This Year’s Out of the Woods Festival Opens with a Rare, Riveting Performance of Classic Indian Veena Music

This year’s edition of the Women’s Raga Massive’s annual Out of the Woods festival is even more diverse and exciting than last year’s installment. The collective – comprising the female talent in the Brooklyn Raga Massive, who play both traditional and very untraditional Indian and Indian-inspired sounds – put on a series of shows that feature their own talent base along with the most spectacular female players in Indian music from around the world.

Thursday night at the Jazz Gallery, the festival kicked off with what Women’s Raga Massive honcho and violinist Trina Basu described as a “mind-blowing” set by veena player Saraswathi Ranganathan. That description fit Ranganathan’s late set as well. Joined by her percussionist younger brother Ganapathi on mridangam barrel drum, she played with as much savagery as dreaminess in a rivetingly dynamic set based in compositions that ranged from the seventeenth century to the present.

The veena – the many-thousand-years-old ancestor of the sitar – is an increasing rarity in Indian music. Most people who play sit-down Indian fretted instruments learn the sitar instead – and these days, if you want the real maharaj of instruments, you go for the surbahar, with its wide range.

But the veena is special. Maybe more than any other Indian instrument, it has a singing quality, with a range comparable to the cello. Another point of comparison is the slide guitar, something Ranganathan is keenly aware of. She’s well versed in the blues – being based in Chicago might have something to do with that – to the point where, during two concise pieces utilizing modes very close to the American blues scale, there were moments where the music sounded like Chicago blues legend Hound Dog Taylor taking a plunge into the raga repertoire.

Maybe this is also a Chicago thing, but Ranganathan is also very funny, with a relentless, down-to-earth, self-effacing sense of humor. And it runs in the family. While most of the show was all about thrills and suspense, there was also a ridiculously vaudevillian duel between brother and sister: his boomy buffoonery clearly won that one.

Although the pieces on the bill were on the short side, comparatively speaking, typically in the ten to fifteen minute range, they seemed to go on much longer considering the dynamics Ranganathan packed into them. In lieu of the big chord-chopping crescendos that sitarists typically employ, she relied on ornamentation that was more tremoloing than shivery, along with some spine-tingling glissandos and triumphant, almost snarling curlicues as she’d end a phrase.

Her opening number, in as steady a 7/8 meter as you could possibly imagine, dated from the 1850s – a particularly turbulent time in Indian history. Her concluding tune was a catchy, insistent ode to prosperity from about half a century later. In between, she built brooding nocturnal ambience with modes that corresponded closely to the Arabic maqamat before lightening the mood yet at the same time picking up the pace in tandem with her brother. They got a standing ovation from an audience full of some of New York’s most formidable musicians.

The Out of the Woods festival continues this Thursday, March 21 at 7 PM at Joe’s Pub with a potently relevant, immigration-themed multimedia performance, Ask Hafiz, at Joe’s Pub. Based on author Sahar Muradi’s haphazard journey from Soviet-ruled Afghanistan to Queens, it draws on the age-old tradition of turning to poems by Hafiz for advice. There are songs by by edgy Iranian-American songwriter Haleh Liza, dance by Malini Srinivasan, and a band which also includes Basu, Adam Maalouf, Bala Skandan and Rich Stein. Cover is $20.

The Alex Levine Quartet in Motion Throughout Their New Album The World of Real Things

by Aakash Mittal

While listening to guitarist Alex Levine’s latest album, The World of Real Things (streaming at Bandcamp), I was struck by how the interpersonal dynamic of the band is evident in their sound. Half of the tracks are inspired by the relationships Levine has with the other artists on and off the bandstand. The other half of the recording draws from specific influences and experiences in Levine’s life.

In the album notes, Levine offers a nod to composers Geri Allen and Henry Threadgill, both of whom are cited as inspiration for individual tracks here. The recording seems to amplify the intersection of relationships, influences, and life events through a shared periodicity that can be found across the compositions, the improvisations, and the larger arc of this nine-part suite. Rather than providing a track-by-track summary, this article explores several broader questions that surfaced as I listened to the album. How do these young artists move together?

