By Taylor Jones

While the stars glimmer in the air tonight, they shine inside the Alternative Café, freshly painted on the deep purple walls of their current art exhibit The Socio-Network. This collection is a display of works from artists around the world, gathered through the means of social networking sites and blogs. I walk past the Christmas tree in the show room to find my seat and casually study a piece by Eugene Plotnikov titled “Alone on the Moon.” The work depicts a disembodied junk figure who is pushing a baby robot in a shopping cart across the moon, looking with remorse toward another moon in the distance. However, not quite as far away as the moon is tonight’s main attraction, the smooth and Latin jazz of the four-piece called Aporia.

My attention is suddenly drawn to the stage when a familiar face, bass player Heath Proskin of the Something Cool Trio (who I saw perform last month), begins playing his upright bass with a bow. Once Proskin tunes and prepares his instrument, vocalist Julie Capili, drummer Jen Schaff (also in Something Cool), and saxophonist/clarinetist Stu Reynolds join him and begin to play “In a Sentimental Mood” by Duke Ellington. Proskin closes his eyes and travels to his musical zone where he begins to pluck a Latin take of Ellington’s song before transitioning into the calm, original interpretation. In this laid back mood, Reynolds shares his clarinet’s warm tones with the audience.

Next, the group performs Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” in which Reynolds switches to his saxophone and starts to harmonize with Capili, not quiet synching up or blending like it should. Nevertheless, the song really kicks into gear when Schaaf and Proskin lay down a stinky beat that would make Mark Wahlberg’s Funky Bunch weep in shame. When I saw this rhythm section play with Bill Minor in the Something Cool Trio they were still very tight, but relaxed and restrained. Tonight they really come alive playing with Aporia, shown as Schaaf channels a keen sense of intensity in her brush playing and dynamically expresses herself.

Another form of expression can be observed on the wall about five rows behind me in Max Capacity’s Andy Warhol type pop art. One of my favorite pieces in the exhibit is Capacity’s bright pink Godzilla, instilling fear in the hearts of doomed citizens with its bright orange teeth and piercing green eyes.

When Aporia breaks into Reynolds’ original song “Samba for Two,” Schaaf makes friends with a pair of maracas and progresses the song by integrating a samba pattern on the snare. Her kick drum sits on the downbeats while the hi-hat clicks on every up beat, giving the song an assertive sense of motion. Then the beat breaks down for a drum feature between Schaaf and Reynolds, who picks up a small, metal drum and rubs it to make a squeaky sound, uncomfortably resembling the cleaning of a window. Alas, the drums naturally fade out and leave Reynolds playing a solo on his bass clarinet, producing a wealth of low tones that carry throughout the café. Inconspicuously, the drums and bass start to merge back into the song as they end with a grand a tempo reprise. Overall, this original arrangement by Reynolds proved very interesting in that it took the audience on an adventure through many different moods.

Being a jazz musician myself, I know Reynolds tells the truth when he says to the audience “improvisation is at our hearts,” for they really show it in this next exercise. Reynolds says they are going to create a song on the spot and asks for the help of the crowd in constructing the tune. Rhythm is the basis for music, so he asks someone to clap a rhythm, “any rhythm.” Feeling like this is my time to shine as a drummer, I clap a traditional bossa nova pattern, and instantly Schaaf and Proskin start jamming. Next, Reynolds needs a key signature, so someone shouts “G Minor” and he begins to riff away. Not only do they make a melody on the spot, but Capili attempts to improvise some lyrics too, and it’s hard to make lyrics when someone shouts the topic “modern fashion.”

The group ends with the Thelonious Monk jazz standard “’Round Midnight,” beginning with a traditional interpretation and evolving to a unique Aporia spin of funky grooves. They play through their hip version and fall back into the “swing” of things, ending with a decrescendo that leaves a lone Proskin playing his bass, sounding like a badass funky sailor.

Aporia: defined as “A philosophical puzzle or a seemingly insoluble impasse in an inquiry,” performed in such a way tonight that will indeed leave us all with one question: “when can I see them again?”

