Javon Jackson Reinvents Rare Spirituals with Nikki Giovanni’s Help

For his latest album, which hasn’t hit the web yet, tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson asked poet Nikki Giovanni if she could suggest ten spirituals that he ought to record. She gave him a list with only a small handful of standards: otherwise, the tracks on The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni are on the rare side. What’s more, the album marks possibly the first time this century that Giovanni has been featured on record as a lead singer.

She picked the ballad Night Song as a salute to her old friend Nina Simone. Since Jackson’s current home state, Connecticut, was locked down, he had to fly to Giovanni’s home in Virginia to cut the vocals. Pianist Jeremy Manasia plays spare, resonant chords beneath Jackson’s balmy lines as bassist David Williams and drummer McClenty Hunter provide whispery rhythm; Giovanni’s weathered evocation of being alone in a bustling crowd packs a wallop.

The first of the spirituals is a straightforwardly swinging take of Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel, a beautiful, stern minor-key tune, Jackson’s cantabile lead giving way to Manasia’s biting chords and elegant rudiments from Hunter.

Of the well-known numbers here, Wade in the Water makes a good segue, Jackson adding some spicy flourishes to his sailing lines, Manasia rising and falling before Christina Greer joins in to speak Giovanni’s scarily prescient words on how it’s up the outcasts and nonconformists among us to keep an otherwise soulless world alive.

The quartet reinvent Swing Low Sweet Chariot as a sly, slinky calypso jazz tune. yeah mon! By contrast, another familiar favorite, Mary Had a Baby, Yes Lord draws a straight line back to somber Birmingham-era Coltrane as well as Miles Davis. The group’s take of Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child is much the same, with a regal, glittering, Mulgrew Miller-esque solo from Manasia.

But it’s the obscurities that everyone is going to want to hear. Leaning on the Everlasting Arms is an aptly warm lullaby of a melody, Jackson giving it a calm midtempo swing and a misty-toned solo.

I’ve Been Buked (as in “rebuked”) has special historical resonance since Mahalia Jackson sang it at the Lincoln Memorial on the day of Martin Luther King’s famous March on Washington speech there. Williams bookends it with stark bowing, Jackson letting the clouds drift away before Manasia’s glittering solo

Lord, I Want to Be a Christian, a duo arrangement for piano and sax, has an aptly reverent ambience. The group cut loose with a carefree swing in the closing number, I Opened My Mouth to the Lord, only to wind it out with a wary intensity. Gravitas and unselfconscious depth galore on an album which will no doubt be sought out by jazz and gospel fans alike.

A Playful, Eclectic, Un-Cheesy Christmas Jazz Album From Singer Vienna Carroll

Singer Vienna Carroll is best known for bringing a fascinating level of historical insight to her songwriting and interpretations of black American folk music from across the decades and centuries. But she’s also an actress, and she has great comedic timing. She has a new Christmas album, Mary Had a Baby streaming at youtube.

The track that’s getting a lot of traction is Santa Baby, Carroll exchanging increasingly sly innuendo with percussionist Keith Johnston. The band – which also includes pianist Dan Furman and bassist Michael O’Brien – give the song a saloon jazz flair.

The group reinvent Vince Guaraldi’s Christmas Time Is Here as a jazz waltz, Carroll airing out the expressive side of her lower register. The album’s impassioned, resolute gospel title track is the closest thing to Carroll’s earlier work. And the third number, Alone in the World features a lush but restrained string section over lyrical piano: this song from the cult favorite 1962 cartoon Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol has unexpected angst for holiday album fare. Which is another reason why this tantalizingly short record transcends the limits of a genre that makes a lot of people wish December 26 would come a month earlier.

