The Musical Box

patty griffin: downtown church

On their respective new albums, Americana songstresses Patty Griffin and Allison Moorer wrestle with two very different notions of salvation.

For Griffin’s Downtown Church - named for the fact the record was recorded, in part, at Nashville’s Downtown Presbyterian Church - that means returning to a spiritual well the Texas-bred singer has generously drawn from for years.

For Moorer’s Crows, the salvation is more personalized with very torchy songs of heartbreak and loss that curiously brighten as the songs deepen.

Downtown Church begins with an earthy harkening to judgment day by Hank Williams (House of Gold) that comes wrapped in Griffin’s clean, confessional vocals and the ambient guitar twang of longtime pals Buddy Miller (Church’s producer) and Doug Lancio.

It’s a meditative preface to a recording that steers into gospel quartet soul (Move Up), a portrait of elegant Spanish spiritualism with Raul Malo (Virgen de Guadalupe) and a slice of churchy 1920s mountain gospel sung with Shawn Colvin and Emmylou Harris (We Shall All Be Reunited).

Though an esteemed songwriter, Griffin relies predominantly on interpretative strengths here. Little Fire (a duet with Harris) and Coming Home to Me (sung with Julie Miller), are the only originals. But Downtown Church summons its most serious spirits when it warps traditional contours.

On Death’s Got a Warrant, Griffin sings in testimonial terms with sisters Regina and Ann McCrary. The primary accompaniment is percussion by Jay Bellarose that sounds like chains being dragged on a hardwood floor. “God’s got your number,” Griffin sings over the fervor. “And he knows where you live.” And in less than two minutes, Downtown Church has shared its most emotive sermon - an unadorned blast of spiritual fire that is invigorating, unmovable and a touch frightening.

allison moorer: crows

Crows, just by the name alone, would seem the antithesis of Downtown Church. But through its often dark self-examinations, a faith is revealed that is as resolute as Griffin’s. The song titles are equally revealing: The Broken Girl, When You Wake Up Feeling Bad, and It’s Gonna Feel Good (When It Stops Hurting). Only Just Another Fool reverses from the course. It’s a warning to those wary males that seek to heal or invade the hurt.

Producer R.S. Field lovingly constructs arrangements that enhance every deep, stoic color in Moorer’s voice, even when the album turns unexpectedly sunny on Early in the Summertime and The Stars & I (Mama’s Song), two patiently warm childhood recollections. If you know the back story of Moorer’s youth (the murder-suicide of her parents), the affirmations in these tunes become all the more striking. Even if you don’t, they form a sense of surprising solace on an album anchored by pervasive loss.

roger daltrey and pete townshend of the who performing last night at the super bowl. photo by mark j. terrill/associated press.

And so, for 12 minutes at last night’s Super Bowl halftime show, Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey were The Who again. Looking and sounding grizzled, worn, but still up for a decent performance fight, the two re-assembled the better known fragments of a storied rock ‘n’ roll career built on anarchy but now fueled by nostalgia.

It wasn’t a bad performance, just not an especially thrilling one. Daltrey was in surprisingly sharp vocal form and Townshend sounded suitably scrappy on guitar. A harmony band, of course, The Who wasn’t, as it showed in the duo’s wildly disconnected singing on the set-opening Pinball Wizard. But Baba O’Riley still sounded full of tireless fire, sparked by the drumming of Zak Starkey (Ringo Starr’s son, believe it or not) and the audience’s hail-hearty vocal backup on the song’s “teenage wasteland” refrain.

Of course, one couldn’t help but notice the corporate, co-opted slant of Baba O’Riley, Who Are You and the set closing Won’t Get Fooled Again, all of which were performed in severely abbreviated versions. The songs today serve as the theme songs for the three CSI shows that are programming staples of CBS, which just happened to be the network broadcasting the Super Bowl.

The verse or two Daltrey slipped in of See Me, Feel Me possessed the set’s least frilly and most honestly impassioned drive. Overall, though, this was a cursory outing by The Who - a bite-sized sampler of hits played with appealing but obviously aged gusto. But then, compare the performance to Carrie Underwood’s flat tire delivery of the national anthem at the onset of the game and the sound of some long-in-the-tooth British rockers merrily bashing away didn’t seem so deflating.

