The touring trombonist Nick Finzer performs with a student band at Johnson County Community College on Wednesday, October 9, and in a quartet format at Westport Coffee House on Thursday, October 10.
Now's the Time: Drew Williams
The invariably interesting Drew Williams has formed a big band. The ensemble makes its second appearance at Westport Coffee House on Thursday, July 11. Here’s a brief sample of the initial foray.
Concert Review: Steve Cardenas at Westport Coffee House
Original image by Plastic Sax.
The singular sensibility of Steve Cardenas has made the guitarist a distinctive voice in the international jazz scene for more than 25 years. Balancing exquisite prettiness with intimations of uneasiness, Cardenas exemplifies the dynamic Thelonious Monk characterized as "Ugly Beauty".
The New York based guitarist from Kansas City exhibited the latest refinements of his sound at Westport Coffee House on Wednesday, May 22. About 75 people paid $20 apiece to take in the first of two sets.
As at his previous headlining show in Kansas City at recordBar in 2022, Cardenas was joined by bassist Forest Stewart and drummer Brian Steever. The duo accentuated the quiet ferocity embedded in Cardenas’ understated approach.
The peculiar way in which Cardenas plays pretty was showcased throughout the seven selections. The serenity of the opener, John Coltrane’s “Trane’s Slo Blues,” was adulterated by a slightly sinister touch. The swinging take on Steve Swallow’s “Ladies in Mercedes” that closed the set contained a correspondingly delectable element of danger.
Set list, first set: Trane’s Slo Blues; Lost and Found; How Deep Is the Ocean; Everything I’m Not; Blue Language; House of Jade; Ladies in Mercedes
Now’s the Time: Henry Scamurra
The young saxophonist Henry Scamurra leads a band at Westport Coffee House on Wednesday, January 31.
Plastic Sax’s Favorite Performances of 2023
Original image of Artemis at the Gem Theater by Plastic Sax.
Top Ten Performances by Kansas City Artists
1. Mike Dillon, Brian Haas and Nikki Glaspie at the Brick
Plastic Sax review.
2. Hermon Mehari at the Folly Theater
Plastic Sax review.
3. Adam Larson, Matt Clohesy and Jimmy Macbride at Westport Coffee House
Instagram clip.
4. Rod Fleeman at Green Lady Lounge
Instagram clip.
5. Pat Metheny’s Side-Eye at Muriel Kauffman Theatre
Plastic Sax review.
6. Drew Williams, Alex Frank, Ben Tervort and Brian Steever at Westport Coffee House
Plastic Sax review.
7. Cynthia van Roden at the Market at Meadowbrook
Instagram snapshot.
8. Chalis O’Neal at the Blue Room
Instagram clip.
9. Alan Voss, Benjamin Baker, Forest Stewart and Evan Verploegh at Swope Park Pavilion
Plastic Sax review.
10. Rich Hill, Arnold Young and Rob Whitsitt in Volker Park
Instagram clip.
Top Ten Performances by Artists from Elsewhere
1. Samara Joy at the Folly Theater
Plastic Sax review.
2. Devin Gray and Maria Elena Silva at the Firehouse Gallery
Plastic Sax review.
3. Bill Frisell, Greg Tardy, Gerald Clayton and Johnathan Blake at the 1900 Building
Plastic Sax review.
4. Artemis at the Gem Theater
Plastic Sax review.
5. CRAG Quartet and Joshua Gerowitz at the Bunker Center for the Arts
Instagram clip.
6. Miguel Zenón Quartet at the Folly Theater
Plastic Sax review.
7. Henrique Eisenmann and Eugene Friesen at the 1900 Building
Plastic Sax review.
8. Robert Stillman at the Midland Theater
There Stands the Glass review.
9. Jack Wright and Ron Stabinsky at Charlotte Street Foundation
Instagram clip.
10. Rob Magill and Marshall Trammell at Farewell
Plastic Sax review.
(Last year’s survey is here.)
Now’s the Time: Arnold Young
The venerable provocateur Arnold Young returns to Westport Coffee House on Wednesday, August 30. The drummer’s RoughTet takes on Thelonious Monk in the embedded video.
Now’s the Time: Dave Scott
Trumpeter Dave Scott returns to his hometown for a show at Westport Coffee House on Thursday, June 29. The embedded video documents Scott’s appearance at Smalls Jazz Club in New York City two weeks ago. (The first set begins at the 36:20 mark).
Concert Review: Drew Williams Quartet at Westport Coffee House
Original image by Plastic Sax.