How does that movement involve both the physical playing of instruments and the conceptual movements of the band’s improvisations? What imagined universe does Levine construct for us in this latest offering?

Levine and his collaborators – tenor saxophonist Marcus Elliott, bassist Ben Rolston and drummer Stephen Boegehlod – have generated a sonic world that may be experienced as three levels of motion. The first level is the individual musician. Throughout the recording, each artist frequently contributes a sonic gesture followed by a brief silence, as they improvise through the score. As these phrases interlock at the silences, they create the effect of overlapping cadences across the ensemble. This shared approach to rhythm distinguishes the quartet’s sound and establishes a feel that tends to be more grounded than ethereal.

The second level of motion exists across the structure of each composition. Levine utilizes moments of communal movement through collective rhythmic phrases and harmonic gravity. These follow an aesthetic similar to the individual level. Brief ebbs in the forward momentum of the composite rhythm follow the transitions in and out of rhythmic and harmonic unisons. The time span of these periods in the second level of motion is considerably longer than the individual gestures they contain.

The individual phrasing of level one, combined with the structure of each composition, forges densities that increase and decrease over the span of the entire nine-movement work. In this third level, we are offered a gradient experience as each section transitions to the next. The entwined phrases and silences of the first and second levels of motion culminate in pockets of swirling activity and moments of sparse melodic improvisation.

When experiencing all three levels of motion together, it becomes evident that The World of Real Things contributes to a number of musical continuums. The quartet’s improvisational aesthetic expresses the Detroit and New York City jazz communities they create with(in). Levine’s relationship to bassist Henry Grimes and guitarist Miles Okazaki is embedded in the rhythmic vocabulary and form of each composition. Impressively, Levine has synthesized these influences into a distinct sound world and, throughout the album, his artistic voice is his own. This work is a unique portrait of Levine’s journey with the members of his quartet, the guidance of his mentors, the communities he inhabits, and how these elements move when brought together. The sonic universe that emerges is rich territory for any curious listener to explore.

Hailed as “A fiery alto saxophonist and prolific composer” by the Star Tribune (Minneapolis), Aakash Mittal is sculpting a dynamic voice that mines the intersection of improvisation, composition, sonified movement, and noise. The colorful dissonances, meditative silences, and angular rhythms that emerge invite the listener to enter a sonic landscape. Mittal’s work explores universal designs while being rooted in both South Asian and American musical traditions. His latest project is a series of nocturnes written for his Awaz Trio that abstract and deconstruct five Hindustani evening and night ragas. Mittal is a recipient of the Chamber Music America Award for Adventurous Programming, the ASCAP Young Jazz Composers Award, and the American Institute of Indian Studies Senior Performing and Creative Arts Fellowship.

The Women’s Raga Massive Put on a Cutting Edge Indian Music Festival Starting Next Week

The Women’s Raga Massive represent the female contingent in the Brooklyn Raga Massive, the intrepid collective taking traditional Indian music to new places. Since there are still as many problems related to sexism and the glass ceiling in Indian music as there are anywhere else, the Women’s Raga Massive play an important role in providing a platform for this city’s formidable female talent base. The Women’s Raga Massive’s Out of the Woods Festival starts next week, with a fantastic lineup of shows.

It kicks off on March 14 with a rare New York appearance by veena virtuoso Saraswathi Ranganathan, who’s playing two sets, at 7:30 and 9:30 with her brother, Ganapathi, on mridangam at the Jazz Gallery. Cover is $20.

Then on March 16 starting at 11:30 AM, the Women’s Raga Massive are sponsoring a free roundtable discussion on empowerment, Metoo and sexism in South Asian artistic communities at the Rubin Museum of Art. It winds up at 2 with two of the world’s most lyrical, captivating Indian carnatic violinists, Trina Basu and Anjna Swaminathan “engaging together in an improvisational dialogue with an art piece of their choice during a special museum tour.” The concert by itself is $19/$14 stud/srs, but participants in the roundtable get to watch for free.

