Secret Society @ The Jazz Gallery, April 18+19
Friday, April 18
Having rested and regrouped in the months following their recent cross-border infiltration,
Darcy James Argue and his wily co-conspirators will soon retake the
stage at SoHo's Jazz Gallery for their first-ever weekend showcase at
the this most esteemed and respectable venue. That these unsavory molls
and blackguards will apparently be permitted to besmirch this hallowed
stage for two consecutive nights, in spite of their dubious
record of preserving the sanctity of the Big Band Tradition, is but one
more lamentable sign of this debauched age.
Worse still, Mr. Argue will be inducting yet more impressionable youths into his degenerate ways: namely, saxophonists John Ellis (Charlie Hunter Trio) and Mike McGinnis (The Four Bags, Loser's Lounge) and trumpeter Sam Hoyt (Perdro Giraudo Jazz Orchestra). Sometime co-conspirators Alan Ferber (trombone) and Jonathan Finlayson (trumpet) are also backsliding their way into the fold, to take their place amongst irredeemable Society habituals such as Ingrid Jensen, Erica vonKleist, and infernal duo of Matt Clohesy and Jon Wikan.
It is sobering to note that ever since the Society's Canadian splinter cell, Secret Society North, appeared at the 2008 International Association for Jazz Education conference
in Toronto, even otherwise respectable scribes have been taken in by
Mr. Argue's devious original compositions. Carl Wilson, of The Globe & Mail and zoilus.com, writes:
"it was like hearing Duke Ellington and minimalism and Tortoise and
Funkadelic and Elliott Carter and much else besides melding into one
floating, shifting, dodging music." And Juan Rodriguez of the Montreal Gazette recounts:
"After it was over - a full 110 minutes of music - there was a sense
among the musicians and the packed, rapt audience that they had
participated in something historic."
We implore you not to allow yourselves to become similarly infatuated with an ensemble that -- lest we forget -- has not once extended to its audience the simple courtesy of a saxophone soli in 4-part block voicings. And need we remind you that in the wake of their performance at the IAJE conference, the 40-year-old organization is facing a debilitating financial crisis? Can this truly be coincidence?
Will you sit back and allow steampunk infiltration, steampunk
indoctrination, steampunk subversion, and the international steampunk
conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids? Or
will you take action?
TRUMPETS
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