Visual Art
The W
ork of Sara Adrian. Urban Scrawl Pop-Up Gallery, 480 W Town St.
Sara Adrian’s painting combines a rich, flowing line with deep investigations of myth and the subconscious. Her work with both oils and acrylics is striking, I still remember the first time I saw her pieces in a group show. This is the first solo show of hers that’s hit my radar in a while and I think it’s a must-see.
Music
June 10: Shifted. The Summit, 2210 Summit St.
Kevin DeBroux and Albert Gray are doing some of the most interesting booking in town right now at the Summit/Bobo complex and this has all the hallmarks of being another winner. I don’t keep up on electronic music that well these days but slowly more and more of it is creeping back into my diet. One of my favorite records in this rediscovery of the last few years is Under a Single Banner by UK artist Shifted. Shifted’s music is full of left angles and surprises. His love of juxtaposition with glossy snare sounds and thick bass rumbles laced with almost pure static used like an additional percussion track is intoxicating. The tracks work on the dancefloor but they also work as landscapes, as action painting.
The rest of the lineup is stacked as well. Cleveland’s Prostitutes make use of similar jolting juxtapositions in a way that shocks the listener but coheres into total sense, rewiring your brain and perception. Locals The Fallen – the new project from Columbus house legend FBK – and Funerals are no slouches either, the kind of gritty, dark and uplifting techno that puts your more in the moment and more in your own body.
Doors at 9:00pm. $8 cover.
For a great interview with Shifted, check out http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/11/shifted-interview-bed-of-nails
June 12-13: What You Will Fest. Old World Stone Carving, 4820 Beard Rd, Sunbury, OH.
Gerard Cox is one of the unsung heroes of music in Columbus and I’m going to keep saying that until his praises are adequately sung in both tenor and volume. For many years he’s booked artists that might never have played Columbus otherwise – including Mary Halvorson, about whom more below – and as he’s turned more attention to local and regional in the last few years he’s kept that same standard of quality and discernment. Cox is someone who believes in improvisation as one of the highest standards of music but also as a healing practice without getting too esoteric about it.
His fifth What You Will festival in Sunbury is the event of the summer for anyone interested in jazz or free improvisation. Friday night’s set with Rent Romus from the bay leading a septet of Cleveland and Columbus improvisers – including LA Jenkins on guitar, Dan Wenninger on reeds, and Chris Weldon on cello – is bookended by a duo of Adam Smith on drums and Wenninger on reeds and Nicole Sherburne’s Auriculum Quartet with Phil Maneri, Smith, and Jason Branscum.
Saturday is full of highlights – what I’m most looking forward to include Detroit’s James Cornish on cornet in duo with percussionist Curtis Glatter; a different septet of Rent Romus, Jayve Montgomery, Tony Zilinick, James Cornish, Chris Weldon, Bryan Stewart, and Ryan Jewell; a quartet of the great Hasan Abdur-Razzaq, Adam Smith, Michael Goecke, and Willie Smart; and so much more. A chance to see phenomenal music in a gorgeous setting barely an hour from town. Even if you have the same aversion to camping I do, this should not be missed.
7:00pm Friday through midnight Saturday. Suggested donation of $10-20. The full schedule is here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153302896638605&set=gm.398931153628295&type=1&theater
June 14: Second Annual Mark Flugge Memorial Concert. Mees Hall, Capital University, 1 College Ave, Bexley, OH.
I talked quite a bit in my year end wrap ups about what a loss the death of Mark Flugge was to this town last year. The tribute concert at Capital University where he worked for so long, and had such an amazing impact on so many musicians over the years, was one of the most moving afternoons I had.
Flugge is still being remembered and paid tribute to – I just a smoking version of his “The Borderland” by the John Allen Trio at Dick’s Den on Wednesday – and I’m happy to say everyone involved is making good on their promise to make that formal concert hall tribute an annual event. This year’s memorial features the Vaughan Wiester Famous Jazz Orchestra going specially commissioned arrangements of Flugge’s work along with smaller combos, chamber music groups, and soloists. This also marks the release of Mark Flugge Remembered: Jazz Originals and Standards which is a compilation of previously-unreleased tracks designed to give a taste of the width and breadth of one of the finest careers in Columbus music. From early word, the record should be an essential document of Columbus jazz and classical music.
Show starts at 2:00pm. Free event.
June 14: Secret Keeper (Mary Halvorson and Stephan Crump). Natalie’s Coal Fired Pizza, 5601 N High St.
Mary Halvorson’s probably my favorite jazz/avant-garde guitarist working right now. I was blown away the first time I saw her in duos with viola player Jessica Pavone at a show booked by Gerard Cox – see above – and I’ve been blown away every single time since, seeing her with Ingrid Laubrock in both Laubrock’s quintet at Barbes and an improvised trio with Tom Rainey at Issue Project Room, playing duets at The Stone, with Marc Ribot in Sun Ship, with Trevor Dunn’s Trio Convulsant at Bowery Poetry Club and Travis Laplante’s quartet at Shapeshifter Lab, and of course her own groups which I’ve seen from the Jazz Gallery to the Wexner Center for the Arts. So it’s a big deal to me she’s coming back to town.
Her unique writing and guitar vocabulary can conjure everything from her longtime teacher Anthony Braxton to Derek Bailey to Horace Silver to Mingus. Over the years she’s developed a way of working with space and the decay of notes that almost puts me in mind of Eliane Radigue and Feldman. Her singular tone and attack haven’t changed so much as over the years they’ve had flash and excess stripped away. The renewed depth and spaciousness of her playing is most apparent in her new project, Secret Keeper, and she’s found a perfect foil in bassist Stephan Crump – this is dancing on air without a net.
I’m very glad to see Natalie’s – one of my favorite listening rooms in town – booking something like this and it’s the show I’m most excited for this week.
Show starts at 8:00pm. $10 tickets available at http://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=9c5d0e4bdb33efe24d11945ea6d77f4f
Screen of Distance 