For his opening piece, Richard McGhee drew rich, long tones from his sax, reveling in the natural reverb of Whole G Café. The audience, which packed the house and had still more people standing near the door to hear, stayed quiet enough that you could hear the notes end not with McGhee’s breath or the instrument, but somewhere up toward the ceiling.
The notes began to cascade and overlap with each other in the echo.
The crowd seemed to grow even quieter as McGhee played near the edge of his sound, putting a little rasp on the instrument’s full voice. His note choices got more interesting, but never too far out to break the mood he had established. Tasteful and free, McGhee played with the confidence of a seasoned veteran still full of life and ideas, and was rewarded at the end with a round of applause that sounded, in that space, even bigger than the audience already was.
McGhee’s set was the opener in the latest installment of the Uncertainty Music Series, where the only certainty is that it will happen in New Haven every month, as it has since 2007. Run by Carl Testa, the series focuses on improvised, experimental, and electronic music, and as such, has become a fixture of New Haven’s robust experimental music scene. It has appeared at Never Ending Books, Firehouse 12, and Erector Square — and now has seen a few appearances at Whole G on Orange Street, where it made what could have been a recent rainy, sleepy Saturday afternoon much more interesting.
Broadcloth, a trio composed of Anne Rhodes (vocals), Nathan Bontrager (cello), and Adam Matlock (accordion), played the second set of the afternoon in celebration of their new album, In Stitches. They began their set with “Mere Distractions,” a piece that tells the story of a harrowing visit to the hospital. With Matlock’s voice and accordion as an anchor, Rhodes and Bontrager used their respective instruments to great effect, beginning with pitches that twisted gradually into more guttural, breathy, smoky sounds.
From the other room, the sounds the staff of Whole G made as they worked to prepare coffee and sandwiches for eager patrons — the screech of the steamer, the clank of knives, the hum of machinery — only complemented the piece, became the wheeze of the respirator, the rattle of a cart passing in the hallway. The siren from a police car passing on Chapel Street nearby was the wail of someone in the next room. As if we were all in that hospital room together, hoping everything was going to be all right.
The next show in the Uncertainty Music Series will be held at 8 p.m. this coming Saturday, at Never Ending Books, 810 State St. It will feature Nate Trier and Chris Welcome, both perfoming solo sets.
