The Top Performances of 2024

The Top Jazz Performances of 2024 by Kansas City Musicians
1. Peter Schlamb at the Ship
Plastic Sax review.

2. Rev. Dwight Frizzell’s Bridge at Charlotte Street Foundation
Instagram clip.

3. Rev. Dwight Frizzell’s Heliophonie at Charlotte Street Foundation
Plastic Sax review.

4. Steve Cardenas, Forest Stewart and Brian Steever at Westport Coffee House
Plastic Sax review.

5. WireTown at Green Lady Lounge
Instagram clip.

6. Seth Davis, Kwan Leung Ling, Aaron Osborne and Evan Verploegh at 7th Heaven
Instagram clip.

7.  Jackie Myers, Matt Otto and Bob Bowman at the Market at Meadowbrook
Instagram snapshot.

8. Alber at Charlotte Street Foundation
Instagram snapshot.

9. Ernest Melton, Parker Woolworth, Jordan Faught and Jalen Ward at In the Lowest Ferns
Plastic Sax review.

10. Rod Fleeman Trio at Green Lady Lounge
Instagram clip.

The Top Performances of 2024 by Touring Musicians
1. Makaya McCraven at Liberty Hall
Plastic Sax review.

2. Trond Kallevåg at the Folk Alliance International Conference
Instagram clip.

3. David Lord at Farewell
Plastic Sax review.

4. Willow at the T-Mobile Center
There Stands the Glass review.

5. Trap Jazz at Concourse Park
Instagram clip.

6. Mike Baggetta and Peter DiStefano at the Ship
There Stands the Glass review.

7. Damon Smith at Westport Coffee House
Instagram clip.

8. Phill Smith and Kyle Jessen at Charlotte Street Foundation
Instagram clip.

9. Síomha at the Kansas City Irish Festival
Instagram clip.

10. David Menestres at the Bunker Center for the Arts
Instagram snapshot.

Last year’s survey is here.

KCUR Meets EMAS

Plastic Sax diligently attempts to track the activities of representatives of the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society. The multitude of recordings and performances is both thrilling and exhausting. That’s one reason the author of this site was pleased to examine the collective from a different perspective. The audio feature he created for KCUR streams here.

Concert Review: David Lord at Farewell

Getting a handle on the music of David Lord isn’t easy. The Wichita based guitarist showcases a unique conception on his 2023 album Forest Standards, Vol. 3. Is Lord filtering John Fahey through Ornette Coleman’s harmolodics? Elsewhere, he sounds like James “Blood” Ulmer interpreting Claude Debussy.

Lord echoed Thelonious Monk in a solo outing at Farewell on Saturday, March 9. Thorny and agitated, Lord’s hermetic approach resists categorization. Reverent members of an audience of 25 who paid a $10 admission charge seemed certain that Lord is among today’s most important artists.

Wearing a Depeche Mode shirt, V.Vecker preceded Lord with a mesmerizing set in which he looped riffs from his saxophone to construct swirling sonic monoliths. The evening began with the jagged power trio of Seth Andrew Davis, Aaron Osborne and Evan Verploegh.

Now’s the Time: Kevin Cheli

Percussionist Kevin Cheli resumes his extensive series of collaborations with guitarist Seth Davis at Farewell on Wednesday, December 27. Scott R. Looney and Aaron Osborne will join them. Night Mode and Nate Hofer round out the bill.

Concert Review: Dan Clucas at World Culture KC

Established jazz clubs occupy hallowed grounds for devotees of improvised music. The venues are more essential than ever. Due to ongoing attrition, however, many of the most rewarding performances are increasingly transpiring in unconventional settings.

A sextet played compelling new music on the porch of a home known as World Culture KC in Kansas City on Monday, September 4. The droning of cicadas, the buzz of aircraft and the lonesome whistles of trains accentuated the outing.

The event was a forum for the Los Angeles based Dan Clucas. The multi-instrumentalist has recording credits on albums by artists ranging from guitar hero Nels Cline to the rock band the BellRays. His most recent release is a harsh “hypothetical meeting between trumpeter Fats Navarro and drummer Peeter Uuskyla.”

Representatives of the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society (EMAS)- guitarists Shanté Clair and Seth Davis, harpist Brooke Knoll, bassist and electronics manipulator Aaron Osborne and drummer Evan Verploegh- deferred to their guest. Poor sightlines for the handful of attendees made it unclear which of the musicians adeptly echoed Clucas’ trumpet and violin riffs.

