"Hey, Fred!" 10/02-10/08/2024
Goings On in Columbus, OH: Steve Dawson and Diane Christiansen | Cecile McLorin Salvant | Hasan Fest | Kris Davis Trio | Davila 666
Back home from Gonerfest, there may still be some longer-form shaping of the fistful of notes and photographs I took. And while I remain stunned by the vibrant, generational wealth of talent and culture in Memphis, these days, I’m also extremely happy to come home. And, true to form, returning feels like autumn in the best ways. Including a fucking stacked calendar of things to do. There are at least another five I didn’t write up because if I don’t set limits, I get overwhelmed and burned out - this is a weekend where it’s hard to go wrong.
Music
10/03/2024
Steve Dawson and Diane Christiansen
Hogan House
October 3: Doors at 7 pm
BYOB, Dinner Provided
$20 Tickets Available at https://undertowshows.com/products/columbus-oh-october-3
I previewed this in a separate edition of the Substack, with what I thought was a great conversation - and more I didn’t include about Dawson’s work with the Chicago jazz scene and his teaching - but obviously I’m going to shout this out here as well as one of the five things I recommend most highly.
As I say in that other article, “I’ve seen some of the best shows in years in the intimate confines of the Hogans’ basement – by Robbie Fulks, Jon Langford, Wussy, Marah, and others. I’m as excited about this show – which kicks off their Northeast tour - as any one of those.”
Cécile McLorin Salvant with Sullivan Fortner on piano
Wexner Center for the Arts, 1871 N High St
October 3: sets at 7 pm and 9 pm
Tickets starting at $10 for students available at the Wexner site
As both a jazz nerd and someone whose taste in the music was partly shaped by proximity to the venue, I’m overjoyed the jazz series is back at the Wexner Center over the last few years - I still get teary thinking about that Jaimie Branch show - and they’re kicking off the most robust season of it since 2017 with one of the guiding lights bringing jazz vocals into the future: Cécile McLorin Salvant.
Her crystalline voice was so immediately striking in 2010 that if the rest of the work had never evolved she’d still be one of the great singers of America’s music, but starting with The Window (one of my top records of 2018), simultaneously stripping down to one of the classic formats, a duet with a pianist (the great Sullivan Fortner who’s also accompanying her here), the taste in repertoire and a couple of fascinating originals made maybe the first fully modern record - finding contemporary resonance and nuance in these standards, most of which I’d been hearing since I was a kid at my Grandmother’s house - I could think of in that format. Hank Shteamer, one of my favorite current music writers, said for Rolling Stone, “[She’s] teasing out the grey areas and tougher truths in these songs — the way love can sting as much as it soothes, for example — to generally stunning effect.”
She followed that gauntlet-slamming-down with the masterful Ghost Song (alternately Fortner and Columbus native Aaron Diehl on piano) shifting to more than half originals, and it was an even more stunning record. The breathtaking “Moon Song” - “Let me love you like I love the moon” still rattles around in my chest a few years later, and it’s one of a slew of examples of this masterpiece. Last year’s Mélusine - mainly in French but also Haition Kreiyol and English - combines historical material with originals centered around the 14th-century eponymous figure from folklore. It’s another astonishing leap forward, both expanding the instrumental palate to include superstars like bassist Luques Curtis, percussionist Weedie Bramah, and saxophonist Godwin Lewis, and drilling deep into the material, making it personal.
10/04/2024
Hasan Fest
Old First Presbyterian Church, 1101 Bryden Rd
October 4 and 5, show at 8 pm on the 4th, 4 pm on the 5th
Tickets on a sliding scale at the door, starting at $10 for Friday and $15 for Saturday
Hasan Abdur-Razzaq left this plane in 2021 and his vibration is still being felt. Long a torch-bearer for fully improvised music, a passionate player who brought a lifetime of study to every note he conjured without anything feeling like it was overthought, and also one of the kindest, most insightful people I ever had the privilege to talk with.
Gerard Cox—one of our often unsung heroes in booking this kind of music and a dear friend of Abdur-Razzaq’s—does more than anyone to keep that legacy alive. He releases records and produces an annual festival in his memory that also pays tribute to his constant searching and to moving the music forward in community, in concert with others.
This year’s starts Friday night with a killer band doing the music of Thelonious Monk - which Abdur-Razzaq loved - in new arrangements by pianist Paul Strawser and featuring the great James Gaiters on drums in an exciting rhythm section pairing with Andy Woodson (Paw Paw Orchestra, Science Gravy Orchestra) on bass, and a frontline I don’t know as well but I’m excited to hear, of Jake Smith on saxophone and Ivan Murray on trumpet.
