Home » Jazz News » Performance / Tour

87

A Mischievous Convergence of Past and Present Jazz

Source:

Sign in to view read count
Erimaj, a band led by Jamire Williams, the young jazz drummer from Houston, features a lot of information being knocked around. There are rising and falling vamps and solos; a bit of rock and pastoral-sounding, post-Pat Metheny guitar harmony; some careful falsetto R&B; and, from Mr. Williams, fluid narrative improvising, as well as beats like fragmented hip-hop.

At the Jazz Gallery on Friday Mr. Williams kept a mischievous smile through almost all of Erimajs set. (The bands name is his first name spelled backward.) It wasnt that he was getting away with something. It was more that the music sounded properly new, part of something larger, and still unnamed.

The pianist was Jason Moran, another Houstonian, for whom the past converges with the present: he sometimes likes to find an unobtrusive sequence inside an old standard and turn it into fresh headlines. The saxophonist was John Ellis, reared in North Carolina and marinated in New Orleans, whose music for his own bands finds new uses for old grooves. The guitarist was Matthew Stevens, who plays a smart and delicate crossway of jazz and indie-rock alongside Mr. Williams in a group led by the New Orleans trumpeter Christian Scott. The trombonist was Corey King, also from Houston, who has played with Mos Def and Ludacris. And the bassist was Ivan Taylor, who works regularly with the pianist Mulgrew Miller, playing straight-ahead jazz the 1960s way.

Continue Reading...

Comments

Tags

News

Popular

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.