For those who remember the band’s glory years, there was an undeniable sweetness last night that came from just knowing Daltrey and Townshend were still around. Anyone under 30, however, likely viewed the pair as living fossils. To them, I say, introduce yourselves to Live at Leeds, The Who’s immortal 1970 live album. It remains one of rock music’s most truly terrifying concert documents.

Nearly 40 years on, it’s unfair to still expect that kind of vitality from The Who. What they presented last night was credible but a little cryptic - a worn snapshot of a band that once proclaimed “Hope I die before I get old” - and then did the latter.

brandi carlile. photo by jeremy cowart.

It’s difficult to view the still-young career of Brandi Carlile and not be tempted to name drop a bit.

Sure, the Seattle area songstress has fortified a substantial national following over the course of three Columbia albums with a pop sound that reflects considerable folkish introspection. Her songs, not to mention the commanding clarity of her singing voice, possess a personal mark that borders on the confessional.

But look at the guest list on her new Give Up the Ghost album. It was produced by Rick Rubin, cut at the Hollywood studio (Sunset Sound) where The Doors and Led Zeppelin once recorded and features help from drummer Chad Smith (of the Red Hot Chili Pepper), pianist Benmont Tench (from Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers), vocalist Amy Ray (from the Indigo Girls) and a fellow pop stylist by the name of Elton John.

That’s some mighty company. But before plans were firmed up on how to best utilize her musical pals, Carlile had a more personal mission - to create songs that were as emotive, fresh and absorbing as those on her self-titled 2005 Columbia debut album.

“I wanted to make a third record that sounded like a first record,” said Carlile, who performs Monday at the Kentucky Theatre for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. “Certainly life itself writes your first record. You have first love, loss and coming of age. You have the big question of what you’re going to do with the rest of your life. All of these things are fodder for a great first record. Then you have a tour bus and the happenings of the road, which is fodder for a second record. The trouble there is while that may be really exciting to someone living that life, to everyone else it is sort of an unobtainable topic.

“So at that point I had to kind of pop into an exercise in songwriting. I had to find a way of writing about bigger and deeper things in our environment at the moment. Although I’m a proponent of internalized songwriting, I also come from a school of thought that a great lyricist connects with the best audience. Take Bernie Taupin, who is my favorite lyricist of all time. He writes story songs - works of fiction. It takes a deep writer to actually pull from something that’s outside of yourself.”

For Carlile, such a quest began on her second Columbia album, 2007’s The Story, which was produced by Americana entrepreneur T Bone Burnett. There we go with the name dropping again.

“T Bone was kind of this vibe facilitator,” Carlile said. “At that time he was also choosing the music for the Robert Plant/Alison Krauss record (the multiple Grammy winning Raising Sand). He had this library, this plethora of bluegrass and delta blues music that we kept listening to, even if it had nothing to do with the music we were about to play. It was always setting the mood.

“T Bone Burnett was kind of a picture taker. He documents what’s there and tries to shine the best possible light on it. Rick was more of an extractor.”

Rick, of course, is Rick Rubin, the veteran producer who has handled, just in recent years, recordings by everyone from Metallica to Neil Diamond. And by “extractor,” Carlile meant that Rubin attempts to bring a performance out of an artist that she said “may or may not be there.”

Rubin also brought Smith and Tench, among others, to the sessions. But Elton John, a lifelong pop idol? Carlile went after him herself. Recruiting the veteran piano man for the light, honky tonk-ish tune Caroline on Give Up the Ghost proved surprisingly easy.

“I wrote him a letter asking him if he would play on it and he responded that he would. It was that simple. I reached out to him and he agreed.

“Elton John is my greatest hero. And Caroline was so reminiscent of the piano style that he used on those great early albums like Tumbleweed Connection.”

The Elton John connection didn’t stop there. Another Give Up the Ghost song, Pride and Joy, boasts a string arrangement by Paul Buckmaster, who scored all of John’s hit albums from the early ‘70s.

“Everybody throws around that word ‘genius’ all the time. It can be nauseating. But Paul is the reason that word applies. To get to work with him on this record was more that just the realization of a dream. It was an experience greater than anything I could have hoped for.”

Making music with personal heroes is one thing. But the voice on Give Up the Ghost still very much belongs to Carlile. Now her mission is to show off her own music with her own band, just as she has done since playing Seattle clubs while still in her teens.

