Concert Review: Black Crack Revue at Westport Coffee House

Just how weird can 100 Midwestern baby boomers get?  Very weird, if the assemblage at Westport Coffee House for the 40th anniversary concert of Black Crack Revue is any guide.  The free-spirited people who paid $15 for entry on Thursday, August 4, provided an outlandish visual counterpoint to the extraordinarily accomplished and often absurdist music of BCR.

The lack of inhibition displayed by fans of the self-proclaimed “Afro-nuclear wavabilly funk swing reggae Turska” band is rooted in the era prior to cell phones and social media.  BCR, an ensemble partially inspired by an extended Kansas City residency of the Sun Ra Arkestra in the early 1980s, acted as inspiring ringleaders.

The current edition of the interstellar jazz and alternative pop ensemble consists of original members including Thomas Aber and Dwight Frizzell as well as more recent additions like Pat Conway and Julia Thro.  The accomplished woodwind specialist Michael Eaton  joined the large cast during the 95-minute opening set.

BCR is just as inspiring and energetic as it was in the early 1990s when it was a fixture on the calendars of Kansas City nightclubs.  Then as now, the ensemble is best during its astral jazz excursions, but wacky pop-leaning songs such as “Teenie Boppers in Atlantis” and “Rappin' Kierkegaard” filled the dance floor on an extraordinarily peculiar night to remember.

Now’s the Time: Thundercat

Thundercat, a jazz-adjacent leader of the West Coast funk and electronic music movements, performs at Grinders on Monday, August 8. Plastic Sax reviewed the bassist’s 2017 concert in Lawrence. According to the Plastic Sax archives, Thundercat last performed within the city limits of Kansas City in 2012 when he opened for Red Hot Chili Peppers at the Sprint Center.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Seth Davis discussed Kansas City’s experimental music scene in the first portion of an interview on Guitar Moderne’s YouTube channel.

*Bobby Watson’s recent performance in Sonoma County was hailed as “a West Coast reemergence” by Classical Voice.

*Tweet of the Week: Adam Larson- New KC Trio Album Pre-Order NOW AVAILABLE! (link)

Album Review: Blair Bryant- Red Tiger

With the temperature in Kansas City occasionally reaching 100 degrees this summer, thousands of area residents are desperate to find ways to cool off.  Red Tiger, the latest release by Kansas City bassist Blair Bryant, offers a quick fix.  Hitting play on the smooth jazz album is like taking a refreshing plunge on a scorching day.

The sultry Sade-isms of “Kiss of Life” might make the song the feel-good hit of the summer in an alternate universe.  The horn lines of “Medusa’s Mirror” echo Hugh Masekela’s classic hit “Grazing in the Grass.”  A breezy arrangement of Stevie Wonder’s 1982 hit “That Girl” is equally invigorating.

Focusing on Bryant’s vigorous fusion-esque electric bass on tracks like “Power Up!” is as pleasantly hypnotic as watching an icon on a screensaver bounce off the edges of a computer monitor.  Fifty-four minutes of carefree fun, Red Tiger is a crisp oasis hidden in a steamy, anxious summer.

Now’s the Time: Julian Vaughn

The smooth jazz bassist Julian Vaughn will represent Kansas City’s jazz heritage at the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum’s Heart of America Hot Dog Festival on Saturday, July 30. The R&B oldies acts Average White Band and Atlantic Starr top the bill.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*A concert headlined by smooth jazz artist Jackiem Joyner and a performance by Dan Thomas are among the events listed on the schedule of next month’s Spotlight Charlie Parker endeavor.

*The Kansas City Star’s feature about Fairyland Park notes that bands led by Bennie Moten and Count Basie frequently performed at the amusement park.

*A review of a Minneapolis concert by the Count Basie Orchestra was published by the Jazz Police blog.

*Tweet of the Week: Helbing Jazz Initiative- Day 1 of the 2022 Grand Prairie Fine Arts Academy Jazz camp! We spent the day focused on the music and legend of Charlie Parker: Kansas City Lightning.

Album Review: Steve Cardenas, Ben Allison and Ted Nash- Healing Power: The Music of Carla Bley

Gullible listeners who mistake volume for quality are unlikely to appreciate Healing Power: The Music of Carla Bley. The new album doesn’t contain deafening drum solos or screeching vocals. Instead, the trio of guitarist Steve Cardenas, bassist Ben Allison and saxophonist/clarinetist Ted Nash interpret nine Bley compositions with solemn quietude. Cardenas, a former Kansas City resident who performed at recordBar four months ago, consistently flirts with silence. Nash, best known for his affiliation with Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Allison, one of the leading bassists of the new millennium, match Cardenas’ serenity on their third recording as a trio. Their sublime restraint is, in fact, restorative.

