Synchronicity Set

The Clutchtet
Three Sheets
Jan. 17, 2025

Elm Street was awash Friday night in the warm sounds of ​“The Clutchtet,” a jazz piano trio that is a semi-regular feature of the bandstand at Three Sheets. 

Above the stage, a mural of three carnival-style characters seemed to introduce each member of the Clutchtet. Pianist Dylan Rowland settled in underneath a portrait titled ​“Bearded Lady” (turquoise beard, magenta lipstick), bassist Eneji Alungbe underneath a purple-skinned fortune teller, and — filling in for the Clutchtet’s absent third member, Jimmy Gavagan — substitute drummer Dan Jantson underneath ​“Lobster Boy” (fleshy claw-hands). 

Jantson did not seem nervous about stepping in. As the band finished setting up, Jantson waited until Rowland stepped into the other room of the bar to retrieve a cardboard cutout from the back wall of the stage — an intoxicated Christmas elf bearing the logo of Tröegs Independent Brewing — and placed it directly in front of Rowland’s piano. 

The familiarity was earned. Jantson and Rowland have played together in various contexts, including a previous gig with the Clutchtet, for years now. They met at the Hartt School, Hartford University’s performing arts conservatory; Jantson is a junior, and Rowland graduated this past spring. Rowland and Alungbe met at a previous jazz gig, though neither can remember exactly where or when. ​“You kind of just materialized in my life,” Alungbe said to Rowland. 

With the decor settled, the Clutchtet began their set at breakneck speed with the Roy Hargrove tune ​“Top of My Head.” 

The connection between the musicians was immediately apparent. Rowland began building his solo to the final crescendo with a series of accented three-note patterns, coming into increasing tension with the 4/4 time signature. Jantson immediately jumped into a three-feel pattern alongside him, sending the music into a controlled tumble for a few bars before the musicians righted themselves at the top of the next phrase, and then let out a burst of relieved laughter at their intuitive moment of synchronicity. 

The Clutchtet played a six-song set that mixed classics (“The Nearness of You,” a Hoagy Carmichael standard that is among the classics of the American songbook) with songs outside the usual canon (“Bless the Lord, My Soul,” a hymnal that Rowland also plays on Sundays at the St. Paul and St. James Episcopal Church in Wooster Square). 

The setlist came together naturally. 

“It started kinda rocky at first. It was a lot of calling tunes, seeing kinda what we knew,” Rowland said after the performance. Eventually the band settled on a few favorites, ​“and we put together a Spotify playlist, threw them all in there and said, ​‘We’re gonna learn this set, and we’re gonna make it our set.’” 

Rowland and Jantson seemed to be in constant conversation throughout the night, particularly during Alungbe’s solos, when bass was elevated to carrying the melody, and the other two instruments were responsible for the fabric underneath. As Alungbe closed his eyes and curved his shoulders around the bass to bring his head tight against the neck, Rowland and Jantson traded rhythmic patterns back and forth, sometimes loosely, sometimes with bug eyes and exaggerated head nods. 

This gig was arranged by the New Haven Jazz Underground, an organization founded by Trumpeter Nick Di Maria to promote jazz events in the city. The Jazz Underground arranges jazz nights twice-monthly at Three Sheets, as well as at Cafe Nine and the Cannon. The Clutchtet is one of a rotating cast of bands that fill these gigs. After the house band concludes their set, Jazz Underground events usually continue into a jam session, where tunes are decided on the spot, and the stage is open to any musician brave enough to step up. 

The Clutchtet concluded their set with a rendition of ​“Rainbow Connection,” originally performed by Jim Henson as Kermit the Frog in The Muppet Movie. But the night was just beginning. As the jam session began, the audience of two dozen stirred from their seats, fiddled with black canvas cases of various shapes and sizes, and produced from amongst themselves a trumpeter, a flugelhorn player, a bassist, two saxophonists, two singers, three drummers, and three tap dancers.