Sallow-skinned, starry-eyed, blessed

The New York Times' Ben Ratliff reviews Thursday's Secret Society hit:

A Big Band for Today, With Hints of the Past

The music was full of large-scale, intricate designs, at times almost manically so. It built on some of the best lessons of Charles Mingus and Bob Brookmeyer, not only in harmony and structure but also in momentum, in moving a piece forward.

But a few other of Mr. Argue’s pieces, including “Induction Effect” and “Habeas Corpus,” established something else about him: he wants his music to make contemporary sense. Thursday’s set established a through line among Mr. Brookmeyer’s adventurous big-band compositions of the ’60s, Steve Reich’s pulse patterns and Tortoise’s new instrumental rock with jazz harmony. There were drones, backbeats, short cyclical figures, clouds of guitar distortion, all of it written into the music and elegantly claiming its place. And so a big, broad musical vocabulary came together easily, without jump-cutting or wrenching shifts of style. Mr. Argue made all these elements belong together naturally.