A Soulful, Gospel-Inspired, Overdue Debut From Individualistic Jazz Singer Trineice Robinson

Trineice Robinson brings deep gospel roots to her work in jazz. Like most good singers, she’s covered a lot of ground throughout her career, from classical choral music, to jazz and various touring gigs. So it’s something of a surprise that her new album All Or Nothing – streaming at Spotify – is her debut as a bandleader. She sings in a disarmingly direct, no-nonsense delivery and has a fearless political sensibility. She comes across as an individualist who defies categorization: there’s the immediacy of classic soul music here, coupled to jazz sophistication, gospel rapture and fervor.

She kicks off the album ambitiously, making an inventive diptych out of All or Nothing At All. There’s a gritty intensity in her voice in the hard-driving first part, Don Braden’s tenor sax percolating over Cyrus Chestnut’s emphatic piano, Kenny Davis’ bass and Vince Ector’s drums. The starry interlude midway through is an unexpected touch; the band swing it hard on the way out.

Likewise, she remakes Wayne Shorter’s Footprints as a latin jazz waltz, tenor saxophonist Nils Mossblad breaking out of brassy harmonies with trombonist Ian Kaufman and trumpeter John Meko as percussionist Kahlil Kwame Bell joins Ector in a turbulent backdrop. The lyrics – by Robinson and Nandita Rao – obliquely reflect the challenge that comes with standing on the shoulders of Civil Rights era giants.

Chestnut shines and glitters in a strikingly intimate duo take of Ellington’s Come Sunday, Robinson playing up the song’s unshackled political subtext. From there she makes another diptych out of her blues-tinted original If This Is Love and The Very Thought of You, reinvented as an altered waltz with an unexpected modal intensity and a spine-tingling vocal coda.

Robinson’s supple, unhurried take of You Taught My Heart to Sing draws on the McCoy Tyner version, through a glass, distantly, lit up by Chestnut’s Errol Garner-esque ornamentation. The band have a great time with Monk’s I Mean You, Robinson updating the jaunty Jon Hendricks version with a knowingly sly, very Monkish sense of humor.

She and the group find unexpected tropical joy but also gravitas in Natalie Cole’s La Costa, Braden switching to flute. The band’s suave wee-hours contentment – and Chestnut’s occasional LOL flourish – in Save You Love For Me fuels Robinson’s determined delivery.

Robinson closes the album with a swinging, New Orleans-tinged take of the gospel standard Let It Shine: once again, she leaves no doubt that this is liberation theology.

Her lyrical update to a brisk stroll through Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On is also an aptly relevant touch; the cheesy DX7 electric piano that Chestnut gets stuck behind is not.

Melodic, Inventive Gospel-Inspired Jazz From Jordan Pettay

Saxophonist Jordan Pettay’s musical background draws equally on jazz and contemporary gospel. Her debut album First Fruit – streaming at her music page – blends original, warmly melodic original jazz tunes with  explorations of classic gospel themes. Pettay’s alto work often has a soprano sound, as she tends to favor the upper registers, but with a mistier tone. She’s a very purposeful player, and that focus extends to the band here: Christian Sands on piano, Luke Sellick on bass, Jimmy Macbride on drums, Mat Jodrell on trumpet and Joe McDonough on trombone.

They open with Whatever Happens, a bright, modally tinged swing tune, trumpet rising from purposeful to ecstatic and back over Sands’ spare, chordal piano work, a terse bass pulse and grittily accented drum work. Alto, trombone and piano solos afterward share a vibe that’s both more reflective and lighthearted.

Pettay plays I Am Thine O Lord as a tender love ballad over spare piano and a lithe, loose-limbed rhythm that grows funkier as the energy rises. The album’s title track opens with punchy syncopation in contrast to Pettay’s warmly sailing lines; then the group swing the tune by the tail, fueled by Sands’ brisk wide-angle chords.

He supplies lingering Rhodes to a tropically-tinged, gently funky take of the Stylistics’ You Make Me Feel Brand New, with sax, trumpet and eventually trombone hanging close to the original vocal line the first time around before expanding and returning with triumphant harmonies.