A superstitious, jazz-loving bride would have had plenty to work with at Westport Coffee House on Thursday, May 25. The first set by a quartet led by saxophonist Drew Williams included something old (a reading of Thelonious Monk’s “We See”), something new (the electronics-enhanced Williams original “Radiance”), something borrowed (drummer Brian Steever utilization of Prince’s yellow tamboracca) and something blue (a bluesy reading of “Skylark”). With the addition of guitarist Alex Frank, Williams’ band expanded on the wedding of tradition and innovation it displayed at the same venue in 2022.
Now’s the Time: Bob Bowman
Bob Bowman is back in town. Westport Coffee House hosts a show billed as the bassist’s seventieth birthday celebration on Monday, April 17.
Now’s the Time: Michael Pagán
Michael Pagán recently shared the embedded video featuring clips of his band Paganova performing at Westport Coffee House. The Kansas City pianist’s busy schedule includes a trio performance at Black Dolphin on Saturday, April 8.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Joyce Smith of The Kansas City Star reports that Westport Coffee House, an important cog in Kansas City’s jazz scene, is for sale.
*Radio France looks back on the Kansas City Women’s Jazz Festival.
*An archive recording recently released by Chris Burnett is reviewed at All About Jazz.
*Michael Shults is featured on Steve Kortyka’s YouTube channel.
*Marc Myers shares recently uploaded footage featuring Count Basie.
*Tweet of the Week: Jessica Moulin- Green Lady Lounge is so underrated in Kansas City. I can’t wait to listen to live jazz Friday and then play skee ball at Updown #ilovekc
Faux Fest
Original image of Brian Haas and Mike Dillon at the Brick by Plastic Sax.
I attended a cutting-edge jazz festival in Kansas City on Wednesday, January 4. What’s that? You didn’t know about the event? Well, since Kansas City hasn’t hosted a proper jazz festival in five years, I’ve taken to curating one-night festivals for myself.
On Wednesday I spent five hours at three venues taking in an immensely rewarding blend of touring and locally based artists. The faux festival got off to a rough start at Westport Coffee House ($10 cover). When guitarist Seth Andrew Davis thanked members of the audience for attending, the Bay Area keyboardist Scott R. Looney sneered “three people!”
The other musicians seemed to brush off Looney’s disappointment in the turnout. Looney, Davis and the New York based percussionist Kevin Cheli began by playing what sounded like devilish variations on the cartoon music of Raymond Scott.
Looney, bassist Krista Kopper and drummer Evan Verploegh toyed with extreme dynamics in the second set. In staving off mere anarchy by holding the center, Kopper was the most valuable contributor to a third set featuring all five musicians. The first stage of the festival concluded with an improvisation on what may have been an inverse version of Miles Davis’ “All Blues.”
The second phase of the bespoke festival transpired at Green Lady Lounge ($5 cover). I joined about 75 revelers for a set by OJT, the popular venue’s de facto house band. Seated directly behind drummer Sam Platt, my appreciation of the ways in which guitarist Brian Baggett and organist Ken Lovern apply their roots in rock to update the organ jazz trio tradition was strengthened.
Funkadelick headlined the fake fest at the Brick ($10 cover). Drummer Nikki Glaspie had the night off, so the peripatetic Mike Dillon and Brian Haas, the keyboardist best known for his groundbreaking work with Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey, operated as a duo for most of their nearly two-hour set.
Dillon manned his expansive rig like punk-jazz’s answer to Carl Palmer as he and Haas interpreted the entirety of the forthcoming album Inflorescence. The tandem was later joined in musical roughhousing by guest drummer Arnold Young. A violent interpolation of the Stooges’ proto-punk classic “I Wanna Be Your Dog” typified the raucous attack.
Drawn to the pocket-size stage like a moth to a flame, I posted up front and center for most of the riveting performance. The approximately 50 people seated behind me couldn’t have been pleased that I obstructed their sightlines. I didn’t care. After all, it was my festival.
Plastic Sax's Favorite Performances of 2022
Original image of Bob Bowman and Peter Schlamb by Plastic Sax.