Ideally suited to the informal setting, the gently anarchic and carefully considered chaos might not have fared as well in a conventional jazz club. Thanks in large part to the scrappy persistence of EMAS, Kansas City’s position on the cutting edge of the international jazz map is being reasserted.

Concert Review: Eli Wallace at Stray Cat Film Center

Pity the piano that was delivered to Stray Cat Film Center for a performance by Eli Wallace on Monday, July 24. After enduring a move in extreme heat, the instrument was mercilessly poked and prodded by the Brooklyn based pianist.

Wallace’s 20-minute solo improvisation was as vehemently athletic. The prepared piano attack sounded as if ragtime piano rolls had grown sentient roots and branches after being stored in a dark, wet basement for more than a century. Several people paid $10 to experience the uncommon sounds.

The extraordinary exhibition illuminated only by an exit sign and a red light bulb on the floor was preceded by a brisk improvisation by saxophonist Benjamin Baker, guitarist Seth Davis, multi-instrumentalist Aaron Osborne and drummers Kevin Cheli and Evan Verploegh.

The most transfixing moments transpired when Davis and Cheli joined Wallace. The spell cast by the trio’s considered investigations was broken as the remainder of the ensemble gradually joined the improvisation. The beleaguered piano was buried under a dense heap of noise.

Concert Review: Rob Magill and Marshall Trammell at Farewell

Farewell, a scrappy rock club near the Truman Sports Complex, hosted three differing sets of improvised music on Tuesday, July 11. More than fifty people passed in and out of the venue, but it’s unclear how many of them paid the $10 cover charge to hear the varied sounds.

The touring duo of saxophonist Rob Magill and drummer Marshall Trammell were the featured attraction. While the comparison is unfair to the tandem, I experienced their ferocious thirty minute set as an elegy to Peter Brötzmann. The German saxophonist who died last month specialized in the bracing form of free jazz rendered by the duo.

Joined by Alex Mallett on bass, keyboard and electronics, the trumpeter and electronic artist Alber opened the evening with a  groovy update on acid jazz. The best moments evoked the ambience of a trendy cafe in Alber’s native Italy.

Three representatives of the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society performed last. Flanked by bassist Krista Kopper and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Osborne, drummer Evan Verploegh annihilated eardrums one moment and whispered through his fingertips the next.

Concert Review: Devin Gray, Maria Elena Silva and EMAS at Firehouse Gallery #8

A downtown art gallery was transformed into an emporium for vital new music on Wednesday, June 21. Nine musicians represented compelling slices of the vanguard of sound in 2023.

The peripatetic drummer Devin Gray’s new release Most Definitely includes a 20-minute homage to free jazz legend Milford Graves. In keeping with that pursuit, his solo outing demonstrated even further possibilities in percussion.  

Segments of his often unhuman attack seemed as if a Jolly Chimp had been infected by an evil strain of artificial intelligence. At other moments his electronically-enhanced performance sounded like an Antifa rally outside the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. 

The noirish music of vocalist and electric guitarist Maria Elena Silva and drummer Scott Dean Taylor evoked the disquieting moments preceding and following bouts of bloodcurdling violence. The unresolved tension was exquisitely excruciating.

Six affiliates of the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society- Drew Williams (saxophone), Seth Davis (guitar), Brook Knoll (harp), Aaron Osborne (electronics and percussion), Krista Kopper (bass) and Evan Verploegh (drums)- built imposing walls of noise.

Davis summoned the pinging of sonar, an effect that prompted thoughts of the ill-fated submarine in the Atlantic Ocean currently dominating the news cycle. The size of the audience may have been negligible, but the import of the music was monumental.

Concert Review: Phillip Greenlief, Midwestern and the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society at Bushranger Records

A concert hosted in the basement of a house in northeastern Kansas City on Sunday, July 3, acted as a study in risk/reward theory.  A multitude of ill-advised gambles were taken.  A high percentage failed, but the payoffs of the sporadic successes were enormous.

The audaciously programmed bill featured three divergent acts.  The exploratory saxophonist Phillip Greenlief opened the show with an approximately 25-minute solo excursion.  The Californian seemed intent in creating previously unheard sounds.  

Following an opening segment in which he sputtered without a mouthpiece, Greenlief used a mouthpiece cap to transform his tenor saxophone into a novel percussive instrument.  Groans and shouts heightened the intensity of more familiar wailing in the mode of Albert Ayler in the latter stage of his recital.

The locally based duo Midwestern ratcheted up the rumpus.  Categorized by Shuttlecock as “experimental hip-hop,” Midwestern’s frenzied set more closely resembled metallic hyper-pop.

