InFlightPress

I am at Café UMI for an IMOO Sunday night Christmas party with a few grateful listeners.

Scott Warren uses cutlery on a cymbal,on a tom, with his hand and a big drum stick then a spoon.  Amazing bassist Philippe Charbonneau is concentrated on switches between song signatures.  The drummer in his toque is a mad hatedplayful trickster I love the timing, off time syncopation two- three versionsof intertwined songs are ever changing. Now it is “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” while Bernard Stepien leads his saxin a marching tune.  A little BennyGoodman meets boogie woogie from New Orleans. I hear martial music as the tune climaxes with Craig Pedersen on trumpet.Great harmonics with Linsey Wellman

Between songs the cymbals are chalk board scratched.  Spooky eerie  night time sounds make us all a little uncomfortable.  The bass bellows out hints of Silent Night.  Here it comes, the melody is shifted and aweird recorded loop is amplified aside a muted trumpet, screeching sax…thebaritone sax is quick drawn from a holster leather slapping fast like electronshere then there, opposite side of the nucleus, all hocus pocus. David Broscoe knows the sphere of the electron.  Bowed  double bass – atonal scratches on a turntable, the cymbal sings hard like sheetmetal thunder at the Globe theatre I am drawn into a quiet setting.  The band is in synch so that we experience amelodic Silent Night scene.  Not for long though as a hard blowing off time tempo horn insists its sound in the multi-directional chorus.  This child will be heralded byjazz angels fresh from boot camp.  They are cacophonic.  A sax sputters and pops as breath passes a reed and puffed cheeks. The band is kept on track by drummer boys’ time and the consistent bass:insistent on authenticity while improvisational characters, six players deep carry tune after tune.  Next up is thefinisher, “Auld Lang Syne”.  It opens with a balled chain tinkling a steel bowl an off tune bass then just on time,“God and sinners are reconciled”…Oh Joyful-Joyful a high hat hits and brushes swooshwhile a hard stick in a right hand plays. The bass is low and heavy very purple or oily green.  Bernard Stepien leads us, “All around theMulberry Bush” and the evening closes; an open present. 

No coal in the stockings of Umi’s crowd thisChristmas!

We are invited back for January16 and Sbot N WO from Sackville NS.

Thanks to Linsey Wellman