VIsion festival 2023 - DAY 2 @ roulette, brooklyn, new york, jun 14 - feat. gerald cleaver black host / brown-greene-krall trio / hamid drake’s turiya / mark dresser 7
photography by © Clara Pereira / text by Filipe Freitas
As a staple of the New York jazz scene, where freedom and improvisation rule, the Vision Festival continues to be a motive for joy and celebration. This year’s recipient of the Lifetime Achievement award was the French avant-garde jazz bassist Joelle Léandre.
We headed to Roulette in Brooklyn to cover the second day of the festival, which featured a strong roster of artists. A spectacular night of forward-leaning music.
gerald cleaver black host
Drummer Gerald Cleaver opened the four-concert program of the day with his Black Host project, featuring Darius Jones on alto, Cooper-Moore on piano, Brandon Seabrook on guitar, and a pair of well-versed bassists: Dezron Douglas and Brandon Lopez. They kicked off with Coltrane’s “Expression” - rubato, spasmodic, torrential, noisy, screaming. Delivered non-stop, the music segued into Max Roach’s “Garvey’s Ghost”, whose dynamics went from a tribalistic rhythm topped with resonant guitar effects, piano drizzles, and buzzing bass sounds to a swinging stroll that leads to a galloping three-time feel pulse designed with tom, snare cross-sticking and kick drum. Indisputably tempestuous at the minimum.
brown/greene/krall trio
The quartet of bassoonist Karen Borca was supposed to play next, but due to the bandleader’s absence - she’s having a problem with her hands - we had a saxophone-bass-drums trio composed of Rob Brown, Hilliard Greene and Jackson Krall. The completely improvised set was launched with jittery brushwork, fluid pizzicato, and a series of motivic saxophone blows carried out with diversified timbres. But the best moment was the final little piece dedicated to Borca in which Brown played the flute.
hamid drake’s turiya
The next concert was memorable. The incredible drummer Hamid Drake honored Alice Coltrane with his super quintet Turiya: James Brandon Lewis on tenor, Jamie Saft on piano and keyboards, Patricia Brennan on vibraphone, and Joshua Abrams on double bass.
The modal jazz erupted with tension, fervor, and spiritual force to the point of causing pleasurable frisson. Arts for Art’s founder and artistic director Patricia Nicholson was in charge of the dance and spoken word. The group delighted the audience with “Ptah The El Daoud”, whose buoyancy reached intense commotion with a grandiose solo by Lewis. Drake sang beautifully the mantra “Om Namah Shivaya” over a modal jazz tapestry before veering the groove into reggae. He ended with “Journey in Satchidananda”, and left the crowd asking for more.
mark dresser 7
Closing the night with creative orchestral audacity was Mark Dresser 7. The seasoned bassist prepared a set of pieces drawn from the albums Sedimental You (2016) and Ain’t Nothing But a Cyber Coup & You (2019). Dresser’s magnificent seven are Nicole Mitchell on flute, Marty Ehrlich on clarinets, Michael Dessen on trombone, Keir GoGwilt on violin, Joshua White on piano, and Michael Sarin on drums, who, subbing for Jim Black, was perfectly integrated into the group’s philosophy. Complex rhythms and tempos, precise accents, faultless unisons turned fanfares from another planet, chamber passages, and imaginative improvisation were spread through pieces like “Hobby Lobby Horse”, “Newtown Char”, “Gloaming” and the politically charged “TrumpinPutinStoopin”.