Links:

http://www.facebook.com/trudeaupublishing

http://aporiajazz.com/

http://www.thealternativecafe.com/index.php

Stu Reynolds

Heath Proskin and Julie Capili

(Left to right)
Jenn Schaaf, Proskin, and Capili

Reynolds, Schaaf, and Capili

"Alone on the Moon" by Eugen Plotnikov

"Godzilla" by Max Capacity

By Taylor Jones

“So that was during the time I spent in Tennessee when I used to hitchhike across the country,” explains the elderly man next to me sporting a circular, brown-rimmed hat along with what appears to be a green, pinstriped shirt. Yes, it is definitely green. Tonight at the Alternative Café in Seaside, California, the “jazz & beyond” music of the Something Cool Trio evidently attracts an audience with a wealth of life experience, and suitably, since pianist/vocalist Bill Minor has traveled the world and will sing songs in English, Greek, Italian, and Russian. Along with Minor this evening are his band mates Jenn Schaaf on drums and Heath Proskin on upright bass.

Captivated by the current exhibit “Guardians,” featuring work by artists Cory Benhatzel and Matthew Linares, I admire the vivid textures Linares uses in order take the observer to another dimension. I’m looking through a portal into an almost video-game kind of world where objects are floating around with a sense of unsettling ambiguity, yet setting a serene mood through the smooth, shaded color scheme.

After pushing aside the black curtain from backstage, the trio picks up their instruments and starts off their set with a Thelonious Monk standard called “Ask Me Now.” This song demonstrates how the Alternative Café’s acoustics are perfect for a jazz combo, in that you can hear Schaaf playing brushes without needing to mic her snare. Being a drummer, I know one of the hardest parts of jazz drumming is brush technique, and Schaaf gracefully shows the audience just how it’s done by never letting a moment go untouched by the gentle glide of her fluid hands.

An interesting aspect of the Something Cool Trio is Minor’s experiments in combining his original poetry with backing music, which acts as a soundtrack to the story. As he begins to recite his poem “My Father’s Things,” the music appropriately follows. Minor shares a deep emotion from his personal life with the audience as he conveys a story of how his father lost his memory with age, and how he could no longer recognize his own son. Minor moves on with the story, elaborating on how his father never used to sing, but one day when his mother was playing piano, his father miraculously burst into song. Minor knew that his father’s true love for his mother had persisted despite his loss of memory.

While living in communist Russia, illegally listening to black-market jazz records, Minor became fluent in the native language, and brought it back to the Alternative Café for us tonight. Schaaf turns off her snare and hits the drums with mallets as the band kicks off a Russian waltz. This tune shows how Proskin on bass is the glue between the drums and piano. By locking in rhythmically with Schaaf and working out melodic progressions with Minor, Proskin proves that a tight jazz combo operates through individual feats of musicianship as well as a keen sense of communication.

Minor hypes up the next song as “the most beautiful love song ever written,” which is apparently “Creep” by Radiohead, a favorite cover I’ve heard artists such as Yann Brown and Angels In the Alps perform in their own interpretations. Something Cool Trio also took the song and made it their own, keeping the original melancholy energy of the verses, but changing up the chorus drastically. Rather than a rude, distorted guitar bleeding into a belting chorus like Radiohead, a piano pickup leads to an upbeat, swing chorus, in which Minor’s vocals resemble a mixture of Willie Nelson and Randy Newman. Thus, I think we can agree that they made it their own.

After taking the audience on an adventure around the world, reciting a poem in Greek and singing a love song in Italian, Minor takes us south to Brazil by performing the Stan Getz & João Gilberto classic “The Girl From Ipanema.” Schaaf tightens her brushes and once again demonstrates her precise control, turning off the snare to enhance the relaxed, Latin feel of the song. As Proskin drops out on the bass, Minor picks up a small conga drum and begins a percussion feature with Schaaf, coordinating dynamics together to give the duet movement in not only volume, but also intensity. When the torrent of percussive juices is finished and the audience reality checks back in to Seaside, California, the performance is met with a magnanimous applause.

So what is “cool” to you? Does being cool mean being the most popular kid at school? Does being cool mean doing what everybody else is doing? To me, being cool is doing what you want to do and expressing yourself the way you naturally feel. Tonight, the Something Cool Trio was just that, cool. Not only did they express themselves, they expressed themselves in four different languages, in song and poetry, and through an assortment of musical genres that will surely please your ears.

Links:

http://trudeaupublishing.blogspot.com

(All photos by Taylor Jones)