Now’s the Time: Marcus Lewis

Saxophonist Matt Otto is among the outstanding musicians who will perform in a band led by trombonist Marcus Lewis at the Blue Room on Friday, July 23. The embedded video captures one of their 2016 collaborations.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Joe Dimino shared video clips from shows by Dave Scott and Charles Williams.

*The Chicago jazz advocacy group Fulton Street Collective streamed a performance by the Kansas City trio of saxophonist Pete Fucinaro, bassist Ben Tervort and drummer Brian Steever.

*Tweet of the Week: Kenneth Barreras- Master Musician Carmell Jones was born on this date in 1936. Here he is playing his own composition on a Nathan Davis recording. Davis himself does not play on this tune. With the legendary Kenny Clarke on drums. Carmell's Black Forest Waltz (link)

Concert Review: The Dave Scott Quartet and Arnold Young and the RoughTet at Westport Coffee House

A concert at Westport Coffee House on Sunday, July 10, felt consequential even though fewer than two dozen people paid the $10 cover charge.  A quartet led by trumpeter Dave Scott and Arnold Young’s RoughTet shared the bill in a rare confluence of exceptional homegrown talent.

Scott, a New York based trumpeter raised in the Kansas City area, and the Kansas City drummer Young made waves in the region’s jazz scene alongside their eminent peer Pat Metheny several decades ago.  On Sunday, the bandleaders were joined by representatives of several generations of Kansas City jazz musicians.  Each participant responded to the momentous summit with inspired playing.

A rambunctious couple sitting near the bandstand hooted and hollered throughout Young’s freewheeling 45-minute opening set.  They had the right idea.  Assisted by his longtime compatriot John Nichols on bass and Gary Cardile on percussion, the veteran drummer acted as an irreverent version of Art Blakey as he mentored the youthful tandem of saxophonist Jacob Schwartzberg and trumpeter Quin Wallace.

Renditions of selections from their new album Fear Is the Mind Killer were gloriously raucous.  Scott sat in with the RoughTet before playing a 70-minute set with the New York based Michael Eaton (the saxophonist is from nearby Liberty), bassist Jeff Harshbarger and drummer Marty Morrison.

Eaton took several Coltrane-esque solos and a few of Scott’s distinctive statements resembled variations on “Flight of the Bumblebee.”   Yet the ensemble mostly shifted between the proto-harmolodics of early Ornette Coleman, ominous post-bop and joyful Kansas City swing.  Such transcendent displays of left-of-center artistic excellence in the face of public indifference are a hallmark of Kansas City’s jazz scene.

Now’s the Time: Joe Cartwright at the Blue Room

Joe Cartwright returns to the Blue Room on Friday, July 15.  The pianist displays his elegant style in an interpretation of “The Summer Knows” in the embedded video.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*The theme of this year’s jazz festival in Glen Ellyn, Illinois, is Goin' to Kansas City.  A headlining set led by Bobby Watson and Fareed Haque’s tribute to Pat Metheny are among the performances slated for the July 16 event in the Chicago suburb.

*Jeff Shirley talked to Joe Dimino.

*Tweet of the Week: KCDownTown- Jazz enthusiasts prepare to celebrate KC’s status as a UNESCO Creative City (link)

Concert Review: Phillip Greenlief, Midwestern and the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society at Bushranger Records

A concert hosted in the basement of a house in northeastern Kansas City on Sunday, July 3, acted as a study in risk/reward theory.  A multitude of ill-advised gambles were taken.  A high percentage failed, but the payoffs of the sporadic successes were enormous.

The audaciously programmed bill featured three divergent acts.  The exploratory saxophonist Phillip Greenlief opened the show with an approximately 25-minute solo excursion.  The Californian seemed intent in creating previously unheard sounds.  

Following an opening segment in which he sputtered without a mouthpiece, Greenlief used a mouthpiece cap to transform his tenor saxophone into a novel percussive instrument.  Groans and shouts heightened the intensity of more familiar wailing in the mode of Albert Ayler in the latter stage of his recital.

The locally based duo Midwestern ratcheted up the rumpus.  Categorized by Shuttlecock as “experimental hip-hop,” Midwestern’s frenzied set more closely resembled metallic hyper-pop.

Four representatives of the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society- saxophonist Ben Baker, drummer Brandon Cooper, bassist Krista Kopper and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Osborne- strove to equal Midwestern’s manic showing with abrasive free jazz.