“It’s all about tenacity,” Carlile said about taking Give Up the Ghost on the road. “It’s all about the fact that we want to do this. And so we do. If you want something bad enough and work at it hard enough, eventually you will get what you need out of it.”

Brandi Carlile and Matt Morris perform at 7 p.m. Monday at the Kentucky Theatre, 214 E. Main for the WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour. Tickets are $20. Call (859) 252-8888.

+ David Bowie: A Reality Tour (2010) - A Reality Tour comes to us now over six years after the performances it chronicles and five years after its DVD companion. Nonetheless, as a representation of David Bowie’s last international tour, this two disc set meshes moody rock gems both classic (Rebel Rebel) and overlooked (Heathens). With help from a top flight band, the ageless Bowie remains in peak performance form.

+ Egg: Egg (1970) - The first and finer of the British prog rock trio’s two albums sounds like a contained version of The Nice. Organist Dave Stewart (not the Eurythmics guy) displays all the classically inclined cunning of Keith Emerson but with more humor (the vignette They Laughed When I Sat Down at the Piano), mainstream appeal (You Are All Princes) and pure prog-rock invention (Symphony No. 2). A wonderfully dated listen.

+ Mike Keneally: Scambot 1 (2009) - One of Frank Zappa’s final guitar henchmen, Keneally also remains among the few to still echo Zappa’s compositional style - a highly animated sprint of pop confections and abstracts sewn together by impossibly crafty guitar excursions and, in the case of Scambot 1, a wild social-fantastical narrative. Making sense of the storyline is a task. But the music is an imaginative, expansive thrill.

+ Kate Bush: Aerial (2005) - Bush muses here on everything from Elvis to motherhood to the very fascination that surrounds the creation of art. The music is as wondrous as anything on her earlier albums, but maintains a lighter orchestral aroma, as shown by the Brazilian breakdown that erupts like a summer shower on Sunset. Hearing Aerial later dissolve into fits of birdsong and Bush’s own laughter enhances its very earthbound muse.

+ Paul Motian: Bill Evans (1990) - A forgotten triumph of drummer Motian’s trio featuring saxophonist Joe Lovano and guitarist Bill Frisell. True to the title, Bill Evans reimagines nine tunes by the great pianist, whose ‘60s trios included Motian, as ambient soundscapes. But the addition of another Evans alumnus, bassist Marc Johnson, wonderfully grounds these exemplary performances of equally sterling compositions.

bluegrass rambler larry sparks.

The first weekend in February at Meadowgreen Park Music Hall can mean only one thing - the return of bluegrass pioneer Larry Sparks. The former two-time International Bluegrass Music Association Male Vocalist of the Year has been making the ultra-inviting Clay City venue an annual part of his winter touring plans for years.

An Ohio native with family roots in Jackson, Kentucky, Sparks was recruited into the Clinch Mountain Boys as a guitarist and vocalist in 1967 by Ralph Stanley following the death of sibling Carter Stanley. He went on to popularize bluegrass-gospel standards such as Green Pastures with the Clinch Mountain Boys before forming the initial version of his own Lonesome Ramblers band in 1969.

Sparks remains an active recording artist today. His latest gospel album, I Don’t Regret a Mile, was issued in late 2008. A newer secular bluegrass CD is tentatively scheduled for release this spring.

Blue River will open Sparks’ Saturday show.

Larry Sparks and the Lonesome Ramblers performs at 7 p.m. Saturday at Meadowgreen Park Music Hall, 303 Bluegrass Lane in Clay City. Admission is $15. (606) 663-9008.

neil young speaking at last weekend's musicares benefit in los angeles. reuters photo by mario anzvoni.

I was just going to let Sunday’s Grammy Awards slide. “Just pretend they don’t exist,” I thought. And luckily, in a weekend packed by local live performances by Joe Lovano, Solas and The Band of Heathens, that wasn’t hard to do.

So come Monday morning, when I heard the Academy of Recording Arts & Sciences had decreed, by way of multiple Grammys, that Beyonce and Taylor Swift represented the finest that American pop music had to offer in 2009, I didn’t feel dismayed.

