Church of the Friendly Ghost present Zevious Trio and Miles Okazaki Ensemble [Sunday Preview]

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Zevious Trio and Miles Okazaki Ensemble
Sunday, March 27th
Salvage Vanguard Theatre (2803 Manor Road)
7pm (door), $10-$30
[info]

While April is jazz appreciation month, the Church of the Friendly Ghost is starting celebrations early on Sunday night with a double bill of progressive-jazz guitar improvisation in the form of Zevious Trio and guitarist Miles Okazaki and his septet. Both outfits hail from the international hotbed of young, creative music - New York - and while Austin certainly gets its fair share of veteran jazz and free improvisation appearances, there aren't too many shows featuring up-and-coming inside-outside players who are putting together some of the most innovative music on the international scene.

Zevious Trio has been around for a few years, and is touring in support of their second record (and first for prog archivist label Cuneiform), After the Air Raid. The trio consists of guitarist Mike Eber, drummer Jeff Eber and electric bassist Johnny De Blase, who merge knotty, angular modernism with a gritty rock sensibility. Mike Eber's fuzzed Telecaster appropriates both the all-stops pulled organ work of Larry Young or Colosseum guitarist Clem Clempson into muscular, thrashing trio music that works as an interesting counterpoint to the work of borough jazz-guitar superstars and peers like Mary Halvorson or Amanda Monaco.

Okazaki's second disc for Sunnyside Records, Generations (2009), has also generated a stir among the jazz cognoscenti, an arch work for guitar, voice, reeds, and rhythm. It's perhaps a headier affair than Zevious, reminding one of the 1990s works of reedman-composer Henry Threadgill or alto saxophonist-composer Steve Coleman's M-Base ensembles (indeed, Okazaki and Coleman's groups share vocalist Jen Shyu). Okazaki's septet is rounded out by altoists Miguel Zenón, David Binney and Christof Knoche, drummer Dan Weiss and bassist Jon Flaugher. Zenon is probably a familiar name because of his work as part of the SF Jazz Collective, but the other musicians who make up the group should be recognized as stunning instrumentalists in their own right. Both bands together will offer a major dose of both the raw emotion and cerebral detail that are present in cutting-edge jazz and improvised music, and these are first-time Austin appearances that you won't want to miss.

Zevious Trio: [cuneiform website]
Miles Okazaki: [website]