A meditative evening that opened holes in the sky.
Anna Butterss & Ben Lumsdaine looked like monastics -- she shorn and erect in baggy togs beside her bass, he neat and bespectacled behind his drums. And the two longtime collaborators followed through with understated grooves designed to level out the twitches of our overstimulated minds. As Lumsdaine laid down steady midtempo beats, occasionally flavoring them with a brief counterrhythm or an electronic enhancement, Butterss confined her long fingers mostly to perfect back-and-forths among a few low notes, acting the role of humble comforter. In this she resembled Jimmy Garrison in John Coltrane's mid-'60s quartet, except here the bass carried the foreground and the rhythm pulled simpler. During one span, Butterss varied her sound with a paper diaphragm behind her strings, producing an African percussive effect. Mostly serious, she smiled when the interaction hit an especially satisfying bend in roads whose scenery varied just enough. The duo closed uptempo, with Butterss roaming confidently up the neck. The capacity front-room crowd stood rapt throughout, heads nodding.
Chicago drummer Jeremy Cunningham released "The Weather Up There" at the start of the pandemic. He made it as a way of working through a family tragedy, and he didn't want it forgotten. Two of the exceptional musicians who abetted this exceptional recording were onstage this night.
Cunningham drove the subtly melodic compositions from behind his small kit, first as a slogging two-fisted sloth, then tightening up into a fusion powerhouse, but always delivering essential human feel. On keyboard and an age-delacquered alto sax that seemed to vibrate in the stage lights, Josh Johnson applied his rainbow-nailed fingers to solos divided between melody and adventurous improvisation; his green-hosed shoeless feet, meanwhile, stroked an infinity of effects from 15 (fifteen) effects pedals. Just as formidable, guitarist Jeff Parker slouched next to sheet music and provided his own orchestra: clean long jazz solos, distorted metallic explosions, softly percussive string pats, lush chords, and electronic colorations (one extension of a single concluding note was pure wizardry). Tall electric bassist Paul Bryan plucked it funky, the anchor in the gale.
The fascination never flagged; the sound sparked, surged and saturated. Cunningham's group gripped us with music, while also affecting us in unconscious ways (and those ways are the best).
Sample Jeremy Cunningham's "The Weather Up There" here.