Solo Projects: Ches Smith and Jason Nazary

In the past week I've seen two solo drum performances that were also CD release parties. First I saw Ches Smith play at Zebulon, celebrating the release of "Psycho Predictions", his third installment of solo percussion music under the name Congs for Brums. I've caught a couple of Ches' solo shows, and the evolution of his music is pretty remarkable. Ches' drum set is situated in a kind of triangle with a vibraphone and Moog synthesizer and other electronics. A lot of the compositions are based around loops played on the synth, and then elaborated or deconstructed on the vibes or drums. The variety of textures was excellent, with the sometimes harsh electronic sounds side by side with the glowing resonance of the vibes. The set concluded with Ches pummeling the drum set, but not in the "drum solo" way that you might expect in a solo drum performance. It was more of a concentrated, groove-based explosion. I felt like Ches' compositional ideas were equally important as his always incredible drumming.

Then last night I saw Jason Nazary's CD release performance for his solo project, So Ghost. Jason mics his drums and runs the signal through his computer where he can control effects and loops. The music has an improvisational feel, but at the same time I was aware of a planned progression through different sound worlds. At times there was an incredibly dense layering of sounds, with the loops transfigured by effects or played at different speeds the music began to resemble some kind of alien tribal drum ensemble.
One similarity to Ches' show was that there was a long buildup to any kind of traditional drum set playing. But when Jason finally played the whole kit at the end of the set, the effect was revelatory. Like at Ches' show, it was also a groove-based explosion rather than a "drum solo", with a wall of sound blaring from the electronics. Totally gripping.
Another cool feature of Jason's set was a projection of a kind of sine wave graphic that responded to the sounds. The image was projected on Jason's white shirt, which was pretty cool to watch in a dark room. I tried to capture a little bit on my camera.

Matt Mitchell at Korzo

Last week I caught two great sets of music at Korzo featuring pianist Matt Mitchell. The first set was Matt playing solo and the second was a duo with drummer Ches Smith. They played a series of short and rhythmically complex pieces by Matt.

Minerva and Tim Berne at Korzo

Minerva, a collaborative trio I play in with Carlo Costa and Pascal Niggenkemper, were honored to share a bill with Tim Berne's trio last night at Korzo in Brooklyn. Tim was playing with Ches Smith and John Hebert, and they sounded fantastic. Ches and John have a great rapport that's evidenced in their work with Mary Halvorson's groups, and they really tore into Tim's music with utter fearlessness. Here's a little clip:



We had the good fortune to have our set recorded by Randy Thaler, who has been most generously taping shows at Korzo and giving them to the musicians. People like Randy are such an important part of the music community, and we are very thankful!
Here's a clip of us playing Pascal's composition "Let's Go...I Don't Know"

Let's Go...I Don't Know by JPSchlegelmilch

Mid-Week Live Music Update

Tuesday was a really great night of music at Korzo in Park Slope. This week James Carney's music series featured a new Tim Berne trio called Snake Oil, with Matt Mitchell and Ches Smith. They played Tim's music, some of it I was familiar with from his band Hard Cell, which has the same instrumentation but with Tom Rainey and Craig Taborn. Tim mentioned at the beginning that they were also planning on incorporating other people's music into the band, naming Matt Mitchell, Craig Taborn, and Django Bates as possible sources. Their set was great, I was especially blown away by how Ches Smith shaped the music, and what an intense and original approach he has to the drums. I was sitting right by the piano, and could watch Matt Mitchell play those incredibly hard piano parts that Tim writes! Matt is such a great improvisor, I feel like I learned a lot just watching his hands.
Then Mike Pride's band Bacteria 2 Boys played, which was also awesome. So much good drumming! Mike's music for this group really took me by surprise. I had always seen Mike playing drums in very out settings, but this band's music is largely tune-based. There was even one straight-up jazz ballad!

On Wednesday I saw most of a set by John Hollenbeck's Large Ensemble at Littlefield. Kate McGarry and Theo Bleckmann were singing together, which was really wonderful to see. I'm always amazed by how many different musical territories that John explores in his writing for this group. I heard him say once that he tries to approach every composition differently, using a different process, almost to try to make each piece sound like it was written by a different composer. The pieces that Kate and Theo sang on were very tonal and almost pop-sounding. Another piece had lengthy sections featuring John improvising with saxophonists Tony Malaby and Ellery Eskelin over cued atmospheric backgrounds.