Alternative Guitar Summit 2016  at Drom - NYC, May 11

• photography by Clara Pereira / text by Filipe Freitas

Defined as ‘an embarrassment of riches’ by its founder/curator, the guitarist and composer, Joel Harrison, ‘While We’re Still Here’ is a new series, launched to honor living composers, which from now on is going to be part of the yearly meeting of creative guitar players known as Alternative Guitar Summit.
The event took place at the Drom, located in Manhattan’s East Village, and the first honorees were the outstanding jazz big-band leader, Carla Bley (who turned 80 on that same day), and the Canadian singer/songwriter, Joni Mitchell. 

The first guitarist to jump onto the stage was Mike Baggetta, consistently backed up by the old stagers Jerome Harris on bass and Billy Mintz on drums.
Immediately turning on a persistent loop note, he starts his performance in a pretty melodious way, filling the room with additional effects and beautiful harmonics. After installing a hypnotic atmosphere, he shifts into something more noisy and abstract, where the distortion à-la Sonic Youth and multiple vibratos tried to push us into the vortex of a controlled chaos.

The American jazz guitarist Sheryl Bailey might evoke a cowgirl in the way she dresses but no country music was heard when she strummed her acoustic guitar. Plucky Strum is an interesting project in duo with the bassist Harvey S. who guaranteed the perfect foundation for the guitarist’s brilliant incursions on a sort of distorted flamenco-bebop style full of both delicate and dissonant sounds. She vividly dug “Hissing of Summer Lawns” by Mitchell, only to slow down in “Sad Song” by Bley.

Also with an acoustic guitar and a loop pedal, Wolfgang Muthspiel showed his remarkable technique and feeling in Mitchell’s “Yvette in English” and Bley’s “Floater”. A sweet encounter of melody and harmony that brought autumnal landscapes into mind.

The host, Joel Harrison, was next. 
A more bluesy design was thrown into Bley’s “Vox Humana”, which counted with Muthspiel, as guest, on the electric guitar. Mr. Harrison’s loud tones, predominantly strident, erupted over the superfine rhythm section: Jerome Harris on bass and Allison Miller on drums.
For Mitchell’s “Borderline”, Mr. Harrison swapped Muthspiel for the singer Everett Bradley, but the first surprise of the night came when Jerome Harris soulfully sang the “Jungle Line” by Joni Mitchell, a tune delivered with sharp tribal grooves.

The second surprise of the night was the appearance of the guitarist Steve Cardenas and the bassist Ben Allison. They replaced the initially scheduled Leni Stern, showing an unimpeachable communication and empathy, which had immediate effects in the audience during “Yvette in English”, a melodious, relaxed piece composed by Joni Mitchell, and “King Corn”, which started frenetically swinging but made an interesting turn through a few variations that somehow reminded me Frank Zappa.

The moment of the night arrived with the brilliant guitar duo: Nels Cline / Julian Lage who gave a fresh course to Bley’s “Temporarily” and Mitchell’s Woodstock hit “Fiddler and the Drum”. 
Instead of a conversation, I would say this was more like a flawless complementation packed with a variety of intriguing sonic puzzles that always find the last piece to succeed. This eloquent performance, whether strolling through identifiable roads or on the loose, muted the audience and deserves a steep bow from me. 

The creative guitarist Ben Monder is used to have vocals embellishing his structured inflections. In the past, he had Theo Bleckmann as a reliable ally, but for this gig he brought Becca Stevens, who helped to infuse further dreamy ambiences to Carla Bley’s delicate “Lawns” through her vocal ostinatos.
The second tune, “Hejira” by Joni Mitchell, was ideally arranged to fit the outgoing explorations of the guitarist, who created a sonic wall against to Ms. Stevens kept uttering the lyrics.

The illustrious trumpeter Dave Douglas, in the company of Heather Masse on bass and vocals, and Camila Meza on guitar, gently interpreted “A New Hymn”, a tune from Bley’s 1977 acclaimed album ‘Dinner Music’, and also Mitchell’s “All I Really Want”. 

The diversified show ended in big with all the guitarists playing the emblematic melody of “Ida Lupino”, a reference in Carla Bley’s magnetic career.