On March 21 at 7 PM there’s an extremely relevant immigration-themed multimedia performance, Ask Hafiz, at Joe’s Pub. It tells the story of writer Sahar Muradi’s tumultuous journey from Soviet-ruled Afghanistan to Queens. “Along the way, following an age-old practice, she turns to the book of poetry by Hafiz for advice. The answers are revealed through songs composed and sung by edgy Iranian-American songwriter Haleh Liza, dance choreographed and performed by Malini Srinivasan, with music by Adam Maalouf, Trina Basu, Bala Skandan and Rich Stein.” Cover is $20.

The festival winds up back at the Rubin Museum on the 29th at 7 with a performance by the Women’s Raga Massive featuring an especially potent lineup: santoorist Deepal Sanghvi Chodhari  – star of the early morning party at the 2017 Ragas Live Festival – plus powerhouse singer Roopa Mahadevan, with Roshni Samlal on tabla and Rajna Swaminathan on mridangam. Cover is  $30

The Women’s Raga Massive compilation album got a rave review here last year. In addition, many members of the Women’s Raga Massive are represented on the Ragas Live Festival compilation album, streaming at Bandcamp. That one’s almost sixteen hours of live performance at the annual allnight party that began in the WKCR studios in 2011 and includes material from the following six years.

It’s an embarrassment of riches. Having listened to about half of it since getting it last fall, it’s a mix of classic ragas played by some of the biggest names in Indian music, plus state-of-the-art originals and a handful of strange cross-genre collaborations that usually work. If you want to get somebody hooked on Indian music, introduce them to the Ravi Shankar performance of Raga Bhimpalasi at the 1967 Monterey Pop Festival, and this. And then bliss out with them.

The Women’s Raga Massive are well represented on it. Basu is all over it, most strikingly in an an absolutely gorgeous suite by her string band Karavika, moving from a wistful pastorale to several spine-tingling crescendos. Mahadevan delivers volley after volley of shivering, meticulously nuanced melismatics throughout a marathon forty-minute raga. And another fantastic singer, Mitali Bhawmik – who is not part of this spring’s festival – delivers calmer rapture throughout a similarly epic take of Raga Bihag.

Sameer Gupta Keeps Taking Indian Music to New Places

Sameer Gupta is one of the prime movers of New York’s most innovative Indian music reinventors, the Brooklyn Raga Massive (whose female contingent, the Women’s Raga Massive, have their amazing Out of the Woods Festival starting next week). Gupta is typical of the members of the collective in that his musical background encompasses both Indian music and other styles. He’s jazz pianist Marc Cary’s main man behind the drumkit, but he’s also a composer, bandleader and tabla player. He’s doing double duty this Saturday night, March 9 at 7:30 PM at the Chhandayan Center For Indian Music, 4 W 43rd Street #618, first in a trio set with sarangi player Rohan Misra and then with sitarist Rishab Sharma. Cover is $20.

Gupta’s latest album A Circle Has No Beginning is streaming at Bandcamp. It’s one of the most intricately trippy, dreamlike releases of the last several months, validating the argument that great drummers have the deepest address books because everybody wants to play with them. In this case, that means Cary plus Raga Massive peeps.

The opening track, Little Wheel Spin and Spin comes across as a swirling, psychedelic Indian update on bluesy, oldtime Appalachian music. Jaunty, acerbic violin from Arun Ramamurthy and Trina Basu soar along with Jay Gandhi’s bansuri flute over Cary’s bubbly Fender Rhodes piano, with an austere Marika Hughes cello solo in the middle.

With its tectonic sheets of violin plus ripples from Cary’s Rhodes and Brandee Younger’s harp, Taiwa alludes to the Doors, the Exorcist Theme and the Hollywood hills boudoir soul of Roy Ayers as much as any classic Indian carnatic theme. A bristling nocturne, Innocence in Harlem is an intoxicating blend of echoey Rhodes, stark violin and cello over matter-of-fact syncopation and a mutedly punchy Rashaan Carter bassline. Saxophonist Pawan Benjamin fuels a big crescendo amid the growing storm.