Four representatives of the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society- saxophonist Ben Baker, drummer Brandon Cooper, bassist Krista Kopper and multi-instrumentalist Aaron Osborne- strove to equal Midwestern’s manic showing with abrasive free jazz.

A punk rocker proudly sporting bruises inflicted in a mosh pit the previous evening, an intrepid violinist and the euphoric author of Plastic Sax were among the handful of observers who stuck around for an evening-ending jam featuring all of the musicians.

The bonkers saxophone bleating of Midwestern’s R.W was the most surprising component of the anarchic collision of free jazz and electronic turbulence.  For connoisseurs of chaos, being tied to the tracks for the sonic equivalent of a proverbial train wreck felt like winning the lottery.

Album Review: Seth Andrew Davis, Kyle Hutchins, Aaron Osborne and Evan Verploegh- Quartet, Vol. 1

The subversive artists of the Extemporaneous Music Society are picking up where they left off their extraordinarily productive 2021.  The January 1 release of Quartet, Vol. 1 on Mother Brain Records is another provocative missive in the collective’s bold overhaul of Kansas City’s improvised music scene.

The album’s intentionally jarring contents will be familiar to those who encountered a concert by Seth Andrew Davis (electric guitar/laptop/electronics), Kyle Hutchins (saxophones), Aaron Osborne (bass/electronics) and Evan Verploegh (drums/percussion) at Charlotte Street Foundation last July.

The anarchic opening segment of the 32-minute “Of Other Mirrors” may cause even the most intrepid listeners to flinch.  The confrontational blaring, obnoxious bleating and insidious braying seems designed to repel all comers.  There’s a method to their madness.  While retaining a harsh edge, the subsequent quieter passages reveal the quartet’s attentive interplay.  

Jazz-oriented listeners are likely to gravitate to the contributions of Hutchins.  His Dolphy-esque playing provides an analog counterpoint to industrial grating on “Of Other Mirrors,” the glitchy futurism of “Under a Strange Legend” and the somber malevolence of “So Many Stars Take Care of Me.”  Viva la revolución!

Concert Review: Benjamin Baker, Kevin Cheli, Seth Davis, Jeff Kaiser, Aaron Osborne and Evan Verploegh at Charlotte Street Foundation

That’s not music!  The common objection to experimental noise came to mind during separate performances of manic improvisations presented by the Extemporaneous Music Society at the Charlotte Street Foundation on Wednesday, October 20.  Quadraphonic sound enhanced the maelstrom created by Jeff Kaiser (trumpet, electronics, gadgets), Kevin Cheli (drums, percussion) and Seth Davis (guitar).  A dizzying racket spiraled around the audience of 25 from speakers in four corners of the room.  Kaiser is a stupendously industrious trickster, so I didn’t mind the failure of Cheli and Davis to showcase material from their recently released album as a duo.  My tolerance didn’t extend to the second set.  Aaron Osborne (bass, percussion) made several interesting contributions to a collaboration with Benjamin Baker (saxophone) and Evan Verploegh (drums), but I’d hoped to hear the saxophonist and drummer present music from their outstanding new Singles album.  Missed opportunities aside, the bold caterwauling was music to my ears.

Concert Review: Kyle Hutchins, Aaron Osborne, Seth Davis and Evan Verploegh at Charlotte Street Foundation

Plastic Sax’s rave review of Second Nature Ensemble’s June performance at Westport Coffee House seems subdued compared to another observer’s analysis of the event that references Friedrich Nietzsche and Jean-Paul Sartre.  As the cliché has it, hold my beer.

A concert including two of the same musicians- Seth Davis (electronics and guitar) and Evan Verploegh (drums)- at Charlotte Street Foundation on July 14 inspires additional purple prose.  Abetted by Kyle Hutchins (saxophones) and Aaron Osborne (bass), Davis and Verploegh played two sets of sinister improvised music for about 20 attentive listeners.

The opening portion of the first set evoked a whale in distress before the liquid atmosphere gave way to deep space.  A glitchy segment sounded as if a denizen of a distant planet was monitoring a decades-old radio broadcast of a Duke Ellington Orchestra concert.  The final salvo could have been the soundtrack for a disaster film about an accident at a gene-editing laboratory.

The second set was a two-part guitar-based freakout. A jam in the vein of Mary Halvorson and Susan Alcorn gradually morphed into (Robert) frippery. The veracity of these flights of fancy can be checked against video documentation of the first and second sets. Cross-referencing texts by Nietzsche and Sartre is optional.