Jon Garelick
The name of the band itself comes from a tune by the most “classical” of all jazz bands, the Modern Jazz Quartet.
But Mr. Ho’s Brian O’Neill had another idea. What if he took the very inauthenticity of the original music as a motive for putting together things that were never meant to go together originally? Like Bach’s Toccata and Fugue with a Balkan beat?
Miss Tess and the Talkbacks — the group will be at MA’s Green River Festival on Saturday. Catch them if you can.
There’s no denying the excitement the López-Nussa brothers can create.
Live, the band crackled. But it was the front line of the grey-maned Rava and trombonist Gianluca Petrella who ultimately defined the band’s sound. .
The music Allan Chase’s septet presented at the Lily Pad on Wednesday night made a cogent argument for Sun Ra’s place among the great jazz composers.
Songs sometime climax with Nicky Schrire improvising in a pure tone way up in her top register, like a bird darting on an updraft.
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