Come Take Everything opens in an echoey haze of atmospherics, then evokes the drama and majestry of classic Bollywood, then goes all dissociative and opaque before Gupta’s flurrying drums pull a series of fluttering voices back toward a punchy, syncopated center and finally a big cinematic coda. Two Faces of the Moon is much more easygoing, bansuri and violin intertwining elegantly, with some wry wah-wah in the background.

Tyagaraja Dreams in Brooklyn is as enveloping as it is insistent, a mix of leaping bansuri and string riffs over a straightforward pulse contrasting with busy bass. Likewise, With Blessings kicks off with a bass solo punching through the haze, then the bansuri and violin build a stark but anthemic interweave. A long, shivery solo from Gandhi introduces a little Jethro Tull into the mix; Gupta’s scampering drum solo enhances the playful vibe.

Crows at Sunset slowly coalesces out of a nebulous intro, then shifts between an uneasy string theme and kaleidoscopic atmosphere that eventually echoes a somber Coltrane classic: it’s rare that so many people can be soloing at the same time yet blend as well together as this crew does. Run for the Red Fort is the band at their most squirrelly and surreal; the album ends epically with almost twelve minutes worth of Prog-Raag Bhimpalasi. It’s here that the Raga Massive’s influence is strongest, from the flickering, droning but propulsive first part to the fluttering variations on the rather stern central riff, guest Neel Murgai’s sitar and Benjamin’s sax weaving amid the careening ambience.

Whether you call this Indian music, psychedelic rock, funk or jazz – and it’s all of those things – it’s absolutely unique and characteristic of the kind of alchemy that the Raga Massive can stir up.

Barbes: Home Base For NYC’s Best Bands

The problem with Barbes – and if you run a music blog, this can be a problem – is that the hang is as good as the bands. If you’re trying to make your way into the music room and run into friends, always a hazard here, you might not make it past the bar. Which speaks to a couple of reasons why this well-loved Park Slope boite has won this blog’s Best Brooklyn Venue award three times in the past ten years or so.

A Monday night before Thanksgiving week last year was classic. The scheduled act had cancelled, but there was still a good crowd in the house. What to do? Somebody called somebody, and by eleven there was a pickup band – guitar, keys, bass and drums – onstage, playing better-than-serviceable covers of Peruvian psychedelic cumbia hits form the 60s and 70s. The best was a slinky, offhandedly sinister take of Sonido Amazonico, the chromatic classic which has become the national anthem of chicha, as psychedelic cumbia is called in Peru. Where else in New York could you possibly hear something like this…on a Monday night?

On Thanksgiving night, the two Guinean expat guitarists who lead the Mandingo Ambassadors played a rapturously intertwining set that drew a more-or-less straight line back to the spiky acoustic kora music that preceded the state-sponsored negritude movement of the 1960s. Without the horns that sometimes play with the band, the delicious starriness of the music resonated more than ever.

The night after that, there was a solid klezmer pickup band in the house. The night after that – yeah, it was a Barbes weekend – started with pianist Anthony Coleman going as far out into free jazz as he ever does, followed by a psychedelic take on nostalgic 60s and 70s Soviet pop by the Eastern Blokhedz and then an even more psychedelic set by Bombay Rickey, who switched from spaghetti western to sick jamband versions of Yma Symac cumbias to surf rock, Bollywood and finally an ominous shout-out to a prehistoric leviathan that’s been dead for twenty thousand years.

Sets in late November and January left no doubt that Slavic Soul Party are still this city’s #1 Balkan brass party band, whether they’re playing twisted Ellington covers, percolating Serbian Romany hits or their own hip-hop influenced tunes. A pit stop here early before opening night of Golden Fest to catch the Crooked Trio playing postbop jazz standards was a potent reminder that bandleader Oscar Noriega is just as brilliant a drummer as he is playing his many reed instruments.

