symphony No. 8 is more of a grande pièce symphonique, Archer patiently and dynamically negotiating its Widor-esque shifts from pensive resonance to a more emphatic attack and a mighty, majestic forward drive that opts for suspense over a fullscale anthem. It’s a High Romantic throwback and a real treat.

Grazyna Bacewicz is another standout Polish composer who is not known for organ music, but her Esquisse for Organ is exquisite: first evoking Messiaen in the gloomy introductory pavane and then Vierne in the coyly ebullient water nymphet ballet afterward. Archer winds up the album with a final 20th century work, Tadeusz Paciorkiewicz’s Tryptychon for Organ The steady quasi-march of an introduction reminds of Naji Hakim’s more energetic material, while the Meditation has more of an allusive early 20th century feel – and is considerably more emphatic than you would expect. Archer delivers the concluding Toccata with eerily puffing staccato but also a warm, triumphant pace in its more majestic moments.

Conrad Herwig Reinvents Charles Mingus With Some Cuban Spices

Making an album of jazz classics inevitably invites ugly comparisons to the originals. But considering trombonist Conrad Herwig‘s longtime membership in the Mingus Big Band, he had an inside track to recording his latest album The Latin Side of Mingus, streaming at Spotify. Herwig can be an electrifying soloist and has the requisite sense of humor along with the fondness for latin sounds that go hand in hand with his instrument. Considering the formidable lineup he assembled for the record, it’s a fair bet that the septet he’ll have for his upcoming three nights this month at the Django will be just as strong. He’s there on Jan 17, 24 and 31, with sets at 7:30 and 9 PM; cover is $25.

This isn’t Herwig’s first adventure into remaking canonical repertoire as latin jazz, but it’s arguably his best. The band – Randy Brecker and Alex Sipiagin on trumpets, Craig Handy on tenor sax, Bill O’Connell on piano, Luques Curtis on bass, Robby Ameen on drums and Camilo Molina on congas – have a lot of fun with a Mingus mix of both iconic and more obscure but equally slashing material.

They don’t waste time reinventing Gunslinging Bird as a sleek, pouncingly direct platform for machinegunning trumpet and trombone solos, O’Connell subtly edging from dissociative postbop into more distinctly Cuban territory. Boogie Stop Shuffle is an interesting choice. It’s hard to top the gleeful noir bustle of the original. But Herwig’s decision to slow it down a bit with a churning congra groove,  simmering trombone and trumpet solos and O’Connell finally reaching escape velocity, makes sense in context.

No Dejes Que Pase Aquí is a remake of Don’t Let It Happen Here, which couldn’t be more relevant considering that it’s based on Pastor Martin Niemoller’s warning about who Nazis come for before they come for you. Ruben Blades delivers Mingus’ voiceover in both the original English and then Spanish: Herwig’s flamenco-noir brass arrangement and phantasmagorical polyrhythms raise the intensity exponentially. Great song!

Herwig’s choice to redo Goodbye Pork Pie Hat with a slinky, altered guaguanco groove results in an aptly wistful but simmering atmosphere, Handy switching to flute for a charanga-flavored break before a scrambling O’Connell solo. Hora Decubitus is considerably more suave than Mingus’ own frantic urban tableau, with solos in a chattering round.

O’Connell plays twinkling Rhodes electric piano behind resonant, mutedly orchestral horns and a tiptoeing clave in Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love, Handy anchoring in a grittier edge with his solo. All the Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud’s Wife Was Your Mother is the big surprise choice here. It’s a lot more expansive and doesn’t have the goofy camaraderie that trumpeter Ted Curson and drummer Dannie Richmond made so memorable in the Mingus quartet version.

The album’s final cut is a lively take of Better Get Hit in Your Soul with the band bookending a New Orleans-flavored chart around a terse Brecker trumpet break.

A Darkly Translucent Album and a NY Piano Festival Appearance From Laszlo Gardony

That recently revived January jazz spinoff of the annual booking agents’ convention has finally reached the point where it has priced and marginalized itself off this blog’s radar. Meanwhile, there have been some interesting alternatives popping up around town lately. One is the NY Jazz Piano Festival, which distinguishes itself by programming mostly solo performances by artists who excel in that setting. It’s on the pricy side – $30 per set – although if you want to make a daylong or even a weekend-plus marathon out of it, you have that option. The lineup on Jan 15 is especially choice, beginning at noon with the Eastern European-inspired and often haunting Laszlo Gardony. Orrin Evans – who despite the many demands on his time is fantastic solo – plays at 3, with symphonic latin jazz player Dayramir Gonzalez at 4:30, world-class improviser Jean-Michel Pilc at 6, and the reliably lyrical and mercurial Marc Cary at 8. It’s all happening at Klavierhaus, a piano showroom frequently utilized for classical music and recently relocated to 790 11th Ave. at 54th St.

Gardony’s latest album is Close Connection, a trio recording with fellow Bostonians John Lockwood on bass and Yoron Israel on drums, streaming at Bandcamp. Gardony’s melodies are terse and translucent: some of these songs without words remind of early Soft Machine or 70s Morricone film scores, with distant echoes of Bartok’s piano miniatures. The trio open with Irrepressible, built around a catchy, punchy riff-rock theme spiced with incisive blues but also chromatics and uneasy close harmonies that reflect Gardony’s Hungarian heritage.

