What better venue for the pouring rain?

Last night I heard Nebyu Yohannes, performing as Nebyoha, play an eclectic set at the Roedde House Museum’s Jazz in the Parlour series. I'd never been to the series before. I walked up the West End’s Barclay Street to Roedde House in the pouring rain, but when I got out the air was clear. How’s that for pathetic fallacy!

Jazz in the Parlour happens monthly and is booked at the moment by Noah Franche-Nolan. It's a small enough space that a personal-size crowd makes it feel full, and people turned out for this edition that re-entered the house's interior – during the summer, it's Jazz on the Porch. I was squished so close to the players that I could see the sheet music and setlist. (Nothing wrong with that.)

This show was a rare solo set for Nebyu, who is one of my original friends in the game going back to our shared New Westminster Secondary School years. 2024 has seen him emerge on our scene, making up for the many years since 2011 that he had lived in Toronto. He played in the two seminal Infidels shows of the first half of the year, the Max Roach show and the Stranger Friends Orchestra, as well as Feven Kidane's jazzfest sextet.

Nebyu sang and played three instruments last night: trombone, acoustic steel-string guitar, and the percussion of his boot on the guitar’s hard case in front of him. The music was all his originals except for a rendition of Keith Jarrett’s “Blossom”, which he said he “always tries to play when [he plays] a show”. It came from different timestamps across the last decade or so and strode across genres with a vulnerability; anyone among the two dozen of us it took to fill the tiny room who didn’t know Nebyu could come away feeling like they did, no matter how understated his manner often is.

Guitarist Madeleine Elkins played bass notes, white noise, chording, repetitive riffs, and all manner of other things to fill out the trio’s space. Her delay-driven improv opened set one, which saw her then move across the next few numbers from sixteenth-note funky strumming to serene slide guitar licks. It wasn't her rocking trio set that I played on at Tyrant Studios earlier this month, but surely several of the same guitar pedals came into use, painting a different landscape with the same palette.

Pianist Róisín Adams played a Steinway upright piano — over 130 years old, top closed — in a colourful but regulated role, not quite breaking loose from the composer’s vamps and segues. Adams led an interesting piano trio set at Jazz at the Bolt this year and continued on to a Frankie's After Dark, merging a composerly perspective with the avant-garde's collective spirit. She was every bit as supportive in this set as in the Beatings are in the Body project.

They played Nebyu’s tune ”Let Her Rest”, a proper jazz waltz where everyone took a solo; newer compositions with long drones repeating figures, or extended white-noise guitar atmospheres; and his emotive songs like “Sing it for Yourself” which kept the mood intimate.

In a twist, the second set broke into a spoken-word moment where all three musicians stopped playing and simultaneously read from a page black with text — such was the range of this gig that no one seemed too shocked.

The presentation was rangy enough, however, that you might come away with no idea what to expect from Nebyu when his name comes up next as a leader. Maybe that's how he likes it. Just as he plays trombone with great dexterity, unafraid of either the high notes or the fast notes, he tunes and plucks his acoustic guitar like a devotee of Adrianne Lenker. I could equally picture him crossing into the indie singer-songwriter scene or keeping the experimental at the forefront in an Infidels Jazz debut of some sort – it's just a matter of which comes first. His sister, Rahael, is a talented solo artist too and would be fun to see as part of what he's cooking up.

Roedde House's next presentation is November 1 – a Friday, not the regular Thursdays – with visiting Toronto guitarist Dan Pitt joined by Franche-Nolan, the booker, on keys. They'll have just led a quartet at Frankie's on Halloween.