Shifting between waltz time and a straight-up, slow swing, For Wayne – a Shorter homage – has thoughtful solos from Pettay and Sands over a vampy backdrop. She goes back to swinging classic 50s style postbop for Straight Street, Sands’ scrambles contrasting with the bandleader’s calmly crescendoing lines.

She closes the album with three gospel jazz numbers. I Exalt Thee has a slow, raptly restrained groove, crystalline sax and a thoughtful, spacious Sellick solo before Pettay finally reaches for the rafters with apt exhaltation. Sands opens I Surrender All with a low-key organ solo before Pettay enters and prowls around the church; the rubato ambience suggests that it’s time everybody started to feel brand new. Are You Washed in the Blood rises from a claplong clave to a more New Orleans-flavored shuffle, Pettay working terse variations over a sunny, amiably swinging backdrop.

A New Take on a Gospel Jazz Classic

Singer Trineice Robinson‘s new single Come Sunday, a rapt, absolutely mystical take of the Duke Ellington classic, is just out and streaming at Spotify. Pianist Cyrus Chestnut keeps the ambience intimate as Robinson really airs out her low register: does this woman have power, or what? Gospel choirs around the world will be lining up for her services when they hear this. A full-length album  is due out this August.

An Eclectically Catchy Big Band Album by the Heisenberg Uncertainty Players

Does listening to the Heisenberg Uncertainty Players transform them from a seventeen-piece big band into a trio? One of the premises of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is that some particles are so small that merely observing them changes their state. It’s an extension of the basic idea that some tools are too heavy for the job: you don’t use a hammer where just your thumb would do.

Ultimately, Heisenberg’s postulate challenges us to consider whether some things will always be essentially unknowable: a very Islamic concept, when you think about it. But you hardly need special powers of observation to enjoy this big band’s energy, and catchy themes, and pervasive sense of humor. Their album Gradient is streaming at Bandcamp. There’s a high-energy sax solo on almost every one of bandleader/conductor John Dorhauer’s compositions here, sometimes expected, sometimes not.

The opening number, Boombox, makes a momentary Mission Impossible theme out of the old surf rock hit Tequila, then hits a Weather Report style faux-soukous bubbliness for a bit before shifting toward a gospel groove beneath Matthew Beck’s joyous tenor sax.

The second track, Nevertheless She Persisted is a slow, slinky gospel tune, Stuart Seale’s tersely soulful organ ceding the spotlight to a low-key, burbling trombone solo from Chris Shuttleworth and a big massed crescendo from the brass. Subject/Verb/Object has clever, rhythmless variations on a circling, Ethiopian-tinged riff, in an Either/Orchestra vein; the polyrhythms that ensue as the piece comes together and then calms to an uneasy syncopation are a cool touch.

Four Sides of the Circle begins as a stately, mysterious, Indian-tinged theme for choir and piano, then chattering high reeds take centerstage as the song almost imperceptibly edges toward dusky, modal soul over a familiar Radiohead hook.

The East African tinges return, but more cheerily in Plasma, with its rhythmically tricky interweave of counterpoint. Mahler 3 Movement 1 is exactly that: a moody, jazzed-up classical theme that rises from rumors of war, to brassy King Crimson art-rock fueled by Chris Parsons’ burning guitar, to chipper, Gershwinesque swing over a quasi-reggae beat and then back.

The record winds up with the Basketball Suite. The first segment, Switch Everything is the band’s Dr. J (that’s a Grover Washington Jr. reference). Part two, Point Giannis is probably the slowest hoops theme ever written: Dan Parker’s hypnotic bassline brings to mind a classic Jah Wobble groove on PiL’s Metal Box album. The band take a turn back toward booding, pulsing Ethiopiques with Schedule Loss, Adam Roebuck’s incisive trumpet contrasting with James Baum’s suave, smoky baritone sax. It ends with the album’s warmly funky, vamping title track An entertaining achievement from an ensemble that also includies saxophonists Natalie Lande, Kelley Dorhauer and Dan Burke, trombonists Michael Nearpass, Josh Torrey and Dan Dicesare, trumpeters Jon Rarick and Emily Kuhn and drummer Jonathon Wenzel.

