Volume 27 Issue 8 | July 1 - September 20, 2022

JOHN COOK MANUEL MIETHE
Lina Allemano
along with a screening of Part Four of the late guitarist Derek Bailey’s
1992 documentary On the Edge: Improvisation in Music. (Parts One
through Three screened on earlier dates throughout the festival.)
Ohrenschmaus features Allemano on trumpet, the Norwegian
bassist Dan Peter Sundland and the German drummer Michael
Griener, playing Allemano’s compositions. The group’s debut album,
Rats and Mice, was released to great critical acclaim on Lumo
Records, and was included in the NPR Jazz Critics Poll of Best Music of
2020, Citizen Jazz France’s Best New Albums of 2020, and reviewed in
this very magazine. Ohrenschmaus blends open improvisation with
strong, specific elements, making the most of its bandmembers’ individual
voices as well as the group’s capacity to listen deeply and create
together.
Numinosity Trio is David Mott on baritone saxophone, Jesse Stewart
on drums, and Justin Gray on upright bass and bass veena. (The
latter is a hybrid fretless bass that Gray and luthier Les Godfrey first
put together in 2010, with four main bass strings, two drone strings
and a ten-string short-scale harp.) Nominally a chordless group, in
the tradition of baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan’s 1950s pianoless
quartet with Chet Baker, Numinosity Trio’s sound is as equally
informed by Mott’s melodicism and Stewart’s percussive stewardship
Numinosity Trio
as it is by the lush textural imagination of Gray, both on bass veena
and on upright bass.
Those familiar with the kind of music presented at Something
Else! will also, almost certainly, be familiar with Derek Bailey’s
musical legacy. A third-generation musician born in Sheffield in 1930,
Bailey was an early English proponent of free improvisation, and,
throughout his storied career, would play with a wide variety of musicians,
including Dave Holland, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Pat
Metheny, William Parker and John Zorn. On the Edge begins with
the assertion that improvisation is the “most widely practiced of all
musical activities, but probably the least recognized or understood.”
Part Four features appearances from Jerry Garcia, George Lewis and
Douglas Ewart, Buddy Guy and more.
Meanwhile, festivals aside, the club scene carries on, indoors and
out, taking advantage of Toronto’s pandemic-inspired CaféTO initiative
while they can, and then taking the music back indoors again.
Check out the Mainly Clubs list that follows, for venues that stay the
course year round!
Colin Story is a jazz guitarist, writer and teacher based in Toronto.
He can be reached at colinstory.com, on Instagram and on Twitter.
9th ANNUAL JAZZ & BLUES FESTIVAL
Sept 16-17-18, 2022
Simcoe Recreation Center
Jully Black
Laila Biali
The Pat Collins Trio
Hosted by
Heather
Bambrick
Ohrenschmaus
southcoastjazz.com
for Tickets and Show info
JAMIE CROFT
thewholenote.com July 1 - September 20, 2022 | 27