Who knew that trumpeter Ben Holmes’ plaintive, bittersweet, sometimes klezmer, sometimes Balkan tinged themes would blend so well with Kyle Sanna’s lingering guitar jangle, as they did in their debut duo performance in December? Who expected this era’s darkest jamband, Big Lazy, to take their sultry noir cinematic themes and crime jazz tableaux further into the dub they were exploring twenty years ago, like they did right before the new year? Who would have guessed that the best song of the show by trombonist Bryan Drye’s Love Call Trio would be exactly that, a mutedly lurid come-on?

Where else can you hear a western swing band, with an allstar lineup to match Brain Cloud’s personnel, swaying their way through a knowingly ominous take of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s Look Down that Lonesome Road? Notwithstanding this embarrassment of riches, the best show of all here over the past few months might have been by Turkish ensemble Alhambra, featuring most of haunting singer Jenny Luna’s band Dolunay. Back in mid-December, they spun moody, serpentine themes of lost love, abandonment and desolation over Adam Good’s incisive, brooding oud and Ramy El Asser’s hynoptic, pointillistic percussion. Whether singing ancient Andalucian laments in Ladino, or similar fare in Turkish, Luna’s wounded nuance transcended any linguistic limitations.

There’s good music just about every night at Barbes, something no other venue in New York, or maybe the world, can boast.  Tomorrrow’s show, Feb 18 at Barbes is Brain Cloud at 7 followed at 9:30ish by ex-Chicha Libre keyboard sorcerer Josh Camp’s wryly psychedelic cumbia/tropicalia/dub band Locobeach. Slavic Soul Party are here the day after, Feb 19 at 9; Noriega and the Crooked Trio play most Fridays starting at 5:30. That’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Moppa Elliott Brings His Twisted, Hilarious Parodies to Gowanus

Is Moppa Elliott this era’s Frank Zappa? Elliott is funnier, and his jokes are musical rather than lyrical, but there are similarities. Each began his career playing parodies – Zappa with the Mothers of Invention and Elliott with Mostly Other People Do the Killing. Their bodies of work are distinguished by an equally broad and spot-on sense of humor, with a cruel streak. With Mostly Other People Do the Killing – the world’s funniest jazz group – seemingly in mothballs at the moment, Elliott has gone out and made a lavish triple album with three separate, closely related ensembles. The world’s funniest jazz bassist is playing a tripleheader, with sets by each of them tomorrow, Feb 15 at Shapeshifter Lab starting at 7 PM with the jazz octet Advancing on a Wild Pitch, following at 8 with quasi-soul band Acceleration Due to Gravity and then at 9 with instrumental 80s rock act Unspeakable Garbage. Cover is $10.

Where MOPDtK savaged Ornette Coleman imitators, fusion jazz and hot 20s swing, among many other styles, the new record Jazz Band/Rock Band/Dance Band gives the bozack to New Orleans shuffles, Kansas City swing and retro 60s soul music, and attempts to do the same to 80s rock. It hasn’t hit the usual streaming spots yet, although there are three tracks up at Soundcloud. Throughout the record, Elliott is more chill than ever, letting his twisted compositions speak for themselves.

It’s redemptive to hear how deliciously Elliott and the “dance band” mock the hordes of white kids aping 60s funk and soul music. This sounds like the Dap-Kings on a cruel overdose of liquid acid, trying desperately to hold it together. Without giving away all the jokes, let’s say that drummer Mike Pride’s rhythm is a persistent punchline. And yet, as relentless as the satire here is, there are genuinely – dare we say – beautiful moments here, notably guitarist Ava Mendoza’s savage roar and tuneful erudition: she really knows her source material.

The horns – trumpeter Nate Wooley, trombonist Dave Taylor, saxophonists Matt Nelson and Bryan Murray – squall when they’re not getting completely self-indulgent, Mendoza serving as good cop. Guitarist Kyle Saulnier and pianist George Burton fall somewhere in the middle along with Elliott. As an imitation of an imitation, several generations removed from James Brown, Isaac Hayes and Louis Jordan, this is hilarious stuff. The arguably most vicious payoff of all is when they swing that unctuous King Crimson tune by the tail until it breaks: it’s about time somebody did that.