A Musical Power Couple Salute the Bravery and Fortitude of the Millions Who Made the Great Migration

Saturday night at Carnegie Hall, historian Isabel Wilkerson related the story of a black American soldier from South Carolina who joined the army in World War I to escape the oppressive conditions of Jim Crow. After the war, he returned triumphantly to his hometown, in uniform. At the train station, he was met by a group of white supremacists who demanded he take off his uniform and walk home in his underwear. The soldier refused. A few days later, he was lynched. The murder was never investigated.

As Wilkerson finished with the narrative, singer Alicia Hall Moran and her jazz pianist husband, Jason Moran, launched into a blithe, whistling take of the old vaudeville hit How Ya Gonna Keep ‘Em Down on the Farm (After They’ve Seen Paree). That crushing sarcasm spoke to the evening’s theme: the legacy of the Great Migration, where six million black American citizens wound up following the road and the train tracks north to escape the hideous antebellum conditions that the southern states reinstated after Union troops withdrew in 1877. We all know the ugly story: until the Civil Rights Movement, it was almost as if the Confederates won the war.

The Morans assembled a vast lineup of over sixty musicians and speakers from jazz, classical and gospel music to commemorate that escape, and the incredible impact it had on American culture, politics and the arts. It’s probably safe to say that even without the influx of southern blacks into the northern states, the raw materials that musicians would combine to create jazz and then rock music were already in place. There’s no question, however, that the Great Migration enabled both to gain critical mass.

The Morans chose an apt venue to debut this star-studded extravaganza, titled Two Wings: The Music of Black Americans in Migration. A century ago, Carnegie Hall was a hotspot for African-American culture: anybody who was anybody in music, almost from the venue’s inception, most likely played here at some point. Alicia Hall Moran’s great-uncle, the great musicologist, choir leader and musician Hall Johnson, was one of them, having made his own Great Migration some eighty years before Jason Moran, proud son of Houston’s Third Ward, also decided to become a New Yorker.

Much of the music on the bill was chosen for its utility and solace to four generations of refugees from the south, although the program deviated jubilantly from that script at the night wore on. The only style that Alicia Hall Moran has been steeped in that she didn’t approach this particular evening was the avant garde. Otherwise, she spanned from jazz, to ragtime, to gospel, to the classicized  approach to 19th century spirituals that Hall Johnson is arguably best known for. And the single strongest song of the night might have been an original of hers, Believe Me. Backed by her husband and the Harlem Chamber Players, she delivered what might be best described as noir cinematic art-soul with a brooding, fixated lower-register intensity.

Likewise, Jason Moran may be best known as one of this era’s foremost jazz pianists, but he’s also a first-rate classical composer, evidenced not only by his film scores but also his historical suite, Cane, two segments of which he played, bolstered by the Imani Winds. Emphatic rhythmic insistence gave way to intricate swirls that brought to mind Carl Nielsen, Moran lowlit in the background. His most breathtaking moment was when he brought out all the eerie Messianic close-harmonied phantasmagoria in James P. Johnson’s Carolina Shout – much as Johnson no doubt did on this same stage a century before.

One after another, the cameos kept coming. Toshi Reagon sagely rocked out a Sister Rosetta Tharpe number. Pianist Joseph Joubert made jackhammering jazz out of a gospel standard, while Pastor Smokie Norful showed off not only his spectacular vocal range but also impressive piano chops. James Carter validated his rep as the last guy you want to have to face in a cutting contest, machinegunning through his valves, overtones whistling from every conceivable spot on his tenor sax, throughout a ruthless shredding of Illinois Jacquet’s solo from Lionel Hampton’s Flying Home. Violinists Ashley Horne and Curtis Stewart engaged in a more wryly sympatico exchange in their take of the cakewalk Louisiana Blues Strut.

