Jazz

New York: Marc Perrenoud Trio from Switzerland from their latest album, Two Lost Churches.

Out on an ill-advised shopping trip to Georgetown one sweltering August afternoon some years ago, the two of us rounded the corner from Pennsylvania Ave. to M Street. In our path a junkie lay shirtless and spread-eagle, a pitted dark briquette smoldering on the new brick sidewalk. A factoid bubbles up as the sweat beads down: “Gil Scott-Heron’s playing at Blues Alley this week” just a few wavy-lined blocks away.

Jazz music has nothing in common with the grey spruce lying unwanted on the Bleecker Street sidewalk, its shreds of tinsel swaying upwards with cold winter gusts. The NYC Winter Jazzfest’s Saturday venues are, in fact, hot houses for a verdant field of talent. Rumors of jazz’s demise are greatly exaggerated with so many genre-bending improvisers sprouting up these days. For a little green ($25 for one night, $30 for two), a crush of 2,500 cultivated souls reaped the benefits of one of the year’s best fests.

So this is the Horn of Plenty. It’s the first night of the NYC Winter Jazzfest and one thing’s for certain: I can’t write in the dark. In its sixth year, the festival features a line-up of fifty smartly selected bands performing at five venues in the West Village. 

2010 Winter Jazzfest (now in its sixth year) began promptly (Le) Poisson Rouge with Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society, an 18-member ensemble (by my count) directed by the eponymous leader. Argue’s direction was precise, if not robotic, but the band sounded confident and emphatic.