Advancing on a Wild Pitch – with trombonist Sam Kulik, baritone saxophonist Charles Evans, pianist Danny Fox and drummer Christian Coleman – is the jazz group here, akin to a less ridiculous MOPDtK. As with that band, quotes and rhythmic japes factor heavily into the sarcasm, but you have to listen more closely than Elliott’s music usually demands to pick up on the snarky pokes. This is also his chance to remind the world that if he really wanted to write slightly above-average, derivative postbop jazz without much in the way of humor to score a record deal, he could do it in his sleep. But this is so much more fun!

Again, without giving away any punchlines, the length of the pieces and also the solos weighs in heavily. Oh baby, do they ever. They savage second-line shuffles, the Basie band, early Ellington, 30s swing and doofy gospel-inspired balladry, among other things. If you really want a laugh and can only listen to one tune here, try St. Marys: the most irresistible bit is about midway through. Even so, there are long, unselfconsciously engaging solos by Fox and Kulik in the two final numbers, Ship and Slab, which don’t seem like parodies at all. If Elliott has a dozen more of these kicking around, he could blend right in at Jazz at Lincoln Center – and maybe sneak in some of the really fun stuff too.

Unspeakable Garbage’s honking instrumental approach to cheesy 80s radio rock is too close to its endless litany of sources to really count as parody. With blaring guitar, a leaden beat and trebly synth, they devise mashups from a list including but not limited to Huey Lewis, Van Halen, Pat Benatar and Grover Washington Jr. This predictable shtick gets old fast: Spinal Tap it’s not. You’d do better with Murray and his band Bryan & the Haggards, who have put out three surprisingly amusing albums of instrumental Merle Haggard covers.

Kyle Nasser Brings a Rogues Gallery to a West Village Gig

The genially ambling final track on tenor saxophonist Kyle Nasser’s latest album Persistent Fancy – streaming at Bandcamp – is titled Coffee and Cannabis. If you like those two things, you’ll probably like the album. He’s playing a trio show at the Bar Next Door on Feb 21 at 8 PM; cover is $12..

True to the title, that song has a dichotomy: balmy sax over guitarist Jeff Miles’ growling, expansively resonant chords, the loose-limbed 4/4 groove supplied by pianist Dov Manski, bassist Nick Jost and drummer Allen Mednard. Nasser takes his album title from the same poetic source that Iron Maiden drew on for their longest epic, which might explain Miles’ shreddy solo later on.

For those who can think outside the box enough to handle boisterous P-Funk buffoonery and enigmatic postrock in a jazz context, this is an entertaining record. Yet much of it is also very serious. Nasser takes considerable inspiration from literary rogues from throughout history: as he points out, they’re invariably more interesting than the good guys.

His fluttery microtones in the opening cut, Split Gut brings to mind Joe Maneri, but more straight-ahead, harmonizing and then trading off with altoist Roman Filiu. The second track, Arrival, foreshadows the carefree/gritty sax/guitar dialectic of the closing number, Manski taking off for Mars with his wry Bernie Worrell-ish portamento synth.The epic Ascent of Henry Monmouth traces a certain Shakespearean king’s journey from Falstaff sidekick to conquistador, a pensive stroll punctuated by moments of wary humor and sharply focused solos. The title track is also a study in contrasts: goofy wah-wah riffs versus tightly wound horns over insistent syncopation, woozy synth solo followed by Miles’ sharp-fanged attack. CBD espresso, anybody?

The Baroque Suite, a triptych, is divided up into a prelude, fugue and improv. The first part juxtaposes a more easygoing take on Rudresh Mahanthappa’s bhangra jazz with glimmering neoromanticisms and trippy Sun Ra twinkle. The second has a playful, shuffling interweave, which goes doublespeed up to an irresistible quote for a coda.