Metropolitan Opera veteran Hilda Harris shared her stories of breaking the color barrier, matter-of-fact and assured. Rev. James A. Forbes Jr.’s benedictory introduction to Alicia Hall Moran’s shivery take of Lord, How Come Me Here was grounded in here-and-now politics and historical context that would have made Dr. King proud. After a tantalizingly brief, brooding, lushly orchestrated segment from Jason Moran’s score to the film Selma, his wife capped off the night, joined by the entire orchestra and wind section, for a triumphant take of He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands.

The Morans are bringing this program – presumably with the same cast – to the Kennedy Center in Washington DC on April 14 at 8 PM, with other national dates to follow.

Four Years of Celebrating Howard Zinn and Freedom Fighters at Lincoln Center

This past evening was the fourth annual Lincoln Center celebration of freedom fighters from across the decades, inspired by Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. A partnership with Manhattan’s High School for Arts, Imagination and Inquiry, the night featured an all-star cast from years past along with some new high-profile artists lending their names to the festival, a mix of readings plus soaring oldschool soul and gospel staples delivered by mighty crooner Zeshan B.

It was a way “To continue to think about way to hope and improve and make our own impact… I think we saw that on Tuesday with so many people coming out and voting,” Lincoln Center’s Jordana Leigh reaffirmed, introducing Staceyann Chin’s defiant reading of Marge Piercy’s colorful arithmetic concerning how to start a movement. Chin brought the night full circle at the end with Angela Davis’ remarks at the first Women’s March on Washington, reminding that “History cannot be deleted like webpages.”

Akema Kochiyama – daughter of Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama – read fifteen-year-old telephone operator Michiko Yamaoka’s harrowing account of the Hiroshima bombings: “People couldn’t scream, even when they were onfire…I wonder what kind of education there is in America about atomic bombs. They’re still making them, aren’t they?” Kochiyama’s mom’s account of Japanese-Americans sent to concentration camps during World War II was just as insightful if less outright chilling: “How little you learn about American history: you learn only what they want you to know.” 

Brian Jones delivered Jermain Wesley Loguen’s famously dismissive letter to his former slavemaster, whose demand that he return to the plantation set the bar Bushwick-level high as far as entitlement is concerned. Later Jones recounted Martin Luther King’s 1967 remarks to the SCLC on the inevitability of taking the Civil Rights Movement to the ne xt level, fighting economic injustice.

Trisha Johnson brought plenty of fire to Frederick Douglass’s 1852 anti-slavery address to a group of upstate New York ladies. Leta Renee-Allen channeled righteous rage in Susan B. Anthony’s address to the court who convicted her of illegally voting, Jones relishing the role of the clueless sentencing judge who constantly interrupted her. The correlation between the civil disobedience of Underground Railroad freedom fighters and the women’s suffrage movement went over big with the crowd.

Imogen Poots got the part of Lowell Mills striker Harriet Hanson Robinson, in her account of how many decades of struggle and resistance preceded the eventual workers’ hard-earned victory. “Whoever heard of these eight-hour days? No one expected decent wages,” Poots reminded later, in the words of Depression-era organizer Rose Chernin, whose battle against ruthless landlords and profiteer shopkeepers resonates mightily today. After fighting fire with fire, metaphorically at least, “Within two years we had rent control in the Bronx.”

“If there’s any national anthem we should stand for, it’s this one, Zeshan B said, introducing his soaring solo vocal-and-harmonium take of James Weldon Johnson’s Raise Every Voice and Sing: the crowd agreed. Later he raised the roof with a Sam Cooke Civli Rights-era staple. Another calmer but no less rousing musical piece was Eva Davis‘ take of a popular, starkly gospel-infused Bernice Johnson Reagon protest song.

Renee-Allen returned to the mic for Genora Dolinger’s gutsy, plainspoken account of the 1930s General Motors sitdown strikes. Wallace Shawn was aptly cast as a perplexed Howard Zinn contemplating cognitive dissonance in late 1960s politics: Daniel Berrigan behind bars while J. Edgar Hoover got to roam free, the National Guard firing on students at Kent State who were subsequently arrested.