Top Performances by Kansas City Artists
1. Logan Richardson + Blues People at the Ship
2. Adam Larson, Clark Sommers and Dana Hall at Westport Coffee House
3. Black Crack Revue at Westport Coffee House
4. Steve Cardenas, Forest Stewart and Brian Steever at recordBar
5. Arnold Young and the RoughTet at the Ship
6. Bob Bowman and Peter Schlamb at Second Presbyterian Church
7. Evan Verplough and Ben Baker at World Culture KC
8. Rod Fleeman at Green Lady Lounge
9. Alter Destiny at Charlotte Street Foundation
10. Drew Williams, Ben Tervort and Brian Steever at Westport Coffee House
Top Performances by Artists from Elsewhere
1. Nduduzo Makhathini at the Blue Room
2. Ohma at the Midland theater
3. Livia Nestrovski and Henrique Eisenmann at the 1900 Building
4. High Pulp at recordBar
5. Phillip Greenlief at Bushranger Records
6. Terence Blanchard at Atkins Auditorium
7. Keefe Jackson, Jakob Heinemann and Adam Shead at Black Dolphin
8. Esthesis Quartet at the Blue Room
9. Kind Folk at the Black Box
10. Bill Summers and Forward Back at Dunbar Park
Album Review: Second Nature Ensemble- Second Nature
The notes accompanying Second Nature, the astounding debut album of the Second Nature Ensemble, include text from The Anarchist Library. While the music implies extreme polemics, the cerebral sounds of the recording are a more appropriate soundtrack for analyzing subversive texts than for throwing bricks through windows in a riot.
Michael Eaton (saxophones, flute, and clarinet), Seth Andrew Davis (guitar), Dwight Frizzell (wind controller and alto clarinet), Ben Tervort (bass), Alan Voss (drums) and Tim J Harte (electronics) are seemingly unlikely collaborators. Plastic Sax published an enthusiastic missive about the (mostly) Kansas City musicians’ generational and stylistic clash at a performance at Westport Coffee House last year.
The discordant tone of Second Nature is established on the 19-minute opening track "Alchemy". A work of sublime beauty is forged from a lethal slurry of abrasive analog and digital sounds. Intentionally erratic swing does battle with galactic static on the 16-minute “Large/Large II”. Tervort’s improvisation is among the individual solo features interspersed among the group tracks.
The prolific output of individual members of the collective make it impossible to cite a single release as representative. Yet in sifting through a myriad of styles ranging from swing to industrial noise, the expansive Second Nature is a good place for lawless agitators, scholastic Marxists and even cutthroat capitalists to begin exploring the most astringent sounds emanating from Kansas City’s improvised music scene.
Concert Review: Black Crack Revue at Westport Coffee House
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Just how weird can 100 Midwestern baby boomers get? Very weird, if the assemblage at Westport Coffee House for the 40th anniversary concert of Black Crack Revue is any guide. The free-spirited people who paid $15 for entry on Thursday, August 4, provided an outlandish visual counterpoint to the extraordinarily accomplished and often absurdist music of BCR.
The lack of inhibition displayed by fans of the self-proclaimed “Afro-nuclear wavabilly funk swing reggae Turska” band is rooted in the era prior to cell phones and social media. BCR, an ensemble partially inspired by an extended Kansas City residency of the Sun Ra Arkestra in the early 1980s, acted as inspiring ringleaders.
The current edition of the interstellar jazz and alternative pop ensemble consists of original members including Thomas Aber and Dwight Frizzell as well as more recent additions like Pat Conway and Julia Thro. The accomplished woodwind specialist Michael Eaton joined the large cast during the 95-minute opening set.
BCR is just as inspiring and energetic as it was in the early 1990s when it was a fixture on the calendars of Kansas City nightclubs. Then as now, the ensemble is best during its astral jazz excursions, but wacky pop-leaning songs such as “Teenie Boppers in Atlantis” and “Rappin' Kierkegaard” filled the dance floor on an extraordinarily peculiar night to remember.
Concert Review: The Dave Scott Quartet and Arnold Young and the RoughTet at Westport Coffee House
Original image by Plastic Sax. From left to right: John Nichols, Jacob Schwartzberg, Arnold Young (obscured), Dave Scott, Quin Wallace and Gary Cardile.
A concert at Westport Coffee House on Sunday, July 10, felt consequential even though fewer than two dozen people paid the $10 cover charge. A quartet led by trumpeter Dave Scott and Arnold Young’s RoughTet shared the bill in a rare confluence of exceptional homegrown talent.
Scott, a New York based trumpeter raised in the Kansas City area, and the Kansas City drummer Young made waves in the region’s jazz scene alongside their eminent peer Pat Metheny several decades ago. On Sunday, the bandleaders were joined by representatives of several generations of Kansas City jazz musicians. Each participant responded to the momentous summit with inspired playing.
A rambunctious couple sitting near the bandstand hooted and hollered throughout Young’s freewheeling 45-minute opening set. They had the right idea. Assisted by his longtime compatriot John Nichols on bass and Gary Cardile on percussion, the veteran drummer acted as an irreverent version of Art Blakey as he mentored the youthful tandem of saxophonist Jacob Schwartzberg and trumpeter Quin Wallace.