Sticky Hipster is a catchy, distantly latin-tinged, offbeat instrumental rock tune, Nasser following Miles’ uptight shred with a cool-headed solo, Mednard’s sotto-voce vaudevillian romp kicking off a final anthemic verse. The Eros Suite, another triptych – hmmmmm – opens with the saxes and drums playing cat-and-mouse, then Mednard predictably drives it home. There’s also a tongue-in-cheek boudoir theme for a postlude:. It’s allmost painfully obvious, but it’s going to go viral once enough college kids discover it.

3-Way, Nasser insists, does not refer to the preceding topic but to a conversation, in this case mostly between edgy guitar and bright sax work. The album also includes a jazz remake of a Hindemith theme

Extrovert Organist Brian Charette Keeps Pushing the Envelope

Organist Brian Charette is this era’s Larry Young, expanding the terrain an organist can cover. And he’s one of the funniest guys in jazz: onstage, his sardonic wit infuses the music as much as the between-song banter. After years of toiling as the main organ jazz attraction at Smalls, and touring relentlessly, he’s finally been getting the critical recognition he deserves. His  next gig is with his Sextette at Dizzy’s Club on Feb 13, with sets at 7:30 and 9:30 PM; cover is $30. With six guys in the band, this is a prime opportunity to catch Charette at his devious best.

The last time this blog was in the house at one of Charette’s shows, it was last fall and he was playing an intimate trio set with his mesmerising singer wife Melanie Scholtz at Rue B in the East Village. In terms of unselfconsciously spectacular talent, it wouldn’t be overhype to call these two the newest power couple in jazz. While this gig was completely different from what Charette does in a straight-ahead jazz context, he was still just as much of a shark on the prowl, chilling out between the rocks, waiting for a choice morsel of melody to sink his teeth into.

Scholtz sings in several languages including Xosa, a distinctive and particularly difficult vernacular from her native South Africa that includes clicks along with vowels and consonants. Playing percussion and syndrums, she looped her vocals on several numbers, constructing wildly spiraling, kaleidescopic melodies on a couple of them as Charette shifted from Afrobeat to dub to gospel to vintage soul to a little funk, sometimes all of that in the same serpentine composition.

Much as Charette’s erudite textures and idiomatic shifts were entertaining, Scholtz was a force of nature, rising from shamanic, unearthly lows to soaring highs, coyly fluttering intimacy and a gale-force wail. Spun through the mixer, those tones took on all sorts of unexpected, surreal shapes. Yet as psychedelically enveloping as all that turned out to be, it was when she went straight through the PA without any effects that she delivered her most spine-tingling moments of the night. She and Charette are off on European tour next month.

Murky Noir Classics and Devious Jousting from Baritone Sax Titan Josh Sinton

Gritty lows, epic solos, smoky riffage, paint-peeling extended-technique freakout: baritone saxophonist Josh Sinton does it all. He’s played on some of the most memorable big band gigs in New York in recent years, but he’s also a mainstay in the far reaches of improvisational music. That’s why his latest project, Phantasos – a Morphine cover band – might be a surprise, considering how straightforward it is. But for anyone who misses that iconic noir trio, Sinton channels Dana Colley’s blend of murk and lyricism while a rotating rhythm section adds a little extra slink. Nobody in the band is using a two-string bass, as Mark Sandman did, but the group’s debut at Barbes a week ago is the next best thing. Phantasos are back at Barbes every Saturday evening at 6 PM this month, tonight included.

Sinton’s latest album with his Predicate Trio – cellist Chris Hoffman and drummer Tom Rainey – is completely different, and streaming at Bandcamp. So much jazz improvisation is awkward and spastic: this is all about conversations, and good jokes, and spontaneous entertainment. Sinton opens it with a sepulchral solo miniature, the ghosts of baritone saxophonists past wafting and keening up through the valves.

Tellingly, there’s more than a hint of Morphine in the epic second number, Sinton pulling away from the catchy theme, up to a burning cello-and-bass interlude with Hoffman’s chords pulsing over Rainey’s colorful, textured syncopation. The sly humor and subtle drift back toward the theme in the jam at the end are characteristically erudite.