Jessica Pimentel brought a straightforward articulacy to Assata Shakur’s description of life on Rikers Island: “American capitalism is in no way threatened by the women on Rikers,” eighty percent of who were there because of drugs. “They have taken away our gardens and our sweet potato pies and have given us McDonalds, dope and televisions as culture.” 

And in somewhat more recent developments, she voiced Standing Rock activist Julian Brave Noisecat’s sardonic insight as to how much the project continues an ugly tradition of American colonialism.

The atrium space at Lincoln Center on Broadway just north of 62nd St. is pretty much unrivalled in midtown for relevant programming. The multimedia performance by catchy, anthemic janglerock band No-No Boy – who explore the history and aftereffects of Japanese-American internment during World War II – on Nov 15 at 7:30 PM promises to be especially insightful. The show is free; get there early if you’re going.

Starkly Beautiful, Weird Americana and New Classical Sounds in Williamsburg Last Night

Last night at the beautifully renovated San Damiano Mission in Williamsburg, Anna & Elizabeth joined their distinctive voices in a very colorful patchwork quilt of songs from across the centuries. Cleek Schrey, a connoisseur of little-known vintage fiddle tunes, played lilting solo pieces in odd tempos when he wasn’t sitting at the organ or the piano. Timo Andres unveiled a hypnotic new solo piano diptych awash in both Glassine echo effects and mystical Messiaenic close harmonies. And at the end, Anna Roberts-Gevalt led a packed house in a haunting, rapturously rising and falling singalong of the blues-infused African-American Virginia spiritual, Oh Lord Don’t Let Me Die in the Storm.

It was a night of envelopingly beautiful, weird Americana. On the surface, pairing oldtime folk tunes and some pre-Americana with indie classical could have opened a Pandora’s box of ridiculous segues. That this bill actually worked testifies to how much outside-the-box creativity went into it. Part of the explanation is simply how some things eventually get so old that they become new again. There’s a lot of centuries-old music that sounds absolutely avant garde, and there was some of that on this bill. For example, while there was no obvious cross-pollination between the subtly shifting cells of Andres’ piano piece and the cleverly rhythmic permutations of Schrey’s solo numbers, it was a reminder how musicians from every time period use a lot of the same devices.

There were also a handful of country gospel and Appalachian folik tunes on the bill. You could have heard a pin drop when Elizabeth LaPrelle reached for the rafters with her signature plaintive, rustic, high-midrange-lonesome wail in a solo a-cappella number. Standing in between the front pews, Roberts-Gevalt clog-danced a swinging beat and sang in perfect time, accompanied by Schrey and viola da gamba player Liam Byrne, who anchored much of the night’s material with a low, ambered, lushly bowed resonance.

Joined by a guest baritone singer, Anna & Elizabeth sang a fetchingly waltzing take of the hymn I Hear a Voice Calling. The night began with a hypnotic take of what sounded like an old Virginia reel played solo on bagpipe, a gentle reminder for the faithful to take their seats. And Anna & Elizabeth brought crankies! Each singer slowly cranked a big wooden box to unscroll a colorfully detailed portrait of the events in the other’s song. LaPrelle delivered a long, extremely detailed, ultimately pretty grim 18th century account of a shipwreck, and Roberts-Gevalt intoned a hazy nocturnal Nova Scotia lament that morphed into droning spectral string music. Anna & Elizabeth are off on European tour momentarily: lucky Lithuanians can catch them at the Keistuoliy Theatre in Vilnius on Oct 21 at 7:30 PM.

A Brooding Live Film Score and New York’s Most Relevant Gospel Choir at Prospect Park

It wouldn’t be fair to let the month go by without mentioning the wickedly amusing, entertaining score that Sexmob played to the 1925 Italian silent film Maciste All’Inferno at Prospect Park Bandshell a couple of weeks ago. Another A-list jazz talent, pianist Jason Moran, teams up with the Wordless Music Orchestra there tonight, August 10 to play a live score to another more famous film. Selma. The Brooklyn United Marching Band opens the night at 7:30 PM, and if you’re going, you should get there on time.

