Real Free Jazz & Fake New Age

Unlike some recent ST residencies of note, the Element Choir and Nilan Perera’s holyblueghost, Kyle Brenders’s residency hasn’t consistently featured one group and, instead, seems designed primarily with variety in mind. Likely, the no-mean-feat task of getting his players to commit for a string of Thursdays has factored into this decision. However, like his teacher and one of music’s great polymaths, Anthony Braxton, Kyle does well by emphasizing his range of strengths, skills, and musical vision. So, it was no surprise to move from the disciplined, rather earnest silences of his Ensemble one week – see here for my report – to the over-the-top excesses of his Double Trio this past Thursday.

For the first set, Kyle formed subgroup duets according to instrumentation: Bassists Michael Owen Liston and Aaron Lumley, drummers Brandon Valdivia and (Vancouverite guest) Dan Gaucher, and he and tenorist Colin Fisher. Though altogether more demonstrative than anything that happened a week earlier, these had the somewhat polite feel of a warm-up, and it wasn’t until the subsequent small group when Fisher, Lumley, and (in particular) Brandon Valdivia started generating some real heat.

The second set was a full double-trio blowout, and less interesting for it, since the expanded group found most common ground in fairly idiomatic free jazz conventions; several times, before and after long, loud solos, they defaulted to the static timbral soup that William Parker, at his U of T workshop a year ago, mockingly called “the avant-garde drone.” Regardless, there was still much to enjoy, especially Kyle’s alto playing that, at times, evoked Joe McPhee’s soulful Ayler-on-alto bray that featured so prominently during Joe’s September 2006 Interface Series. The contrast between drummers was equally stimulating, with the amazingly fleet Valdivia zipping around and animating Gaucher’s more deliberate, rock-ish gestures. And, in case there is any doubt, it all got pretty damn loud.

Saturday night, as promised, featured the Fake New Age Music Band, and I was pleasantly surprised to have Josh Thorpe, Jason Benoit, and Allison Cameron open for them. I hadn’t heard this trio play before and, despite the constantly brilliant sounds that Allison was getting out of her cheapo electronic keyboard and pedals, it took awhile to overcome my initially skeptical response to the set. They seemed to adhere to an approach that prizes a rather self-conscious brand of noodling, perhaps as a way to side-step straightforwardly ‘responsive’ responses, and the results seemed all too haphazard at first. By the second piece, though, I’d discovered a fairly exquisite coherence in it all, and all of the disparate internal details came duly to collective life. Josh’s guitar playing is beautifully subdued, though my highlight came when he stepped out with an episode of controlled feedback with which Allison, then on her amazing electric toy saxophone, entered into a momentarily mind-bending dialogue.

The New Agers, however, seemed to have a hard time finding any such dialogue (if that was indeed a goal – the project seems perverse enough that I’d be foolish to assume so) and mostly the trio's music skirted around on the surface of things for their shortish set. Ryan Driver was amazing on thumb reeds – which he played exclusively – as he responded occasionally but generally contrasted with the ‘sounds of nature’ furnished by Andrew Wedman on records, CDs and sundry electronics. A brief episode of thumb-reed birdsong mimicry was totally breathtaking. Michael Keith picked his spots on his acoustic guitar but occasionally seemed at a loss in the face of Ryan’s inscrutability as an improviser. The set ended oddly and abruptly, leaving a further disjointed edge to the music; this could well have been intentional, though they may have simply been good-naturedly throwing in the towel for this one.