But, blast it all, the Grammys had to go and do something so preposterously insulting that keeping one’s peace was no longer an option. On Monday, with all the stories rolling about what a groundbreaking night it had been at the Grammys for women artists (Really? How many Grammys went to Neko Case? Rosanne Cash?) came word that Neil Young had, amazingly, won his first ever Grammy. But the award wasn’t even for his music. It was for art direction for last summer’s Archives box set.

Huh? The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee who co-piloted the Buffalo Springfield, wrote Cinnamon Girl and Heart of Gold, defined an entire West Coast songwriting scene, redefined garage rock with Crazy Horse and created dozens of masterful albums over the last four-plus decades is acknowledged for art direction? Mind blowing.

Among the comments left on the New York Times ArtsBeat blog regarding Young’s miniscule win:

+ “This is why the Grammys have never mattered.”

+ “This just proves the Grammys are pointless.”

+ “It’s like Einstein winning a lifetime achievement award for best mustache.”

+ “The Grammys are pure self-marketing, serving only to assign false artistic validation to the ludicrous mechanisms of a dying industry.”

+ “Grammys? Neil Young don’t need no stinkin’ Grammys.”

+ “Let’s take this as a sign of creative breadth, ironic as it may be.”

Adding to that irony was the fact the award came two nights after Young was honored as the Grammy-associated MusiCares Person of the Year for his philanthropic work (including the annual FarmAid and Bridge School concerts). The fundraising evening - with proceeds going to help provide financial, medical and personal aid for struggling artists - saw Young’s songs performed by Elton John, Wilco, John Fogerty, Dave Matthews, Sheryl Crow, Ben Harper and Crosby, Stills and Nash, among others.

“Neil, how are you enjoying your Bar Mitzvah so far?” asked host Jack Black during the benefit. It was undoubtedly a blast. But I bet it didn’t measure up to the big surprise that came on Sunday.

blue rodeo: the things we left behind

Jim Cuddy and Greg Keelor must be songwriting fools. Ever since the first Blue Rodeo album surfaced out of Canada in 1987, barely two years have gone by when the two haven’t composed a new set of songs drenched in a plaintive country haze for the band. The two have also crammed in nearly a half dozen solo recordings between them. The songwriting well with these guys clearly runs deep.

Such longevity has translated into a vast and lasting audience in its native Toronto and, for that matter, throughout Canada. Just south of the northern borders, though, Blue Rodeo maintains a more cultish following. And that’s a serious shame. One of the vast appeals in the songs of Cuddy and Keelor is their almost Beatle-esque distinction in style and temperament. Cuddy possesses the more overt pop and country tenor. Keelor reflects the grimier stuff that sends Blue Rodeo into post-psychedelic romps that keep the band’s modern country pop far afield of Eagles turf.

In essence, Blue Rodeo possesses the Americana earnestness of Gram Parsons with a generous touch of British Invasion pop - except, of course, when their music willfully jumps the tracks and plows down a dark alley. Examine the title tune from 1989’s Diamond Mine for proof.

A new Blue Rodeo opus hit Canada last fall and, with expectedly modest fanfare, the United States last week. Titled The Things We Left Behind, the recording is a two disc affair that allots plenty of room for all kinds of concise pop delicacies. Leading the pack is One More Night, a shuffle sung by Cuddy propelled by soul-savvy electric piano, a chorus full of killer hooks, beefy guitar twang, the pedal steel guitar colors of former Frankwater/Wilco journeyman Bob Egan and lyrics full of the sort of dark wanderlust that would make Hank Williams proud.

That’s a lot to pack into a tune just over five minutes long. Not surprisingly, The Things We Left Behind still affords Blue Rodeo some leg room for their seriously moody pieces. At the top of that list sits the nine minute Million Miles, sung by Kellor with a deep acoustic melancholy that recalls late ‘60s Byrds records but with a bittersweet folk rock accent that also echoes less obvious inspirations like the Ozark Mountain Daredevils.

While there is often warmth to such wanderlust, The Things We Left Behind is an album of unease and remorse. Arizona Dust, for instance, is full of summery vocals from Cuddy along with churchy strains of organ and pedal steel. But its sadness still pervades, just as it should in any serious country song.

Shoot, this Rodeo ain’t Blue for nothing, people.

frontman adam gontier of three days grace. photo by rich copley, herald-leader staff.

