Ornate Dining Rooms
A bunch of music show and dining room reviews
I’ve been watching a lot of Poirot, lately; the 1980s-90s Agatha Christie television adaptation starring David Suchet as the titular Wallon-Belgian private detective with a funny mustache, a “french” accent, and Hitchcockian belly. I mostly (and I mean 89%) watch this show for the production design and decor. There must be some blog that catalogs the extraordinary interiors and architecture of mid-century England. It’s really something. Without the designs, I fear the show’s incidental racism, even if only once surfacing every 8 or so episodes, would be too recurring and too obvious for me to ignore. I doubt I’d have watched past the episode featuring a Chinese industrial magnate who leads Poirot and his entourage through a beautifully staged opium den hidden within a night club covered in Chinoiserie, manned by slick gangsters in perfectly tailored suits, and hostesses in cheongsam dress, were it not for high production value. Were it not also for the Regency Era dining rooms of the villainous Count, or the Modernist architecture and art of the suburban bankers calling for help.
The premise of a Poirot episode is always the same—someone is murdered for their money, usually in the form of a defrauded inheritance. Often, the murder takes place under Poirot’s nose, inside the victim’s own mansion. The set decor is bar none.
OK so now, some show reviews of things I happened to be a part of:
Over the past week, I performed in two very different arrangements at shows in Philadelphia and Baltimore. The shows shared an unexpected symmetry of design I only took into account on my early morning drive home from Baltimore. In both shows, I was part of a trio playing a 20-30 minute improv set, in support of two other creative music acts that only comprised men. Both shows also took place in converted spaces and were organized as a part of a series.
The Philadelphia show was part of a series called Avant Mash, organized by Chris Coyle as a standing monthly jazz residency. Avant Mash has taken place at the MAAS building and the Ukrainian Cultural Center in Northern Liberties. Lately they’ve established camp at The Perch—a converted mechanic’s barn turned music venue. The building is divided into two performance venues. One, a vaulted warehouse with church pews for seating and a high ceiling resembling an apse. The other space is a converted rowhome with a converted ground floor that has all the trappings of a living room—small sofas, folding chairs, heavy drapes over vinyl windows.
This May iteration of Avant-Mash featured three acts including the arrangement in which I appeared as a guest. Special What is a duo project of Pete Angevine (drums) and Bryan Thomas Rogers (sax), where I joined with a eurorack. Our outing as Special What could be best described as beautiful, and embodied music. Pete announced a notion of a title for the piece: Dream Flag.
Here are rosters of the other two acts as listed on the event page (just because it’ll be more accurate than my memory):
Phantasma is a power-packed quartet featuring Chris Coyle (bassist, lead composer/arranger), Ron Stabinsky (piano), Andrew Urbina (saxophones), and Doug Hirlinger (drums). Their ambitious compositions and unique interplay are best witnessed in person.
BeUs is the latest exciting configuration from Sandy Eldred (bass) and Andrew Urbina (saxophones), two founding members of the exalted U.S.E. Trio - they’re joined by Dan Blacksberg (trombone) and Wayne Smith (drums) for a singular adventure in free-flowing improvisation.
It’s first worth noting how much literal (read: athletic) stamina is required of a saxophonist playing two consecutive 45 minute sets without break, for two distinct groups. Andrew Urbina arrived with an alto and departed with a tenor sax, like an Egyptian riddle of jazz maturity. In the latent green room gossip taking place above the stage in a lofted lounge, other musicians warming up or cooling down shared a minor debate about the virtues of each saxophone. Apparently Bobby Zankel doesn’t believe in anything but the alto. Others felt the same way about tenor. The saxophone is a brilliant topic of music in that way—divisive and rousing all at once.
Wayne Smith Jr. was an epic revelation, as a drummer, to a drummer. Smith is someone who might embarrass other drummers who’d deign to call themselves that. A True Drummer©, if like Champagne, we could only call it that when it met a standard of production or provenance.
The idea of compositional improv, or improvisational composition, is an oxymoron and yet how Jazz© does appear in the listener’s mind, as well as motivating highly trained performers. As one sits in converted spaces designed once upon a time for cars and families, you have to pay attention to the notions of tuning, repair, and a logic of comfort that includes some avoidance and some collisions, and a preference for chairs, though the best seat in a living room is usually halfway up a flight of stairs. These are all “you had to be there” truisms of attending live music events.