It’s amazing what an epic sound trumpeter/bandleader Steven Bernstein manages to evince from the four voices in his long-running quartet, which also includes alto sax player Briggan Krauss, bassist Tony Scherr and drummer Kenny Wollesen. Part of the equation is long, desolate sustained tones; part is echo effects and the rest of it is the reverb on Wollesen’s drums, gongs and assorted percussive implements. On one hand, much of this score seemed like a remake of the band’s 2015 cult classic album Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti: Sexmob Plays Nino Rota, especially the brooding opening sequence. With a very close resemblance to Bernstein’s reinvention of the Amarcord main title theme, the band went slinking along on the moody but trebly pulse of Scherr’s incisive bass and Wollesen’s ominously muted and-four-and tom-tom hits.

Yet as much as the rest of this new score followed the same sonic formula (or tried to – as usual this year, the sound mix here was atrocious, bass and drums way too high in the mix), the themes were more playful than that album’s relentless noir ambience. At the same time, Bernstein’s uneasy but earthily rooted dynamics added a welcome gravitas to the movie’s vaudevillian charm. In brief (you can get the whole thing at IMDB): strongman Maciste, stalked by the devil, ends up in hell, fends off all sorts of cartoonish human/orc types and ends up having a potentially deadly flirtation. All the while, he’s missing his true love and family topside. Will he finally vanquish the hordes of tortured souls hell-bent into making him one of their own?

Wollesen built one of his typical, mystical temple-garden-in-the-mist tableaux with his gongs, and cymbals, and finally his toms, to open the score. It’s a catchy one, and the hooks were as hummable as the two main themes were expansive. In addition to the many variations on the title one, there was also a funky bass octave riff that subtly pushed the music into a similarly hummable uh-oh interlude and then back, spiced here and there with screaming unison riffs from the horns and one achingly menacing spot where Krauss mimicked guitar feedback. But the scrambling and scampering ultimately took a backseat to gloom. For this band, hell is more of a lake of ice than fire.

“Is this forest a Walmart now?” fearless ecological crusader Rev. Billy Talen asked midway through his incendiary opening set with his titanic, practically fifty-piece group the Stop Shopping Choir. That was his response to a security guard who’d told him the other night that the park was closed. For this Park Slope resident, not being able to connect with the nature he loves so much and has dedicated his life to protecting is an issue.

When he isn’t getting arrested for protesting against fracking, or clearcutting, or the use of the lethal herbicide Roundup in New York City parks, Rev. Billy makes albums of insightful, grimly funny faux-gospel music…and then goes up to the public park on the tenth floor of the Trump Tower to write more. And tells funny stories about all of that. He was in typically sardonic form, playing emcee as a rotating cast of impassioned singers from the choir took turns out front, through a lot of new material.

Pending apocalypse was a recurrent theme right from the pouncing, minor-key anthem that opened the set: “How can we tell the creatures it’s the end of the world?” was the recurrent question. Relax: they saw this coming a lot sooner than we did and they’ve all come south from the pole for one last feast on our polluted corpses. In between towering, angst-fueled contemplations of that eventuality, Rev. Billy and his crew took Devil Monsanto to task for its frankenseed assault on farmers, the environment, and ultimately the food chain. In the night’s most harrowing moment, they interrupted a towering, rising-and-falling anti-police brutality broadside with a long reading of names of young black and latino men murdered by police: Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Amadou Diallo and many, many more.

Miking a choir is a tough job, no doubt, but the inept sound crew here didn’t help much making Talen and his singers audible over the sinewy piano/bass/drums trio behind them. And it wasn’t possible to get close to the stage to listen since all the front seats, almost all of them left empty, are all reserved for paying customers here now. Ever feel like you’re being pushed out of your own city?