Roy Hargrove is no stranger to D.C., making frequent appearances at Georgetown’s Blues Alley and playing a headline engagement during 2007’s Duke Ellington Jazz Festival (now the D.C. Jazz Festival). Sunday night, however, he took a surprise detour from his four-night stand at Blues Alley to hit the clubs of U Street.

Tenor saxophonist Elijah Jamal Balbed reports that he was at U-Topia Bar & Grill at about 1 a.m., listening to the regular Sunday night band co-led by keyboardist Wayne Wilentz and drummer Jim West, when “next thing I know a man wearing a leather suit with black and orange Nike shoes is walking up to the stage to sit in with a flugelhorn. That was Roy Hargrove.” Over the next few hours, Hargrove’s impromptu sit-in became an open jam session featuring Jamal, singer Cheryl Jones, and local trumpet mainstays Donvonte McCoy, Joe Brotherton, and Israel Lattimore.

See what you miss when you decide you’ve “got to get up for work in the morning?”

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Oct. 1
1905 Restaurant sometimes gets labeled a speakeasy for its obscure location (the dimly lit second floor of a barely marked rowhouse at 1905 9th Street NW) and its absinthe-featuring drink menu. Like the classic speakeasies, it also regularly features some of the most interesting jazz on the local scene. The Cricket Fusion Quartet, led by trumpeter Joe Brotherton — with saxophonist Elijah Balbed, bassist Olvier Albertini, and drummer Jeff Franca — plays collectively improvised jazz on Thursday nights at 10 pm. It’s as moody as the eatery’s atmosphere and often quite melodic…but it may spontaneously thrust into directions nervy and unexpected.
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Unless I missed it, there was no lecture to be had from Peter Brötzmann at the Velvet Lounge last night. Instead he did two sets: one solo, one group improvisation with Chromatic Mysteries (featuring drummer/avant-maestro Scott Verrastro).

The solo was classic Brötzmann, requiring great intellectual energy to penetrate his harsh, often shrieky tone for the melody and pace (”rhythm” isn’t quite the right word) of his tenor/alto/soprano saxes and clarinet. The clarinet was a particularly intense tune, Brötzmann running his fingers up and down the (much simpler than a saxophone) keyboard, hard—as if sanding down the burnished wood—and blowing with such force that he was audibly grunting.

Brötzmann’s ferocity was impressive…but honestly hard to take in a large (nearly 60-minute) dose. Without an accompanying ensemble, however chaotic, it’s hard to stay with his many twists and turns; my mind wandered, and I looked at my watch more times than I care to admit.
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