Railroader Reviews

I’m writing from the train that’s taking me to Montreal for a week of work on Joane Hétu’s Récits de Neige project, the third in her Musique D’Hiver triptych, to be performed this coming weekend at Théâtre La Chapelle. Thus, this is my first full week away from ST since it opened, and I’m sad to be missing this week’s program: Christine Duncan’s Element Choir on Wednesday; the return of Kyle Brenders’s seven-piece Ensemble on Thursday (to close out his residency); and HuffLigNon, a chamber jazz project by New York-based Canadian saxophonist, Peter Van Huffel, on Saturday. I’m also very grateful to Joe Sorbara, who is presiding in my stead.

This past week has again featured some very fine music, starting with the Element Choir, with Idiolalla (Christine, DB Boyko, Jean Martin) in support, on Wednesday. The trio played just one piece, sandwiched between choral sets, and it was striking how it galvanized the choir following their rather tentative opener. The sheer physicality of DB’s and Christine’s delivery seemed to grant the choristers permission to pursue the same, much to the benefit of the last set, and the contrast between them – Christine mostly digging down and DB sailing overtop – reinforced how utterly dynamic this pair is. They shared conduction duties and their dance-like flurry of signals surely caused some confusion within the ranks, though it left the singers intriguingly to their own intuitive devices, and resulted in some marvelously unpredictable responses through the improvising.

(A heads-up: My favourite Bramptonian, Maestro Ricardo Marsella, has enlisted me to curate the “Rotundus Maximus” series at the Brampton Indie Arts Festival, and I’ve given all of Wednesday 13 February to Christine and the Choir. My shortlist of things for which it’s worth braving 400-series highways includes hearing this squad in the Rose Theatre Rotunda.)

Thursday, Kyle Brenders brought in his trio with bassist Rob Clutton and drummer Brandon Valdivia, a group that, to my ears, paints the clearest picture of Kyle’s vision as a composer and bandleader. Their first set was dominated by a version the modular, episodic “Flow Line Follow Line Flow,” a signature piece that has had performed by Kyle’s septet and the AIMToronto Orchestra as well. The crispness of response by Rob and Brandon beautifully animated what can be a fairly static, unexpressive piece. The trio’s second set was comprised of shorter, diverse, perhaps more idiomatic pieces of which “Black Bile,” a quirky blues fantasy with a nifty palindromic form, was most memorable.

Rob was back again, much to my delight, on Saturday night with his Cluttertones, one of the first groups to have played at ST back in September. To my mind, the band fits the spirit and scope of the place perfectly, and everyone in the band – Rob, Tim Posgate on banjo and guitar, Lina Allemano on trumpet, Ryan Driver on synth, melodica, and voice – clearly revels in the chance to play here. Rob’s writing is deeply wrought and so very personal, and pieces like “Lion and Ant,” featuring Ryan’s fragile vocal delivery, left at least a few of us in tears. Gracefully, Rob followed up with the delightful “Porch,” a whimsical, almost faux-naïf diatonic swing tune that seems tailor-made for Tim’s banjo, with Ryan’s demented melodica comping as a brilliant foil. Lina’s burnished-toned trumpet solo went from singing to sputtering and back again, but it’s her reiteration of Rob’s wonderful melody on the out-head that I haven’t been able to stop humming.

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.