JAZZ
The Many Movements of Impulse! Night by Maria Shaughnessy
A
lways look at a performer’s feet in concert. The feet provide an insight to how each musician feels their music and where their groove lies (because, you know, groove is personal). Whether it is a subtle tap of the foot, heavy stomping, or even complete stillness, there is a certain grounding that comes only from movement or the lack thereof. While some motions may seem more practical than others—say, the changing of a harp pedal or the tap of a looper pedal—all motion is indispensable in music. Impulse! Night at this year’s Winter Jazzfest, hosted at Le Poisson Rouge’s main stage, provided an interesting case study for these movements. To open the show, saxophonist James Brandon Lewis joined The Messthetics trio (made up of the former Fugazi members Joe Lally on bass, Brendan Canty on drums, and Anthony Pirog on guitar, for a quintessentially jazz-rock fusion set. The quartet balanced some surprisingly minimalist ballads with traditional head-bangers that energized the crowd. Here, I had a perfect view of Anthony Pirog’s pedal setup, which he subtly used to create hypnotic loops with his guitar riffs, over which James Brandon Lewis masterfully soloed, moving seamlessly between bebop and freer,
10 OnAir · February 2024
Coltrane-esque lines. Overall, they set the tone for a great night to come. The next set was a classic trio: Brandee Younger on harp, Rashaan Carter on bass, and Allan Mednard on drums, all of whom I had seen almost exactly a year before at Winter Jazzfest 2023’s Impulse! Night at LPR. There was a similar awe in the audience both years upon hearing the first shimmering notes of Younger’s arpeggios. At first very free-flowing, Mednard and Carter’s entrance provided a structure and momentum to the music of Alice Coltrane that snapped the audience out of their daze and into a synchronized sway. This is where the feet get interesting. While I know it is hard to look away from a harpist’s hands, I would always recommend focusing more on the feet, especially when you get the rare opportunity to see harp performed in a non-classical setting. The pedals, a 19th century innovation to the harp’s mechanism, are what bring the
Irreversible Entanglements, 2024. Photo by author.
