OTS / Event 061 - The Sabir Mateen Quartet with ISWHAT?! featuring Claire Daly - Friday, Dec. 9 @ Firebird Studio

OTS / Event 061
Outside the Spotlight 3rd Anniversary Performance/Celebration
featuring the Sabir Mateen Quartet and ISWHAT?! featuring Claire Daly
Friday, December 9 @ Firebird Studio
359 W.Short St - near the corner of Broadway
8pm, all ages, $5


Help celebrate the third anniversary of the Outside the Spotlight series this Friday, Dec. 9 @ Firebird Studio. The performance is a double bill headlined by the SABIR MATEEN QUARTET from New York with Cincy's ISWHAT?! featuring NYC baritone saxophonist CLAIRE DALY opening the show.

Sabir's group is pure fire jazz - intense stuff that hits you in the gut and the heart. Strangely, this will be the third straight year that Sabir has played at the OTS anniversary party. This group features legendary trumpeter Raphe Malik, pianist Raymond King, percussionist Ravish Momin, and, of course, Mateen on reeds and flutes.

Perhaps you're already familiar with Cincy's ISWHAT?!. P'haps you saw them open for KRS-One at the Dame or you caught them at the CD Central/WRFL-sponsored 'Independent Music for Independence Day' stage in Phoenix Park this past 4th of July. Musically, ISWHAT?! merges the funky side of avant-jazz (think Mingus) and next-school, socially conscious hip hop. For this show (as with the 4th of July gig), the group's beatboxer/mc Napoleon Maddox and tenor saxophonist Jack Wright are joined by NYC baritone saxophonist Claire Daly. For more info and free sounds, check out http://www.iswhat.net and http://www.clairedalymusic.com.

So, that's that - a great night of music and an excuse to eat cake and drink wine and coffee with friends.

Check out http://thelexingtonproject.org for a nice preview of the show written by Reese Richardson.


> COMING UP <

OTS/Event 062
FIGHT THE BULL
(young guitar/trombone/drums trio from Richmond, VA)
Sunday, Jan. 8 @ Underlying Themes, 110 S. Upper
http://www.fightthebull.net

OTS/Event 063
MARY HALVORSON/JESSICA PAVONE duo
(guitar/cello duo from NYC)
Saturday, Jan. 14 @ Firebird Studio, 359 W. Short St

OTS/Event 064
THE VANDERMARK 5
(from Chicago, Ken Vandermark-reeds, Kent Kessler - bass, Fred Lonberg-Holm - cello, Dave Rempis - sax, Tim Daisy - drums)
Sunday, Feb. 5 @ Underlying Themes, 110 S. Upper

Lexington's 3rd annual MARDI GRAS JAZZ PARADE
Saturday, Feb. 25 through the streets downtown!

more to be announced soon!

review of The Thing + Joe McPhee show

A review of The Thing and Joe McPhee's OTS show from last Friday's Herald-Leader.

>

Lexington Herald-Leader
Friday, December 2, 2005
from the Weekender section

"The Week That Was"

The Thing with Joe McPhee at Underlying Themes:
The members of the Scandinavian free-jazz trio The Thing dressed for the evening in souvenir T-shirts advertising an Austin, Texas, eatery called Ruby's Barbeque. They seemed to enjoy the taste of rock 'n' roll, too, as numerous non-jazz references were peppered about the band's hourlong second set. And when it came to embracing the improvisational inspiration that propels much of its music, the trio went right to the source. It enlisted veteran saxophonist/trumpeter Joe McPhee, a daring jazz stylist for more than three decades, as an auxiliary player. McPhee proved a catalyst for much of the evening's trickier meshings of rock and jazz. Playing off the scorched bark of baritone saxophonist Mats Gustafsson during the Yeah Yeah Yeahs' Art Star, McPhee let the music settle into a mantra-like drone before switching to soprano sax and leading The Thing into an atypically sweet-sounding revision of the Black Sabbath staple Iron Man. The rest of the set exhibited numerous levels of beastly improvisation, but it was again McPhee who proved the leveling force. In tackling You Think You Know Me, a work by the seldom-recorded South African trumpeter Mongezi Feza, McPhee and Gustafsson turned to their tenors and molded the music into a studied but soulful blues lullaby. "The music, it takes you to different places," Gustafsson remarked between tunes. That it did -- and with efficiency and invention to spare. - Walter Tunis, contributing music critic