Renditions of selections from their new album Fear Is the Mind Killer were gloriously raucous. Scott sat in with the RoughTet before playing a 70-minute set with the New York based Michael Eaton (the saxophonist is from nearby Liberty), bassist Jeff Harshbarger and drummer Marty Morrison.
Eaton took several Coltrane-esque solos and a few of Scott’s distinctive statements resembled variations on “Flight of the Bumblebee.” Yet the ensemble mostly shifted between the proto-harmolodics of early Ornette Coleman, ominous post-bop and joyful Kansas City swing. Such transcendent displays of left-of-center artistic excellence in the face of public indifference are a hallmark of Kansas City’s jazz scene.
Now’s the Time: Michael Eaton at Westport Coffee House
The New York based Michael Eaton, a native of Liberty, Missouri, is back in town. His appearance at Westport Coffee House on Thursday, July 14, is likely to be the most obstreperous of his several gigs in Kansas City. Billed as “Expression: The Late Music of John Coltrane,” the saxophonist will be joined by Kyle Quass, a trumpet player from Indiana, and a cast of Kansas City ringers.
Confirmation: Weekly News and Notes
Original image by Plastic Sax.
*Herbie Hancock, Robert Glasper, Thundercat and The Comet is Coming are among the jazz and jazz-adjacent artists performing at the inaugural Format Festival in Bentonville, Arkansas, in September.
*Drew Williams created an enhanced performance video filmed during his trio’s recent appearance at Westport Coffee House.
*A local television station reported on high school band performances at the Gem Theater.
*Joe Dimino shared a taste of a Preston Portley show at the Blue Room. He also interviewed Miguel de Leon, Alyssa Murray and Anita Dixon and Robert Farmer.
*The author of this site lists his favorite albums, songs and performances of April at There Stands the Glass.
*Tweet of the Week: Pat Metheny- Exciting Side-Eye News We are thrilled to welcome a fantastic new player to the ongoing evolution of Pat's Side-Eye project. 24-year-old keyboard phenom Chris Fishman will be featured on the upcoming European tour (tour date graphic)
*From the Mutual Musicians Foundation: On Saturday, April 30 members will host an Open House to commemorate the 105th anniversary of the Mutual Musicians Foundation— the oldest jazz house in the world. The event, which coincides with International Jazz Day, will celebrate the history of the Foundation and its contributions to the art form. The general public is invited to sit in on live jam sessions, learn about upcoming events for the year-long tribute and the relaunch of KOJH; the Foundation's community radio station. (9:30 p.m. - 1:00 a.m.)
Concert Review: Drew Williams, Ben Tervort and Brian Steever at Westport Coffee House
Original image by Plastic Sax.
Prior to his first set with bassist Ben Tervort and drummer Brian Steever at Westport Coffee House on Sunday, April 3, saxophonist and bandleader Drew Williams told the audience of about 30 that the show marked the first time his child was in attendance at one of his public performances.
As the toddler contentedly played with doting adults, at least one member of the audience was overwhelmed with a correspondingly childlike sense of wonder. The trio’s invigorating 45-minute volley of improvised music simultaneously honored and augmented Kansas City’s jazz legacy.
Williams characterized an original composition consisting of six pages of notated music a “behemoth.” The ambitious undertaking- along with a trace of electronics on the opening selection- makes Williams susceptible to accusations of trafficking in an academic form of jazz.
A muscular version of Charlie Parker’s “Cheryl” refuted any potential priggish denunciations from conservative devotees of mainstream sounds. Williams’ return to a Kansas City stage following an extended residency in New York was a triumph. The big city’s loss is Kansas City’s gain.
Concert Review: The Adam Larson Trio at Westport Coffee House
Original image by Plastic Sax.
The predictability of the phenomena that transpired at Westport Coffee House on Wednesday, February 9, didn’t make the event any less remarkable. Exceptional musicians typically magnify the brilliance of their recordings while celebrating the release of new albums.
The rousing performance of Adam Larson, Clark Sommers and Dana Hall was no exception. Renditions of selections from With Love, From Chicago were even more rewarding than the superlative studio versions.
Larson embellished his stupendous playing with a few flourishes not on the album. The performance of the rhythm section was commensurately outstanding. Sommers and Hall applied a substantially different approach from what’s typically heard in Kansas City.
The sense of occasion was enhanced by an attentive capacity audience of almost 100. The cover charge for the general public was $15, but students who made up about half of the attendees paid only $5 each. Invaluable lessons were dispensed at the de facto masterclass.