RSS 2.0 FeedSeptember 30, 2009, Featured Articles, theSTEADY, Jazz
Snuff Jazz: Musical assassins free jazz
"It originally had a real violent, revolutionary meaning," Mark Southerland confesses. "Kill the old guard so the free jazz freaks could fly their flag." The evocative, sinister name suits the would-be musical hitmen who make up Snuff Jazz.
"It originally had a real violent, revolutionary meaning," Mark Southerland confesses. "Kill the old guard so the free jazz freaks could fly their flag."
The evocative, sinister name suits the would-be musical hitmen who make up Snuff Jazz.
No need to worry, jazz traditionalists. Southerland and his crew are more interested in killer jams than assassinating their old music tutors. Following in the spirit of free jazz, their long form improvisations are explorations of musical topography covering all sorts of terrain-from the melodic to the atonal, the measured to the arrhythmic, the whimsical to the dystopian and all points in between.
Snuff Jazz is but one iteration of the many guises of Mark Southerland, who also leads Wee Snuff and Urban Noise Camp. The prolific and innovative output netted him a Charlotte Street Foundation Generative Performance Artist Award in 2008.
A multi-disciplined artist, Southerland integrates his musical skill with visual art and fashion, disassembling instruments into conjoined, wearable horn sculptures and Frankensteined instruments he affectionately calls bastardized horns.
One such creation was featured throughout the Snuff Jazz performance I attended on Saturday, September 26 at Jardine's. It perched beside its maker all night, looking like the illegitimate child of a saxophone and a flugelhorn.
"The 'bastard horn' you saw was part of an old soprano sax with an even older marching mellophone bell," Southerland explained. "In addition, it has an elbow from a car horn and a couple extra keys."
And just as Southerland, an accomplished saxophonist, has found freedom in making his own instruments, Snuff Jazz is a liberated exploration of improvised alternative jazz.
The full house in attendance at the dimly lit Jardine's last Friday was treated to nearly two hours of music created organically on the spot.
"Snuff Jazz is almost entirely improvised. Occasionally we land on a 'cell' or idea that is recurring in our sets. These cells develop over months and years of playing together."
The rotating lineup includes both free jazz rebels and jazz traditionalists who sit in and revel for an evening of music with no boundaries. The uninitiated may find only chaos and noise in such seemingly anarchic proceedings. Conventional song structures are absent. There's certainly no verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-final chorus road map to follow.
But there is always a method to the madness. Southerland and Rich Wheeler (both on tenor saxophone) begin the performance with a duet. The notes sound dissonant. The lack of a traditional melodic hook is alienating.
Soon, however, an aural image begins to take shape. As Mike Shanks (drums) builds tension with tom rolls, Southerland and Wheeler jump intervals like pachyderms dancing a jig. And then the snare and cymbals kick in and the elephants and hippos morph into a belly dance fantasy.
Jeff Harshbarger, freshly released from his Friday evening stint in the orchestra pit of the KC Repertory Theatre's production of Into the Woods, slips quietly in the front door and onstage.
His mates don't bring the song to a resolution or even acknowledge his presence. They play on. As soon as his upright bass is out of its case, he joins right in and the song becomes a groove piece. All of a sudden the music struts with night club cool.
Mark sets his tenor sax down and picks up the sax/horn hybrid, his "bastard horn." The voice that issues forth is unique but not altogether unfamiliar. It may have been played by a mythical snake charmer confronting a psychedelic hydra. After about twenty-five minutes, the first of many epic pieces comes to a resolution.
Such is the experience of listening to free jazz. It may be disconcerting but it can also seduce you. If you choose to listen hard enough, narratives begin to appear within the staccato bleats, freak squeaks, and frenetic movement of the music.
Snuff Jazz is happy to deliver the enigmatic message. They utilize repetition and motifs to allow notes snatched out of the air to form images. An hazy morning dialogue between cranky neighbors. Basset hounds and bullfrogs and nuclear alarm sirens. A religious ritual. A battle cry.
Southerland and Wheeler play well off of each other, giving and taking the stage with authority and mutual respect. Shanks provides subtle percussive support but occasionally throws down some serious thunderstorm, hard rock drumming.
Harshbarger has a grand time throughout, playing both upright and electric bass, utilizing bows and mallets in ways both conventional and novel. He almost always plays with a fury. At times, his hands move up and down the neck of the upright as if propelled by a flurry of twelve or thirteen fingers.
It's well past one in the morning when Southerland announces, "We're gonna do one more song of indeterminate length." He grins. "Such are our lives."
The crowd cheers. All of them seem to have gotten their money's worth. Some enjoyed having music serve as a backdrop for their evening out. Their conversations floated throughout the room mingling with the cacophony onstage.
There were many other faces, silent and attentive, who tabled their discourse for tens of minutes at a time, scrutinizing the music for a codebreaking clue to its meaning. One woman in particular seemed to have divined its secret. I never saw her utter a word, but her lips were pursed in a smile, her raised hands were swinging and swaying, her body was translating for her.
Review:
Snuff Jazz
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Jardine's Restaurant and Jazz Club
4536 Main St., Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-561-6480 or online at www.jardines4jazz.com or www.hornsculpture.com
Upcoming gigs:
Snuff Jazz
Saturday, October 17 at 10:30 p.m.
Jardine's Restaurant and Jazz Club
4536 Main St., Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-561-6480 or online at www.jardines4jazz.com or www.hornsculpture.com
Mark Southerland presents
Installation Operetta
"Moon Bears and Sister Wives"
Friday, October 23 at 8:00 p.m.
La Esquina
1000 W. 25th St., Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-221-5115
Mark Southerland presents
Installation Operetta Part 2
"Moon Bears and Sister Wives"
Friday, November 6 at 8:00 p.m.
La Esquina
1000 W. 25th St., Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-221-5115
Snuff Jazz
Saturday, November 21 at 10:30 p.m.
Jardine's Restaurant and Jazz Club
4536 Main St., Kansas City, MO
For tickets call 816-561-6480 or online at www.jardines4jazz.com or www.hornsculpture.com
More Featured Articles
KC Events this week and beyond
Looking for something to do this weekend? Click here for the KC Events calendar of theatre, classical music, dance and jazz events through 2011. Highlights of this week's classical music and dance offerings are in Don Dagenais' "City Classics." For current Theatre listings visit Victor Wishna's "City Stage." Enjoy!
KC Events this week and beyond
This week: Pianist Nareh Arghamanyan opens The Friends of Chamber Music; tenor Lawrence Brownlee in a free recital at Harriman-Jewell, the Glenn Miller Ochestra at Lied Center, John Obetz, organist at Community of Christ; the Goldenberg Duo in several locations. "Into the Woods," "My First Time,' continue; "Seascape" ends and Quaility Hill opens with "Curtain Up!" Music and theatre events at UMKC and JCCC... and much, much more.
Doomed love portrayed brilliantly in "Bright Star"
Rock icon and self-described poet Jim Morrison once wrote, "Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?" While early 19th century poet John Keats, a tragic figure in his own right, may not have thought he had a good world when he died at the age of 25, his life and love were epic enough to inspire this drama.
All material contained in KCMetropolis.org is the property of or licensed for use by KCMetropolis.org. Any use, duplication, or reproduction of any or all content of this publication is prohibited except with the express written permission of KCMetropolis.org or the original copyright holders.