Lage Lund has a classically clean and mellow guitar sound, prodigious but understated technical facility, and a sequential, motivic approach to line construction that allows him to burn long and build up to soaring, cathartic releases -- like the one you hear when you visit his embryonic website. Last night, he brought a quintet to the Jazz Gallery made up of fellow Monk competition winner Seamus Blake, bassist Orlando Le Fleming, drummer Kendrick Scott, and one of my favorite young pianists, Aaron Parks -- all players very much in demand. The music, as others have remarked, is often reminiscent of Brian Blade's Fellowship -- acoustic post-ECM jazz, with understated pop inflections that occasionally bubble to the surface, as in Aaron's rhapsodic Mike Garson-esque finish to Lage's new 12/8 tune, or Kendrick's supple breakbeat-influenced playing on the epic "Vonnegut" (which Lage, with his usual self-deprecation, described to me as "just a couple of vamps"). They closed their first set with Kendrick's "#20" -- "Great tune, bad title," Lage deadpanned, a knowing wink at his own "Incredibly Profound Song" -- where everything came to a head during the vamp out, with both Lage and Seamus telegraphing syncopated short-long-short pulses over the surging rhythm section.
I split for Cornelia Street just in time to catch the last few tunes of singer Monika Heidemann's set. Guitarist Khabu Doug Young was in mid-shred as I walked in -- his gritty sound was the perfect contrast to Lage's pristine clarity. Monika's band is flush with some of the stars of the Barbès scene -- in addition to Khabu, there's vibraphonist Matt Moran (of John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet), Derek Layes on bass, and Take Toriyama. I loved the loose, quirky grooves from Derek and Take, and Matt's relentless creativity as both accompanist and soloist is dizzying. The band seems perfectly attuned to the indie vibe of Monika's tunes, which have more affinity to Animal Collective and The Magnetic Fields than than they do to the Great American Songbook. While I sometimes missed the multilayered vocals from the record, Monika's musical concept is strong, highly personal, and practically unique -- I can't think of any other jazz-trained singers mining this territory. Check her out on MySpace and don't miss her March 19 gig at Galapagos.
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