New series are very much still a thing
10 Things: The Hargrove, Coastal Cravings; back to Apollo's at long last; shows by Róisín Adams, Sean Fyfe, and Jason de Couto;
It's always nice to talk about new series. The pie's still growing, and new slices keep coming online as part of this now almost three-year wave of momentum:
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I was grateful to play in the debut of a new series at The Hargrove artist space on Sunday. Madeleine Elkins presented her trio with Kevin Romain and I following Cole Schmidt and Alvaro Rojas' twin-guitar compositional duo. Kevin and Cole are the curators of this biweekly series called Lost Dog Sundays. Our draw was decent, especially considering it was walk-up only and an unknown thing. Madeleine's trio music is like an experimental, instrumental rock with threads of folk, free improv, and jazz. These DIY rooms are a better fit for that mix than most other places. Plus, doesn't it look cool and moody in the photo at the top?
The next Lost Dog Sunday has more of a free-jazz leaning and features a quartet of Julia Farry, Saba Amrei, Róisín Adams (whom I also feature in item 5 today down below), and Bella Beinert alongside the chordless trio of Romain, Dominic Conway, and Nikko Whitworth. Admissions are at the door only once again. Here's the poster (I'm not affiliated with this edition):
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I went down to Apollo's last night (Thursday) and heard the trio of Jason de Couto on organ keyboard, Chris Fraser on guitar, and Buff Allen on drums. They opened with a downtempo take on this tune "Mellow Mood" which Chris said he used to hear at the Cellar's B3 nights. I too can recall Chris Gestrin playing it somewhere. But last night, Chris Fraser pulled way more from the Peter Bernstein bag than the Wes one.
It's awesome to have a musician of Allen's pedigree coming all the way down to Apollo's, like many did at the Tangent before. Last night was my first time back to the venue after my now-slightly-infamous pan. So how was it this time?