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The Baltimore show was part of a series called Peace in the Valley, organized by John Hoegberg. It is a Spring-weekly Monday night showcase of experimental and creative musicians, and takes place in the lower patio of a boutique restaurant/wine cave called Le Comptoir du Vin, which won a Bon Appetit Best in the Country award in 2018! A fact the owner (Rosemary), a mutual friend (Will), and I laughed about a lot. Peace in the Valley is a musical takeover of an otherwise busy restaurant, on its weekly off night. This creative Baltimore ecosystem includes in its orbit the mighty High Zero Festival, with which PITV shares infrastructure, and which I got to participate in last fall. To date I’d say it is potentially the greatest presentation format of the genre we generically call “improv.” And I don’t mean this to say HZF features the best of the best musicians, or makes more lucrative sense than say, a Big Ears. I say it is the best presentation of the format because the format requires exactly the kind of mad looseness afforded by its organizers, and the city of Baltimore. There are no QR codes or lenghty personal introductions. Just a badge and a schedule.
Peace in the Valley works because it, too, is only loosely organized in terms of format and conceit. Hoegberg uses a discerning ear to suggest arrangements, or invite known quantities to try something new, but otherwise like the best of performance platforms, the ins and outs are very casual. Le Comptoir du Vin hosts Peace in the Valley in its bar patio, a converted basement shed with a roll-up garage door. A garage door that harkens to the Perch, though significantly smaller. Wooden floors and a rustic approach to the wine-forward bar make visitors feel like they’ve stumbled into a cozy Italian hole in the wall, except it’s Baltimore so the alley is poorly maintained and the road winds around two or three different kinds of urban ecosystems of completely varying personality. Comptoir itself is the lovely hideaway you always want to find as a visitor; probably as a resident, too.
My arrangement in this outing included Hanna Olivegren (vocals), and Corey Thuro (guitar). We were followed by Sam Wenc who played an ethereal steel lap guitar set, and a mind-blowing, all-out, forward and upward sonic motion by Sam Pluta (electronics) and John Dierker (bass clarinet and tenor sax). This latter set reminds me why and how we got here as musicians. Absolutely incredible stuff—also requiring an athletic stamina we sometimes take for granted as mincing musicians.
In preparation for our set, Hanna, Corey, and I went over some general ideas of what we might do. I always love these notes because they’re most productive when metaphorical. The closer it hews to a conventional compositional cue, the less animated I become. It reminds me of this diagnosis I’ve just learned about, to describe my son’s opposition to classroom activities—Pathological Demand Avoidance. Apparently it’s more anxious, and not so much a oppositional behavior, in that a subject will work by his own volition with flying colors but react with fear when commanded with precise instruction.
Hanna had been talking about the iphone games she’s been playing to get out of her head, and a genre of games (room games?) that leads players through…rooms, with puzzles you have to solve to get out of them. Dario has a Mr. Panda game on his dummy iPad where you have to put out literal fires as a fireman (firepanda?) before advancing to the next floor. Same idea, I guess. So after this small talk, Hanna asked us “what is the room we want to start in?” and my mind went quietly and speedily to a very distinct form:
It’s an extravagant and ornate dining room of a large mansion, hardly used, and often occupied by a surreptitious eavesdropper or house keepers such as one would see in an episode of Poirot before the denouement of an upper class midcentury crime of reason. It was so clear to me that our sound would begin in an unoccupied room meant for larger occasions. Quiet but for the reactions of furniture, the dust thereupon, the portraits on the wall framed in gilded wood carvings of flowers and vines.
Introduce to the room, from the center of floor, a sound.
Follow and like these musicians, as they say:
Special What (Pete Angevins and Bryan Thomas Rogers)
Phantasma (Chris Coyle, Ron Stabinsky, Andrew Urbina, Doug Hirlinger)
U.S.E. trio qua BeUs (Dan Blacksberg, Andrew Urbina, Sandy Eldred, Wayne Smith Jr.)
John Dierker with Jeff Arnal
