(Editors Note: I originally planned to attend both the Manhattan Marathon last weekend, but came down with whatever cold/flu has been going around. Following is what Dan was able to catch at the Brooklyn Marathon, along with my thoughts on Tuesday’s Bitches Brew Reimagined show at LPR.)
Brooklyn Marathon, Sat 1/10/26: For all their many musical interests over 40 years of existence, Ethiopian music has been one of the more recurring proclivities of the Boston-based Either/Orchestra, and both the familiarity and willingness to expand upon the material could very much be heard at their set at Brooklyn Bowl. The swirl of horns around the percussion recalled a bit of Ellington’s Far East Suite and Coltrane’s Africa Brass, where harmonic sophistication blends smartly and subtly with the characteristically slinky melodies of the “Ethiopiques” sound. In their “small big band” format, the band moved with both strength and nimbleness; horn solos easily interacted with the rhythm section, but could easily switch into cinematic mode to back their guest vocalists with lush cinematic textures under intoxicating melodies.
It wasn’t terribly unusual to see Kevin Eubanks return to hardcore jazz in his post-late-night career, but an audience might be quite taken aback to see another late night veteran, longtime David Letterman music director Paul Shaffer, as part of the searing, prickly avant-funk outfit Quantum Blues Quartet at Music Hall of Williamsburg. Led by the spiritually-hefty guitarist Tisziji Muñoz, an alum of artists like Pharoah Sanders and Shaffer’s own one-time mentor, the pianist’s pop chops weren’t sidelined but rather brought into a lightly chaotic fold where Hendrixy blues, boogie-woogie, free jazz and 70’s funk ping-ponged back and forth, melting and reconstituting at will. All possibilities seemed to be on the table: something that seemed like it could’ve been penned for Billy Joel might be only a minute behind something that sounded like an outtake on Ornette Coleman’s Dancing in Your Head.
At National Sawdust, Samora and Elena Pinderhughes made light of the oddity of their relative lack of co-performing, despite their blood and musical relationship. Though they’ve both been on their own trajectories for many years, you could hear where they dovetail: there’s palpable sense of vulnerability in their melodies (of which both brother and sister deftly either sung or performed instrumentally) at the midpoint between alt R&B and contemporary jazz. The siblings drew from a wide variety of musical influences in a melding of both new and old music from each of their oeuvres; lush flute improvisations from Elena soared over crackling drum grooves a la her tenure in Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah’s group, and Samora’s Radiohead-esque “Inertia” rocked and rumbled underneath his gentle vocal confessions.
Over at Superior Ingredients, saxophonist Dave Binney’s “Action Trio”, (flanked by bassist Pera Krstajic and drummer/pianist/singer Louis Cole) was melting heads and moving hips with an explosive combination of icily potent modern jazz and heavy break-beating electronic music. Toggling between a raw trio sound and dense track programming, Binney would swoop and strike with cold precision overtop thick grooves from his bandmates, the extra effects sometimes coming in hot from the get-go, and sometimes creeping in like ghosts. The group would occasionally chill out with Cole singing lo-fi love ballads over retro-fabulous key and drum machine sounds, only to bring the house down with an outright dance party of hard house just one selection later.
Ten years ago, Dawn of Midi’s “Dysnomia” – an unbroken, 45-minute long journey through tightly-woven polyrhythmic melodies – dazzled critics and audiences,In and it was no less potent at their performance at National Sawdust. Listeners would be led through trap doors of ambiguous musical cells that could be clarified or obscured at a moments notice, sometimes soothing audiences by locking them into a groove and sometimes letting the bottom drop out as the next section was being staged. Apart from the rhythms and synchronicities, an underrated part of Dysnomia is its exploration of sound; though it’s influenced by electronic music, the sounds are even more naturally-derived than a typical trio, as the piano and bass would explore the metal and wood of their instruments through tapped harmonics. As their name suggests, it was like watching a version of electronic music as if it started in the Stone Age, a fascinating reconstruction of musical history that, though there’s little improvisation to speak of, fits within the questioning spirit of jazz.
Take Two: Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew Reimagined: Tues., 1/13/26
In 1969, Miles Davis performed with his so-called “Lost Quintet” (Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, Jack DeJohnette) at the former The Village Gate, better know today as Le Poisson Rouge. Miles’ set that night included numbers that eventually made it onto his 1970 magnum opus Bitches Brew: a heady mix of acoustic and electric sounds that is still fresh and startling well into its sixth decade. So, it was only fitting that last Tuesday, presenters Pique-Nique offered Bitches Brew as their latest Take Two show, first playing the album – they made it through DIsc One – then bringing on stage a band assembled by bass clarinetist Stuart Bogie and guitarist Dave Harrington to perform their own reinterpretation. The 11-piece band consisted of veterans Nels Cline and Billy Martin, alongside stalwarts Shahzad Ismaily, Grey McMurray, Yuka Honda, Kenny Wolleson and others; perhaps wisely, Miles himself on tape provided the stark, haunting trumpet blasts that echo throughout the album. As bandleader, Bogie managed to work some kind of alchemy, conducting the ensemble with wild gestures that somehow modulated tempo and dynamics, not unlike Butch Morris’ quasi-real Conduction techniques. Lasting about an hour, it all amounted to a thrilling evocation of Miles’ spirit, and a fitting way to wrap up the 22nd edition of the Winter Jazzfest. Which will no doubt be back before we know it.
More pics from Take Two’s Bitches Brew Reimagined here.