Woe be to the nu-metal, guitar-rock, post-grunge, what-have-you band that surrenders to that most familiar of riffs: the sharp, staccato guitar hook that provides the metal-esque backbone of what has come to define arena rock in the 21^st century. It’s an audience favorite, for sure - a kick that pumps up a crowd in an instant. But it’s also often a trap. Once a band gives in to the riffs and tastes the sort of machismo whirlwind they kick up onstage, a performance seldom seeks much else by way of stylistic variance.

In short, once that metal cocoon is sewn, breaking free is nigh-impossible.

Last night at Rupp Arena, three formidable, radio-friendly outfits - Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin and Flyleaf - went for the metal jugular almost from the instant their sets began. And, to no one’s surprise, the mostly 20-something crowd of 7,000 reacted obediently, swearing allegiance to the mighty power chord. But here’s the thing. At various points, all three bands refused to be painted into a stylistic corner by the chunky guitar rhythms. None of them exactly strayed from the thick and often purposely oppressive rock fabric, mind you. But neither did they sound like knock off Linkin Park clones, which seems to be the going guise of modern radio rockers.

Toronto’s Three Days Grace, which closed the show, summoned its metal crunch chords right off the bat in the show-opening Break before allowing them to bloom and corrode during the radio hit I Hate Everything About You. But what broke the cast for the band was guitarist Barry Stock, a bearded, bruiser of a player that resembled a punkish Abraham Lincoln.

Stock was hands down the evening’s most inventive instrumentalist, whether he was underscoring the audience friendly angst provided by singer Adam Gontier during the party tune The Good Life or playing off of Three Days Grace’s surprisingly vast library of pop references, from Phil Collins-like prog flourishes to the wild drones that echoed at the onset of Home.

benjamin burnley of breaking benjamin. photo by rich copley.

A preceding hour-long set by the Pennsylvania rockers of Breaking Benjamin kicked off with the anthemic grunge-pop of I Will Not Bow. That proved a set-up for the more angular metal guitar hooks of Until the End and the band’s other nu-metal weapon, singer Benjamin Burnley. As a vocalist, Burnley provided a generous pop accent to much of the band’s performance. But just as things got a tad orderly, his singing dissolved in to a coarse, metal-savvy wheeze.

The dirge like sing-a-long So Cold nicely sifted stylistic gears. But the set ultimately dragged. Between-tune breaks and Burnley’s often pandering audience banter robbed Breaking Benjamin of some much needed drive.

By way of proof, the show-opening Texas quintet Flyleaf plowed through the same number of songs as Breaking Benjamin (an even dozen) in roughly half the stage time. And, yes, the band also came onstage full of metal-esque majesty with the ultra crunchy Fully Alive, sounding like’80s-era Motorhead - well, Motorhead had they been fronted by a woman.

Singer Lacey Mosley (La belle femme Lemmy?) provided a sense of engrossing immediacy to Flyleaf’s set, whether the band was tearing through the hallelujah crunch of Beautiful Bride, embracing the affirmations that bookended Arise or opening the door to a blast of postpunk pop lyricism during Missing that sounded less like metal-esque fury and more like A Flock of Seagulls on holiday.

three days grace: barry stock, neil sanderson, adam gontier and brad walst. photo by danny clinch.

Believe it or not Three Days Grace is starting to lighten up.

You might not be able to tell that as you’re hit with the muscular guitar charge that makes up its third and newest album Life Starts Now. There is still a dense, tense sound at work that will satisfy neo-metal and arena rock devotees alike. But there is also a different lyrical angle to the Toronto band’s newest songs. Take the chorus to Life Starts Now’s initial single, Break:

“Tonight, I start the fire,” sings frontman Adam Gontier. “Tonight, I break away.”

OK, so those aren’t words of pure sunshine. But they signal a level of positive defiance, a move away from the darkness that has often pervaded the music of Three Days Grace in the past.

“We took enough time off before making this record, so we were all pretty excited about getting back into the studio,” said Gontier, who will perform with Three Days Grace on a co-headlining bill with Breaking Benjamin tonight at Rupp Arena.

“It was just one of those situations where we were just ready to go because we had spent quite awhile at home dealing with personal issues.”

Gontier didn’t elaborate on that point, although recent interviews with other members of Three Days Grace said they had dealt with deaths and serious illnesses within their respective families after completing touring duties for its double-platinum selling 2006 album One-X.