For Saturday, improvisers, local and from far afield, team up in intriguing combinations. I’ll quote Gerard’s event invite:
4 pm- "Obsessed with Sound" invocation in the sanctuary. Long tones/drone set featuring Torin Jacobs on flutes and percussion.
4:45- Alex Henry, solo saxophone
5:30- Leigh Hohenfield + Max Hyde-Perry. Processed flute and upright bass.
6:15-7 pm- dinner break, pizza being ordered in.
7 pm- Josh Strange-Troy Kunkler mallet percussion duo. Marimba and vibraphone, ridiculously fun!
7:45 pm- Emily Hay (flute) with Josh Strange (marimba, trumpet), Bryan Stewart (electric bass), Gerard Cox (percussion, noises)
8:45 pm- L.A. Jenkins (electric guitar) with Max Hyde-Perry (bass), Troy Kunkler (drums) and special guest Alex Henry (saxophones).
9:45 pm- Hasan's "True Medicine" legacy band. This is the last band that Hasan formed and that played publicly. We played a memorable show at a Franklinton Friday in 400 West Rich. The legacy version will feature Hasan's good friend Michael Carey on saxophones. True Medicine includes Aaron Putnam on keyboards and percussion, Chris Haas on bass clarinet and keyboards, Gerard Cox on keyboards and trumpet, and the stellar Tim Sanders on drums.
10/06/2024
Kris Davis Trio
Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E Broad St
October 6: 2 pm show
Free tickets with RSVP at Eventbrite
One of my favorite pianists, bandleaders, and composers - it’s an enormous treat to hear Kris Davis coming through the Columbus Museum of Art under the umbrella of the excellent A Tribe for Jazz organization. She’s made my year-end lists so many times: in live performance alone, a Paradoxical Frog (trio with Ingrid Laubrock and Tyshawn Sorey) gig at Cornelia Street in 2011, a 2016 duo with fellow supernova Craig Taborn at the Wexner Center, leading Diatom Ribbons around Winter Jazzfest in 2020, and a killer quintet at my first trip back to the Village Vanguard after lockdown in 2022.
My praise has included “all about tone and feeling but still steering clear of any clichéd way to think about those concepts,” “Motifs appear and disappear, splinter and flow together again, like clinging to a raft along a surging river. For pure beauty, I don’t think this show could have been bettered,” “Grappled with the history of the music, with mesmerizing takes on Eric Dolphy’s tribute to Monk, “Hat and Beard,” Roland Shannon Jackson’s “Alice in the Congo,” and a dazzling read of Geri Allen’s “A Dancer” along with her own stellar compositions,” and “a kaleidoscopic explosion.”
She comes to town with an astonishing trio: Johnathan Blake on drums (whose own quintet stand at the Vanguard in 2023 made my list) and Robert Hurst on bass (Diana Krall, Charles Lloyd, Branford Marsalis, Willie Nelson), promoting a fantastic new album of all originals, Run the Gauntlet. Highly recommended.
Davila 666 with Las Nubes, Ladrones, and The Ferals
Rumba Cafe, 2507 Summit St
October 6: 4 pm show
$20 tickets at Rumba Cafe Site
One of my favorite rock bands - full stop - returns to town for an early Sunday show at Rumba leading a stacked lineup. Puerto Rico’s knocked me sideways the first time I saw them in 2009 at Ravari Room and made my year-end list - I said, “Exactly what you want rock and roll to be, the stripped down-to-basics melodies of Johnny Thunders and the Ramones but also the wild dancing excess of the Fleshtones, with two people who are tambourine players and background singers. They got up in front of maybe 70 people on a Sunday night, left an ounce of sweat and plenty of spilled beer on the stage, and sent everyone out into the night with a song in her heart.” Most recently seeing them in 2019 at the Summit the night before Anne’s birthday, they lived up to and affirmed every ounce of those feelings with a righteous set that reminded me of the power and beauty of rock and roll.
The fact that we didn’t have to wait another ten years for them to return alone would make this a must-see. But they’re not content with that - they’re bringing Ladrones via San Juan/Atlanta, a brightly burning newer star system in the garage-punk universe, and the poppier, raucous Las Nubes from Miami. The cherry on top is The Ferals, a noisy rock Columbus supergroup of Lara Yazvac (The Tough and Lovely), Lou Poster (Grafton, Drift Mouth), and Vicky Mahnke (Son of Dribble) that doesn’t play nearly often enough. End your weekend with rock of the highest order.