Halfway through the sax solo in “Black Rock,” the first song of WiRED’s set at Cafe Nine on Thursday night, a smile broke out across trumpeter and bandleader Nick Di Maria’s face. He’d just finished a blistering, textured solo himself, one that sounded like he was fully warmed up, even though he’d just hit the stage. Now he threw his head back, beaming, as Matt Knaegel on alto sax kept exploring. He was still grinning as drummers Eric Hallenbeck and Elliot Wallace took their turn, breaking down the rhythm and reorganizing it in time for bassist Andrew Zwart to take a ride on it. Slowly but surely, yet still improvising, the rhythm section found its way back to “Black Rock’s” original groove, a fast, frenetic funk.
The New Haven-based WiRed had released “Black Rock” on its album 2015 Time Circuit, and there the band wore its proud debt to 1970s fusion like Herbie Hancock on its sleeve. This “Black Rock” was more lived in, both harder and more flexible. It sounded a lot more like right now. It showed that when Di Maria told the audience he was “bringing jazz to young folks” — Thursday’s show was sponsored by Jazz Haven — he meant it.
The entire evening, in fact, was devoted to showing a much more modern face of jazz, one to take its place alongside the New Haven Improvisers Collective in showing the state of improvised music in New Haven. New Haven’s Ted Morcaldi began the entertainment with a set of sweeping ambient music that he created on the spot using just his guitar and an array of electronics. As has always been the intent behind ambient music, the music was less something to sit quietly to and more something to live to. A group of six socialized loudly not far from the stage. People talked at the bar. But it mattered that the music was there. It made a vibe, soothing and eerie at the same time, and sure enough, when Morcaldi finished, everyone stopped what they were doing to clap.
“Thanks for listening to that,” Morcaldi said good-naturedly. He didn’t need to be so modest.
Next up was the Recess Bureau, which Di Maria described as “Connecticut’s version of Snarky Puppy” — a jazz collective out of Texas that has made a career out of performing groovy, accessible, and at times downright poppy improvised music.
Di Maria’s comparison was apt. As the bobbing heads and swaying hips in the audience proved, the Recess Bureau drew from R&B with a tinge of Afrobeat to pull down big rhythms for its musicians to improvise over. The harmonies beneath the soloists were dense, but the improvisations themselves melodic, almost sweet at times. With little banter, the group moved from tune to tune quickly and easily, letting their music do the talking.
WiRED’s own set, with Di Maria at the helm, capped the evening. After the ferocious “Black Rock,” Hallenbeck laid down a lurching, swinging beat that D’Angelo might have been proud of. The audience had grown steadily larger as the evening progressed, and one of the latercomers to the gig — fresh from a previous gig — was fellow trumpeter Tim Kane. In a moment of relative calm, Kane pulled out his horn and took a solo from the bar. WiRed’s members looked up and smiled. Di Maria pointed at Kane, then pointed at the stage beneath his feet, an unmistakable signal of get up here. Kane joined Di Maria and Knaegel to make a horn section that filled out the final tune of the night.
Di Maria had mentioned before the show that Jazz Haven was looking to expand its reach, bringing in more, and more younger, musicians and audiences. As generations mingled in the healthy crowd at Cafe Nine all night, it appeared this show was a step toward accomplishing that mission. Here’s hoping for more.