Bass and drums begin Strong Minds with a simple trip-hop rhythm, then Lockwood builds a muted suspense beneath Gardony’s shifts between emphatic riffage, ripples and occasional phantasmagoria. Gardony peruses the upper registers gently as Sweet Thoughts gets underway, then Israel rises above a piano loop with his misty cymbals and loose-limbed accents.

The group lock in on an insistent vamp in Cedar Tree Dance, Gardony punching into the blues, then backing away for a moonlight half-mile as Lockwood tiptoes and Israel rustles into kicking off a darker dervish dance on the way out. Gardony’s hard-hitting precision remains, aptly, in All That Remains, a moody tone poem of sorts, Lockwood again playing good cop to Gardony’s stern attack.

.Times of Discord – now there’s a theme for 2023, huh? – has a similar, gritty forward drive, Israel taking over the propulsion as Gardony energetically works the brooding passing tones. Then Israel plays kalimba behind Gardony’s melodica in Savanna Sunrise, a goofy, calypso-tinged piece. They reprise it a little later as a subtly gospel-tinged piano number.

Walking in Silence is Gardony at his best, a wintry, somber tune, Lockwood and Israel filling in the edges gingerly over alternately spare and driving close-harmonied piano. Gardony parses some fond, familiar motives with hints of both gospel and calypso in Hopeful Vision, the album’s lone solo tune.

Gardony scampers into tensely syncopated, darkly carnivalesque territory in the aptly titled Night Run: it’s the album’s hardest-charging song. The trio conclude with Cold Earth, a sepulchral tableau where Israel’s flitting, poltergeist flickers mingle with Lockwood’s melancholy bowing and the bandleader’s grim pedalpoint. Fans of melodic European players like Romain Collin and riff-driven improvisers like Rachel Z will love this record.

A Vividly Symphonic, Epic Big Band Album and a Chinatown Gig From Pianist Manuel Valera

Pianist Manuel Valera has been a reliably tuneful fixture on the New York jazz stage, best known for his monthly residency with his New Cuban Express at Terraza 7, which ran for years until live music was criminalized here in 2020. His latest big band album, Distancia, counts as one of the millions which would have been released sometime that year if we all hadn’t been rudely interrupted. The good news is that he managed to finish it – that fall, restrictions be damned – and it’s streaming at Spotify. Valera and his New Cuban Express are at the Django on Jan 10 at 7 PM; cover is $25. For those who want to make a whole night of it, the 10:30 PM act, Sonido Costeno, play fiery guitar-fueled salsa dura and are also a lot of fun.

Like a lot of his countrymen, Valera has both a lyrical neoromantic side and a love for slinky beats, and his arrangements are nothing short of symphonic. Pretty much everything here is past ten minutes or close to it. He opens the record with Expectativas, the percussion answering the trombones to set up a catchy modal piano vamp and some cleverly lush exchanges by massed brass. Soprano saxophonist Charles Pillow ranges from allusive chromatics to a wicked downward spiral in a tantalizingly brief solo; trumpeter Brian Pareschi takes his time choosing his spots, then backing away for a light-fingered Samuel Torres conga solo artfully echoed by drummer Jimmy Macbride with a flick of his cymbals. It sets the stage for the rest of this absolutely brilliant, consistently gorgeous album.

The riffage in the interplay among the brass in the second number, Gemini, is a lot punchier, Valera hinting at a rhythmic shift before the group backs off for a cheery, spaciously paced Pareschi solo matched by baritone saxophonist Andrew Gutauskas. Valera keeps the pulse going with an incisive, rhythmic solo as Macbride shadows him; the band bring the tune full circle, guitarist Alex Goodman tantalizing with his pensive solo out.

Camila Meza’s signature lustrous vocalese mingles within catchy, fugal brass to introduce From Afar, the group developing a slow, orchestral sway, dipping to a spare, somewhat wistful trumpet solo. The way Valera sneaks Meza and the band back up into the mix is as artful as it is unselfconsciously gorgeous. It ends unresolved.

The tradeoffs are faster and lighter in Pathways: it’s a goodnatured joust, up to a meticulously articulated Valera break and a flurrying Michael Thomas alto sax solo. Meza carries the big riff through a fleeting piano/alto conversation. The horns give way to a moody moment as From the Ashes grows into a nimbly orchestrated salsa tune, but without the usual rumble on the low end. Trombonist Matt Macdonald flickers allusively; Valera tumbles and ripples, Macbride firing off a shower of cymbals. Pillow punches in as the forward drive grows funkier; the bandleader’s sudden turn toward the shadows will grab you by surprise. Lots of that on this record.

Impressionistic Romance is intriguingly allusive and tinged with the High Romantic, fueled by Valera’s steady cascades, a hint of a grim march and Bernard Herrmann. Echo effects move into the center as the low brass simmers and punches, Valera following a determined, unresolved tangent that the horns bring back to an uneasy landing.

Valera stays in brooding mode to open the album’s title track, Pillow pushing the group toward a warmer morning theme, then taking a more pensive break. Valera teams up with singer Bogna Kicinska’s resonant vocalese to build a glistening nocturnal tableau on the way out. He winds up the album where he started with the steady counterpoint and implied, vampy salsa groove of Remembere. It’s more straight-up big band jazz than it is traditionally Cuban; whatever the case, this is one of the most delicious big band albums of recent months.