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Three-Alarm Jazz Fire at Firehouse 12
by Regina DeAngelo | May 1, 2006 11:25 am
(4) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author
Posted to: Arts
Joe McPhee leans back and whales on his ornately etched baritone saxophone. Drummer Jay Rosen switches cadence mid-phrase, while Dominic Duval slides, taps and fans accompaniment on the upright bass. Between the saxophonist’s breaths, the room is quiet. No shifting chairs, no background conversation or clinking glasses. It’s just Trio X and its audience, wombed in the insulated performance space of Firehouse 12 on Crown Street in New Haven.
Musicians used to competing with bar noise might be intimidated by the level of intimacy at Firehouse 12. This was not the case Saturday night as the great Trio X channeled the likes of Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, Thelonius Monk and even Rodgers and Hammerstein.
The trio, Joe McPhee on saxophone and pocket horn, Jay Rosen on drums, and Dominic Duval on bass, is known for taking well-known standards into the far reaches of avant-garde. For this performance, their second at the Firehouse, they referenced just enough to entice the listener toward beguiling harmony, only to depart to “other planes of there,” as Sun Ra would say.
McPhee introduced “My Funny Valentine” by blowing soft high winds through the pocket horn. Duvall alternated walks with runs, skitters with grooves. Each musician imitated the other, exiting then reuniting then diverging again until all came home as if by telepathy, without nod or signal. The piece ended with McPhee’s unique diminuendo: a forlorn wheeze-cry that blows softly away.
At times McPhee literally sang into his instrument. It tweeted, it wailed, it yelled a tinny call to prayer from a minaret a thousand miles to the east. All along Duvall bowed or tapped or squeaked out the most empathic of accompaniment. Drummer Jay Rosen at one point held the blunt end of his stick against the cymbal and rotated it, laying on a barely discernable sound dimension.
McPhee is a frontman who knows when to step back and give room to the equally talented cohorts of Trio X. The Trio is as mature as it is experimental; they allow white space, they forge into dark space, they let the whole thing crash into a three-instrument pile-up. Then one of them takes the lead back to sanity, and the rest follow, one by one, trailing music.
In the last number of the evening, Trio X’s interpretation of Ornette Coleman’s “Lonely Woman,” McPhee almost came untethered into that trance-dimension that threatens to pull great artists from the mortal realm. Duval brought the trio back with low call of bow on bass, with Rosen’s brushes tapping everyone gently back into the room.
After the applause, McPhee began to tell the audience a story about the tune, but smiled and cut himself short, knowing his drummer had to catch the last train home to New York. “Well,” he said, “I’ll come back and talk to you about that.” We hope to hear the rest of that story some day.
No better place to hear it than Firehouse 12, a north star in the jazz firmament that might well guide music lovers to New Haven from far away. They will come to experience great music in a perfectly tuned space; to find out what it’s like when flesh and bone dissipate into waveform. Once enclosed in this space, they will enter the music, and they will not want to leave.
Visiting Firehouse 12 might be disarming for the newcomer. Those expecting a jazz club scene (mixed drinks, low light, urbane clientele) will find it, but only downstairs at the bar. Upstairs, through the hall and behind a soundproof door, is where they put the music.
To enter the performance/recording space is to be immediately enveloped in the highly controlled acoustics of a state-of-the-art sound studio. The room is lushly quiet, every surface padded and molded to the singleminded purpose of conducting soundwaves. Fabric-covered walls are angled to urge music to flow, not bounce, through a womblike space. It’s almost like sitting in the hull of an instrument. Closing your eyes to pure sound, the space becomes an altar to the gods of music.
Since its first show in February 2005, Firehouse 12 has been attracting latter-day jazz gods to New Haven. Headliners have included the Jane Ira Bloom Duo, the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet, and Dave Douglas and Keystone. Roberto Rodriguez and Susie Ibarra return next week with their Filipino musical style known as Kulintang.
Because of the size of its performance space (it seats about 70), Firehouse 12 usually has two shows, at 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. Concert-hall seating and stage lighting demand the full attention of its audience, who know well enough to leave their drinks at the bar. (They’re not allowed in the studio). Unlike at typical jazz clubs, “the musician-to-listener relationship is much less diluted,” said Nick Lloyd, Firehouse’s owner and recording engineer, a former student in Yale’s Department of Music.
Such intimacy can turn away those who come for a scene rather than a show. Luckily, the Firehouse attracts people who bring near-religious reverence to the music, producing an exchange of energy that often fires great performances. “Bands who are really psyched about that are usually more progressive and want people to tap into [the music] in a more intense way,” said Lloyd.
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Comments
posted by: Lou West on May 27, 2006 1:10pm
There is not one club in New Haven that hires Jazz Musicians! With the exception of Mose Allison,white people can’t play this music called Jazz, and quite a few black dudes can’t either!! They have excellent chops, and they can play the notes, but they can’t play from an Afro-Centric point, which is a culture that you have to live. The sad part is that quite a few black musicians,as Charles Mingus stated, have a “hole in their soul”!Want to hear some Jazz go to “Varick AME Zion” on Sunday 11:00 service.Or listen to Gene Harris CD entitled “In His Hands”!! Mose Allison’s “Your Mind Is On Vacation” with the lyrics by himself, which is Jazz!! Or read the poems of Paul Lawrence Dunbar.Jazz is more than playing a bunch of notes or hot licks!! Of course, all of us are influnced by someone, but you use the influence in your own style, but keeping in step with the culture, which cannot be taught, it has to be lived in order to feel it!! All the tricks, strange instruments, etc. don’t make for Jazz, although it might be very entertaining!!
posted by: Jeff "Dirty Hands" Simon on June 5, 2006 5:24pm
The other night I approached Firehouse 12. I’m a jazz musician, and I was put off (even intimidated) by the exclusivity and austerity (not to mention the NYC price tag!) Jazz IS about bar noise and clinking glasses and yes, even cigarette smoke (though I don’t smoke, I appreciate those that do.) Jazz is about life, in all its messiness. I don’t know about ‘afro-centric’ anymore, but I do agree with Lou West’s posting, that it’s about how life is lived. All I have to do is play the next real note. Get a whole string of these together and that’s jazz. Dig?
posted by: Nick Lloyd on August 3, 2006 12:16pm
I just wanted to respond respectfully to Jeff’s comments about Firehouse 12. The atmosphere surrounding the music here is not intended to be intimidating, exclusive or austere. Though it’s true that jazz has a history of being performed in smoky clubs and neighborhood bars, I chose to design the performance area at Firehouse 12 as an alternative to those kinds of spaces - which is in no way a judgement on the importance or relevance of those smoky clubs or neighborhood bars (I have played in many of them myself). The intention was/is to create a respectful atmosphere for the musicians and performers creating the music, to provide them with a conducive environment for communication both with each other and with the audience, which is in my view the essence of jazz.
With regard to the price, I don’t think viewing jazz anywhere in New York costs $10 anymore. All of our second sets are priced at $10, and one of the benefits of having the bar separated from the performance space is we do not require a drink minimum. You can come strictly for the music.
