Marco & Friends + Cooper-Moore 4/11-13/08

I had a good time at the Marco shows last weekend. I think Krasno was stuck somewhere due to flight issues, so he didn’t make it. I think a lot of people were disappointed and many left or were just hanging back by the bar on Sat night. There wasn’t a huge turnout, probably also due to the funk shows that I opted out of. I just over-funked and since I’m going to NOLA soon, I don’t really need to see NOLA people right now.

I loved the Marco shows. Both nights had a trombone player, Fri was Curtis Fowlkes of MTO and Sat was Gianluca Petrella. I liked both of them. Petrella was a little spacier.

Fri night, toward the end, Marco started playing songs and had Nikki Gillespie on the drums and Kinninger sitting in. I preferred Previte, who just seemd to play the perfect thing throughout the whole 2 nights of improvisation. Marco started playing that Galactic song and it was fun to see what Briggan would do with it, since he didn’t know it. Later, Kinninger kind of showed the 2 horns how it goes and then they played that. I definitely like all the improvisation before it went there more.

Sat night had less people, since a lot cleared out kind of quick. But, I enjoyed it even more. It was spacey and I was amazed by Previte. I also prefer Sullivan Hall when there’s plenty of room, so it was better for me all the way around.

I was disappointed that I tried to go to Charles Gayle first at The Living Theatre and he called out sick again. It sounds like it wasn’t related to the last time at Zebulon, they said he had an eye infection.

I did get some great experimental jazz at Zebulon on Sun night. The Cooper-Moore quartet was awesome. The piano player is only 19. His teacher sent him to Cooper-Moore for lessons and he said he needed to play in his band. He didn’t need lessons, just good people to play with. A lot of the music was the 19 year-old’s compositions, which were great. The sax player was fantastic. He played a lot of Coltrane-style jazz. He was really great. The drummer made his own drums. I’m very curious since the kit looked like any other kit. He was awesome. And, I love Cooper-Moore and was again impressed with how he can play those instruments he invented himself. That bass was pheonomenal. He also played his own variation of the jaw harp, which was plugged into a pad with buttons and a pedal. When he stooped down while playing it sounded more like a whistle. When he stood upright it sounded more like a jaw harp.

I was a great weekend for music, and I’m happy with my choices. I got to dance without being crowded and had a great time.