It’s mid-afternoon and I’m washing dishes when my partner Joh and her son Shep arrive at the house. I’m surprised to see Joh is already wearing earrings. “Of course, it’s date night!” she says. We’re going out to dinner and to see Peter Evans. It feels good knowing Joh’s sense of anticipation matches mine. Plus, Shep knows he will have a fun night with my son Sean, about ten years older, babysitting. Good moods abound.
***
Standing on the floor of the Cunneen-Hackett Arts Center in Poughkeepsie, rather than on the stage, surrounded by shadows, Peter Evans is lit by a single spotlight. I close my eyes for long stretches and listen to the fireworks. Joh sits on my left. We check in with side glances and hand squeezes. She digs the adventure, too. On my right is Joe McPhee. It’s a special night when Joe is on the scene. I flashback to an early date with Joh, when she and Joe first met at a show in Newburgh. They’d each recently seen Get Out and hit it off immediately, exchanging theories about the movie, being careful not to divulge spoilers.
***
“What do I really need to survive?
What keeps me captive to the heat of the city?
I feel like we could all use some time walking around those hills naked, drinking rain water, and
foraging for wild edible plants”
– Daryl Gussin, “#7 4:30-5:30”
***
Tonight’s show is organized by my friend James Keepnews under the aegis of Elysium Furnace Works. I help with setting up and cleaning up. James very generously credits me as co-director, though he does the lion’s share of the work promoting “genre-resistant culture” in the Hudson Valley. This includes treating the musicians to a pre-gig dinner. Joh and I aren’t able to make tonight’s dinner, but we find a nearby pub with tables out back. Fresh air and no televised sportsball. We each find something appealing on the menu, but the food is secondary to having time together.
***
Evans is not one for polite ascendance. He sparks from the start, searing heat erupting from his piccolo trumpet. Such power from such a tiny instrument and so many ideas with vast leaps from one to the next. (Am I tall enough for this ride?) Much is made of Evans’s rapid fire delivery. This aspect of his playing is noteworthy, often exhilarating, but only a means to an end. He sculpts such an array of sonic imagery, and yet he barely moves from the waist down. I don’t think he takes more than two or three steps throughout the concert. All apparent effort, which is considerable and unrelenting, seems concentrated from the neck up. He sweats profusely despite the limited movement and seems certain to explode. But again, Evans’s gift is most evident in the results—the ability to pull us into the gallery of his captivating explorations, the raw emotions that flow forth. Small wonder his record label is named More Is More.
***
“I promise you civilization, I’ll come back, I will return to my job and rent and phone plan, just give
me a minute to feel the love, the fear, and the honesty of these hills, just a minute.”
– Daryl Gussin, “#7 4:30-5:30”
***
Before the show I mention to Joh I need to cut back on expenses for a while, even albums. Walking past Evans’s merch set up, an LP catches my eye, Ars Memoria, the latest from his Being and Becoming Quartet. I take the plunge after the show. Ever the loving partner, Joh gives me a look of, “Are you sure?” This is appreciated, but my instincts have already summoned the Lloyd Bridges character from Airplane! (“I picked the wrong week to quit smoking!”). There are times when I’ve bought an album at a concert, but the recording fell short of the live performance. More common are the cases in which a compelling live show led me to a record I wouldn’t have encountered otherwise, a keepsake on par with the show. The rarest category is reserved for the concerts that connect me with records that heighten my appreciation for the live performance while also transcending the show. Such is the case with Ars Memoria, a deep, nourishing departure, like basking in those hills Gussin longs for.
***
We’re seated up front, a few feet from Evans, just beyond the blast zone. The proximity adds to the excitement and heightens my awareness of each phrase’s onset and decay. Being close also reveals details I would miss otherwise; for example, the saliva streaming out of the spit valve of Evans’s trumpet. Watching it fall to the floor, my instinct as a teacher is to engage in clean up mode—dash out of the auditorium, find a towel, and lay it on the floor for Evans to stand on and absorb the mess. But I have to let that go. The mess comes with the process, dirt on a ballplayer’s jersey.
***
My curiosity about the new album is further piqued when I notice it features Joel Ross on vibraphones. Yes, that Joel Ross. He and Evans seem to orbit different places on the continuum of contemporary musicians, at least from my admittedly limited vantage point, which makes for an unexpected pairing. But I’m getting ahead of myself because it’s the rhythm section of Nick Jozwiak and Michael Shekwoaga Ode that first catches my ear when I drop the needle on Ars Memoria. Jozwiak’s magnetic bass lines appear to be brief clusters of rhythm, minimalist in terms of the number of notes, but maximalist in terms of how he weaves them into hypnotic quilts, providing the pulse and propulsion. It’s a perfect balance of what to play and how to place himself within the mix, fully immersive even though sometimes his playing is felt more than heard. Riding in tandem, drummer Michael Shekwoaga Ode is also subtle and wondrously impactful. Single strikes of the ride cymbal instead of washes. The softer, rounder sounds of the rack and floor toms over the snare’s snap. Ode develops a big sound without being loud. His architecture yields a panoramic theater, soothing and invigorating, inviting us to gaze up and all around and marvel in the quiet thunder. (It reminds me of Milford Graves’s drumming on Lowell Davidson’s album for ESP-Disk.) Jozwiak and Ode’s elegant collaborations also function as an underlying grid, at once dense and weightless, guiding their bandmates and listeners along.
***
The artwork for Ars Memoria comes from a Wassily Kandinsky painting titled “Joyous Ascent.” Or rather the upper left quadrant of the painting, which gathers clusters of rectangles, circles, semi-circles, and line segments. Some are brightly colored, others black and white. The cover zooms in and reveals inconsistencies in the colors, angles that are close to right but not quite. In short, it humanizes the geometry, reveals the heart beating within the math. (If you want to read this as anti-AI, join me.)
***
Getting back to Joel Ross. He’s a key contributor to several of my favorite Makaya McCraven albums (Universal Beings, We’re New Again, In These Times) and Rob Mazurek’s Dimensional Stardust (along with a string of leader albums, which I’ve yet to check in with), but he gives his vibes a different glow on Ars Memoria. You can’t miss the way his playing shimmers and illuminates with golden hues. Other times he pulls just beneath the surface and allows his vibes to saturate the mix. Like the other members of the group, Ross sits with ideas and lets them germinate. The results are ethereal and enveloping. Meanwhile, Evans can be jittery and piercing, also delicate and vulnerable. All the while, cosmic and seeking, moving through zero gravity and shifting to a different set of gears relative to his solo concert. He plays such long, striking lines throughout the record. Actually, they’re rays. They have defined starting points, emanating from Evans, but I’m not sure they have defined end points. They fade, yes, but maybe that’s simply the LP running out of room and those rays continue traversing the universe. For the purposes of this essay, I’ve been thinking about what’s been captured on wax, but I must acknowledge there may be more out there.
Ars Memoria is one of the most fascinating records of the decade. It’s immediately appealing and also elusive, like the songs are coming from around the corner or down the corridor.
***
My high school track coach used to tell us to run through the finish line, not to the finish line—don’t ease up at the end of a race. Evans embodies that maximum, attacking through the final, putting us through our paces, and then some. Tidy resolutions and comforting denouements are overrated anyway. When the show ends, Joh and I begin to reacclimate. I’m not sure what we say to each other. Probably something like, “Wow!” or “Intense!” She is wide-eyed and I’m feeling the same, our senses fully dilated, though language lags in the moment. Then Joe says: “That should not be possible. I play trumpet. I know. That should not be possible.” In time, we’ll have more to say about the show, as well as the album that awaits in the lobby.