Considering Gontier had used stories of his own despondency and drug abuse to fuel the songs on One-X, it’s no wonder that the hard rock slant of Three Days Grace had grown increasingly dour. Indeed, a Break was in order.

“We’ve always been a real band,” Gontier said. “Our lyrics are very real. I think people recognize that. I think they recognize that we’re coming from a very genuine place. I turn on the radio these days and I hear a lot of bands that just try to write a melody and a lyrical hook. That’s such a cliché. I mean, it may work on the radio, but the music always winds up sounding the same. I’m tired of hearing that stuff.

 ”Our goal, when we went into the studio this time, was to make a record that sounded real and sounded, to the listener, like they were right in the room with the band. And I think we did that.

“There are a lot of records out there right now that sound a bit shiny, a bit mechanical. We just wanted to sound a little more raw and real.”

Three Days Grace formed in the mid ‘90s out of an Ontario group called Groundswell. It was initially a trio made up of vocalist/guitarist Gontier, bassist Brad Walst and drummer Neil Sanderson. All attended high school in the Central-Eastern Ontario town of Norwood, a place where rock ‘n’ roll had no pulse.

“There was barely any music in that town,” Gontier said. “When we lived there, there were maybe 1,500 people. You had to excel at either sports or school. Our first record was written about growing up there. So in a way, it was good for us because we had to get out of town just to make that first record.

The addition of lead guitarist Barry Stock in late 2003 made Three Days Grace a foursome. Things concurrently soared and crashed from there. The band charted a major radio hit with the caustic I Hate Everything About You and toured relentlessly for two years. That sent the debut album to platinum status and Gontier into rehab.

Flash forward to last fall when the more positive but still monstrously electric music on Life Starts Now allows the recording to live up to its name. It entered the Billboard album charts at No. 3.

“Every night is different for us,” Gontier said. “But to be onstage playing with the band… that’s the reason I got into music in the first place. The feeling you get is hard to describe other than there is no other feeling like it. There is no high from any drug or drink to equal getting onstage and having 5,000 or 8,000 people singing your songs back to you.

“That’s what I’m in this for.”

Three Days Grace/Breaking Benjamin/Flyleaf perform at 7 tonight at Rupp Arena. Tickets are $39.75. Call (859) 233-3535 or (800) 745-3000.

joe lovano. photo by jimmy katz.

In the wake of last weekend’s winter storm, cancelled flights left two members of Grammy winning saxophonist Joe Lovano’s quintet stranded in Louisville and Cincinnati. As of showtime last night at the Singletary Center for the Arts, neither had arrived. Amazingly, the absent parties were collected and the concert commenced with only a 20 minute delay.

With the crisis resolved without most of the audience even knowing it took place, Lovano introduced himself by way of an unaccompanied tenor sax solo that merrily echoed around the mighty Singletary Concert Hall.

From there, Lovano’s group jumped into two tunes from his current Folk Art album - Us Five (which doubles as the quintet’s name) and the title composition - that put some novel ensemble dynamics into motion. Specifically, the quintet utilized two drummers. The first, Otis Brown III, largely stayed within the groove of the tune. The other, Francisco Mela, worked more off of Lovano’s turns on the tenor saxophone. But the strategies shifted regularly. Sometimes Mela sat out, especially when the fine Us Five pianist James Wiedman received his all-too-few solo spots. Sometimes the cross-rhythms created an almost samba like grace, as in Mal Waldron’s Soul Eyes - one of several works to feature the quintet’s “sixth” member, vocalist Judi Silvano (Lovano’s wife). And at times the drummers were in direct, complimentary harmony with each other.

As prominent as the percussion was, though, it was still Lovano’s leads on tenor sax, the clarinet-like tarogato and aulochrome that fueled the 100 minute performance. The latter, a contemporary creation that fuses two soprano saxophones together, revealed a wild chromatic range during the John Coltrane-ish turns of Big Ben. Lovano’s more familiar but equally robust tenor sax sound nicely turned the heat up under Sanctuary Park and neatly played off Silvano’s animated vocal charge during Thelonious Monk’s Reflections.

All in all, it was a performance that might have seemed novel given the designs of the instrumentation (and, in the case of the aulochrome, the very instruments). But considering Lovano’s history of musical thrillseeking, the concert was simply another adventure where nothing was more daring or distinctive than the cunning of the jazz intellect drove it.