Rockstar music

There are a few kinds of rockstars in jazz.

One way to be a rockstar in jazz is, quite simply, to show up at a jazz festival and play rock music. At Performance Works this past Sunday, June 23, The Messthetics & James Brandon Lewis did just that.

The two former members of Fugazi, Joe Lally and Brendan Canty, looked every bit like ex-legends of rock: emotive and locked-in. Lewis riffed atop the rhythm section with much of the firebrand voice you can hear on some of his other projects (including at last year's fest), and guitarist Anthony Pirog — the third Messthetic — was the midpoint between Lewis’ and their territory.

I‘m sure any Messthetics, Fugazi, rock fan came away from that show with a thrill. However, you know I don’t claim to be a rocker; my jazz heart was a bit bored as they largely played the record quite close to the final takes.

Fortunately, there are more ways to be a rockstar in jazz. Another one is to play definitively jazz music but bring out the rockstar characteristic that lays within the jazz tradition, rally the crowd, raise your arms in the air both in celebration and toward what you believe in, burn bright: that was alto saxophonist Lakecia Benjamin at the same venue last night.

Lakecia Benjamin’s Phoenix, the quartet, played not just a tune called "Trane" but also a version of "My Favorite Things" a la the Coltrane Quartet. Although the presence of the tradition was set from there, Benjamin also brought rap verses, some smoother grooves, and banter for days to the set. Quotes and interpolations ranged from Wayne Shorter’s "Footprints" to Mongo Santamaria’s "Afro Blue" to Bob Marley’s "Get Up, Stand Up".

The eclectic presentation did the album, with its star-studded ensemble cast and only drummer EJ Strickland with Benjamin on this show from it, justice.

But you might not know from this album how much of a star Benjamin can be, unless you hear her live. She was all smiles and dead serious. That’s the winning presence of Jon Batiste but hold the cheese: rockstar behaviour.

Now, the last rockstar’s path I can think of isn’t for everyone. It is to be either Peregrine Falls (the duo of guitarist Gordon Grdina and drummer Kenton Loewen) or festival artist-in-residence Shahzad Ismaily, who last night also joined forces — and forces is the word.

Consider Peregrine Falls. I heard the duo play a show earlier this year at All-City Athletics, and Loewen hit his snare drum so hard that he broke the skin. How often does that happen? Only when you’re one of the strongest drummers this town has ever seen and you’re rocking out with Grdina at his loudest.

Then, Ismaily. At the 2023 festival, he was one-third of the moody, anything-but-rocking headliner band Love in Exile with Arooj Aftab and Vijay Iyer. I know and love him from this. He wears a black tracksuit everywhere and hangs loose in a 90-minute festival Q&A at the Western Front while calling on attendees arbitrarily to come up with questions for him.

Last night at the Revue Stage, despite being a chill guy from everything I’ve seen, Ismaily sat between the loudest duo in our scene and elevated them further. His heavy basslines and washes of synthesizer made space for Grdina to take more solo flights instead of just pounding riffs toward Loewen.

The thing that unites Grdina-Loewen with Ismaily in terms of being a rockstar is that they all have made their bones being themselves turned up to 11, no matter which of many projects they're in at any given moment. I'm going to Frankie's tonight, and I'll hear master musicians there who do that when they swing. This is the one true way to be a rockstar, whether it's in jazz or elsewhere: stack years on years of being your unmistakable self.