The staccato, rhythmic triangulation in Taiga is much the same, after the wry cat-on-the-steppes-in-midwinter interlude that opens it. A Dance is elegant and rather somber, from Hoffman’s long, terse solo intro, through hypnotically catchy, circling riffs, a divergent interlude contrasting Sinton’s carefree accents against Rainey’s majestic tom-tom resonance and an unexpectedly calm resolution.

After an amusing, improvisational rondo of sorts, the group stray even further outside in Unreliable Mirrors, with its rustles and flutters and a coy quasi-march, Rainey coloring the exchange with every timbre he can coax from the depths of his kit, finally rising to a chuffing crescendo.

Sinton and Hoffman growl in tandem as the aptly titled Propulsive steams aong,; then the volcano boils over with a memorable squall. Hoffman hints at a stroll in the improvisation after that, shadowed by fleeting sax and drums. Sinton brings the album full circle with a sly squawk.

Poignancy and Exhilaration with Claudia Acuña at Birdland

There was a point last night during her first set of a four-night stand at Birdland where singer Claudia Acuña started pogoing across the stage. She got as far as guitarist Juancho Herrera’s pedalboard before she ran out of room and had to chill out a little. If you’d been on that stage with that band and that setlist, you would have been just as ecstatic – but you wouldn’t have sung as rivetingly as she did.

Because the majority of this particular setlist was hers. She opened with a punchy take of Hey, a no-nonsense empowerment anthem for women everywhere and closed with a shamanic, enveloping take of her mentor Abbey Lincoln’s Holy Earth. In between, she mixed a couple of acerbic Lincoln tunes and a knowingly angst-fueled take of Jimmy Van Heusen’s But Beautiful in with a gorgeously lyrical mix of songs from her new album Turning Pages.

Acuña gets all sorts of props for her often shatteringly direct alto voice, but here the crowd was just as blown away by her songwriting and the quality of the band. Pianist Pablo Vergara spun intricate, plaintive neoromantic filigrees, with a couple of starry solos as openers. Behind the kit, Yayo Serka played what seemed to be both sides of a conspiratorial talking drum interlude to start one number, underscored much of the material with a subtle clave and went way back to the banks of the Nile to foreshadow the end of the set.

Starting on Fender and finishing on upright, bassist Carlos Henderson’s minutely nuanced touch matched the bandleader’s subtlety, notably with his allusions to the steady propulsion of Bob Marley’s Exodus throughout an understatedly dancing take of Futuro, one of the new record’s standout tracks. Acuña explained that she’d written it to her yet-unborn son and then sang with hushed joy about how much she was looking forward to seeing him “Dancing through the constellations, and through the onion and garlic patch. That translation from the Spanish is less poetic  than the actual lyric.

The high point of the new album, and arguably the show as well, was the poignant, brooding anthem Aguita de Corazon. Lowlit by Herrera’s spare accents and Vergara’s rippling angst, the wounded payoff packed a wallop whenever the chorus came around. “I’m from Chile,” Acuña explained. “We have a tea for everything. You have a broken heart? We have a tea for that too.” It was strong and potent medicine in this group’s hands, guest Gregoire Maret’s harmonica reaching an unexpectedly wrenching coda after he’d taken his time, going deeper into the blues as the narrative unfolded.

His animated exchanges with Acuña’s scatting on the next number were more lighthearted, and a lot of fun. But ultimately, depth and emotional impact is what she’s all about, and she delivered all of that, whether the wistful hope of Tres Deseos – a wish song times three, basically – and Lincoln’s The World Is Falling Down, which she and the group built matter-of-factly and aptly, with a bittersweet knowingness that was closer to Rachelle Garniez than the woman who wrote it, a deeply personal political artifact from the Civil Rights era whose relevance hasn’t dimmed.

The album release stand continues tonight, Feb 7 through 9 with sets at 7 and 10 PM; you can get in for $20.