Readers that like their jazz on the wild side probably know, perhaps by way of “Bleeding Edge” articles, about the adventurous jazz gigs that take place at the Medicine for Nightmares Bookstore & Gallery on Friday evenings. The Other Dimensions in Sound programs are curated by David Boyce, but he neither introduced nor performed in last night’s gig. This was a three-set program, which began with solo sets by vocalist Dave Katz and Jordan Glenn on drums. The two of them played as a duo for the final set.
Glenn’s name should be familiar to many readers. Like last night’s venue, it shows up frequently in “Bleeding Edge” previews. According to my archives, my most recent encounter with one of his performances took place at Bird & Beckett Books and Records, which hosted a tribute concert in memory of jazz trombonist Grachan Moncur III in December of 2022. The trombonist for the occasion was Rob Ewing, and Glenn was the drummer. More recently, I wrote about Glenn’s contribution to the Noertker’s Moxie quartet album (led by Bill Noertker on bass) entitled in flitters: 49 bits from B*ck*tt this past November.
As a soloist last night, Glenn was prodigiously inventive. He systematically explored riffs with the moderately rich gear at his disposal, and his polyrhythms kept the attentive listener on the edge of his/her seat. (My wife joined me for this event.) One could describe the set as a journey through different combinations of instruments (some of which amounted to “elevated objects”). What made the entire performance so engaging was that Glenn knew exactly how long to explore each combination and then how to move on to the next one. Given the coordinated physical movements behind all that music, last night was an event worthy of a video document.
Katz’ opening set was similarly exploratory. Unfortunately, his journey was not as well “programmed” as Glenn’s. Each of his episodes was given a theatrical delivery; but, in spite of an inventive pairing of the auditory and the visual, each one of them overstayed its welcome. Katz does not yet seem to have internalized the right sense of “how time passes by” (in the immortal words of Karlheinz Stockhausen); and any overall sense of “flow” was impeded by too much repetitive stasis. When he is not playing trombone, Ewing is much better at this sort of thing; and he does it without visual enhancements!
Because both sets were more than generous in length, I was pretty much saturated before the final duo set began; and I took my leave while Glenn’s inventions were still reverberating in my cerebral cortex.
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