Dwight Frizzell asked “what is reality” during the debut performance of Alter Destiny at Charlotte Street Foundation on Thursday, October 27. Members of the audience of about three dozen were likely pondering the same question.
After all, it seems impossible that Frizzell is still at the top of his game well into his sixth decade of making music in Kansas City. Frizell has challenged assumptions about how improvised music in Kansas City might sound since the 1970s.
Alter Destiny, Frizzell’s theatrical new trio with guitarist Julia Thro and percussionist Allaudin Ottinger, is a fresh twist on the interplanetary jazz the musicians create with the Kansas City institution Black Crack Revue. The larger ensemble observed its fortieth anniversary with a celebratory concert in August.
The trio shares BCR’s enthusiasm for traveling the spaceways blazed by Sun Ra. Improvisations over a recording of the aurora borealis were enhanced by a video backdrop of celestial spaces and bursts of theremin from guest artist Kat Dison Nechlebová. Quadraphonic sound furthered the interstellar experience.
The immersive sensibility wasn’t limited to the loudspeakers surrounding the audience. Frizzell and Ottinger roamed the room during an inventive jam and Frizzell occasionally exhorted the audience to unleash their minds in an effort to “alter destiny.”
Thro’s raw electric guitar riffs prevented Frizzell’s woodwinds and electronics and Ottinger’s airy rhythmic pulses from developing excessive ethereality. Even so, Alter Destiny stretched credulity throughout an unreal performance that was beyond belief.