A punk rocker proudly sporting bruises inflicted in a mosh pit the previous evening, an intrepid violinist and the euphoric author of Plastic Sax were among the handful of observers who stuck around for an evening-ending jam featuring all of the musicians.

The bonkers saxophone bleating of Midwestern’s R.W was the most surprising component of the anarchic collision of free jazz and electronic turbulence.  For connoisseurs of chaos, being tied to the tracks for the sonic equivalent of a proverbial train wreck felt like winning the lottery.

Now’s the Time: Michael Eaton at Westport Coffee House

The New York based Michael Eaton, a native of Liberty, Missouri, is back in town. His appearance at Westport Coffee House on Thursday, July 14, is likely to be the most obstreperous of his several gigs in Kansas City. Billed as “Expression: The Late Music of John Coltrane,” the saxophonist will be joined by Kyle Quass, a trumpet player from Indiana, and a cast of Kansas City ringers.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Giovanni Russonello of The New York Times suggests that one of Logan Richardson and Blues People’s sets at the Village Vanguard in May was “the sparsest show I had been to the Vanguard in years in terms of attendance and it was the best show that I had been to at the Vanguard in years” in an episode of Popcast.

*Steve Kraske chatted with the McFadden Brothers and Candace Evans on KCUR’s Up To Date.

*Joe Dimino documented a street party fueled by the Back Alley Brass Band.

*Anteloper’s July 9 concert in Columbia is previewed by Aarik Danielson for The Columbia Daily Tribune.

*Tweet of the Week: Next On TCM- PETE KELLY'S BLUES (1955) Jack Webb, Janet Leigh, Edmond O'Brien. Dir: Jack Webb 12:00 PM ET The jazz band's leader gets mixed up with a gangster in '20s Kansas City. 1h 35m | Crime | TV-PG

Pitch Imperfect

The introduction of The Pitch’s new music issue suggests “the entirety of KC’s music scene is jazz-incarnate.” Yet not one of the more than two dozen acts featured in the publication’s overview performs improvised music. The staff of The Pitch is free to apply its editorial discretion as it sees fit. Yet the snub is consistent with the systematic disregard of jazz in Kansas City. Neglecting the robust contributions of current innovators such as Seth Davis, Kelley Gant, Adam Larson, Eddie Moore, Logan Richardson, Peter Schlamb and Evan Verplough is the latest example of the ongoing erasure of jazz by the city’s conventional powerbrokers.

Now’s the Time: All Night Trio

All Night Trio, Matt Villinger’s jazz-adjacent band, performs at the Blue Room on Friday, July 8. The embedded music video for the wavy “All Faded” features cameo appearances by the Kansas City musicians Stephen Martin and Peter Schlamb.

Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes

*Libby Hanssen created a feature about Kansas City’s women jazz musicians for KCUR.

*Nduduzo Makhathini chatted with Rashida Phillips of the American Jazz Museum.

*Tweet of the Week: Miles- Kansas City took my Jazz club virginity and I am so grateful for it (video)

Concert Review: Bill Summers and Forward Back at Dunbar Park

“Summer’s heat- smell my feet!” Bill Summers exclaimed at Dunbar Park on Tuesday, June 21.  The legendary percussionist and his new band Forward Back overcame stifling conditions in a free 65-minute set sponsored by Creative City KC in conjunction with Make Music Day.

Acknowledging the disappointing size of the audience of less than 100, Summers noted “it doesn’t matter how many people are here or not here- we’re going to throw the funk down.”  The sextet did- kind of.  In stark contrast to the jazz and African orientation of Summers’ concert last year in the same location, Saturday’s show was rooted in pop.

At its best, Forward Back resembles an exciting reboot of the Fugees.  In lesser moments, Forward Back sounds like a sketchy Black Eyed Peas tribute band.  A disappointing reliance on backing tracks belied the talent on stage.  Drummer Jamal Batiste (yes, he’s Jon Batiste’s brother) was particularly constrained.

Forward Back doesn’t attempt to replicate Summers’ rarified artistic achievements with the Headhunters and Los Hombres Calientes.  Yet the infectious exuberance of the group compensated for its stylistic limitations.  Summers proclaimed “we are not musicians- we are physicians.”  The sextet administered spiritual healing on Saturday.

Now’s the Time: The Glenn Miller Orchestra at Muriel Kauffman Theatre

A mention of Charlie Parker at a concert featuring members of the Kansas City Symphony last week elicited a smattering of applause. Dozens of people heartily cheered when Glenn Miller was cited a few minutes later. Some of those enthusiasts of the late bandleader will almost certainly be on hand when The Glenn Miller Orchestra performs at Muriel Kauffman Theatre on the afternoon of Saturday, June 25.