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?”

But despair not! For, says Balbed, “I run a jam session at Utopia on Mondays, and although Roy has already left town, we may have appearances there tonight by some of the members of his band.” Not quite the same, perhaps, but a hell of a good excuse to hit U-Topia this evening anyway. (Another good excuse: the chicken pecan.)

Oct. 4
Don’t let the name throw you: Digital Primitives don’t play any electronic instruments whatsoever. Instead, leader Cooper-Moore builds his own musicmakers — twangers, mouthbows, diddley-bows — as well as playing piano and flute and singing. He teams in DP with percussionist Chad Taylor and Israeli saxophonist and clarinetist Assif Tsahar for an eccentric but inescapably catchy avant garde music that contains elements of funk, jazz, blues, and folk music from the Middle East, Africa, and America. It’s unique and fascinating, and don’t be surprised if you find yourself dancing in your seat, even without electronic beats. Digital Primitives play Sunday at Contradiction Dance in Takoma Park. $15.

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.

So, when Brötzmann called intermission after the solo, I decided to get a recharge — and headed over to 1905, in 9th Street’s Little Ethiopia corridor. D.C. trumpeter Joe Brotherton was playing his regular Thursday gig with his Cricket Fusion Quartet, featuring bassist Oliver Albertini, James Brown veteran Mousey Thompson, and 19-year-old tenor saxophonist Elijah Balbed — already one of the scene’s hottest up-and-comers. They were starting Art Blakey’s “Moanin’” when I came in, then moved back to their usual 100% improvised tunes. The solos from all four were killer, their interaction edgy and dramatic; the audience was rapt and the staff were delighted. “They’re playing some different shit tonight,” I heard the bartender tell one of the waiters. “I like it!”

Thus re-oriented, I ducked back out of 1905 and back to the Velvet Lounge just in time to see one of the most transcendent sets of free group improvisation ever performed in this town. Largely drawn from Verrastro’s large experimental collective Kohoutek, Chromatic Mysteries created an atmosphere of alien psychedelia in which Brötzmann was a natural fit: two additional saxes, guitar that wandered mostly through the lower registers (and had more than a little freaky noise from a console of pedals and electronic equipment), and drums and percussion (marimbas, mostly). The sync between the three saxophonists was uncanny, but the whole ensemble’s ability to listen to and follow each other was astonishing and as rewarding on the surface as in penetrating.

Perhaps this second set would have been just as good had I not gone to 1905, but it was nonetheless a refreshing, stabilizing experience. So a hat tip to Brotherton and his band – it ain’t easy to compete with a monster like Peter Brötzmann. You guys held your own without even trying.