Hey, Halloween was awhile ago, but some kind of ghost has inhabited the fingers of Joshua White, whose long fingers are crawling around the keys and greasing the pitch wheel on his 20-year-old electric Yamaha S08 to elicit eerie, dyspeptic gas. As if to provide support for White after some bad news he heard (we heard it too), Eric Revis grabs his bass and Mark Ferber his drumsticks, and they rustle up a quick groove that White can't help but join. Dan Rosenboom punches a few notes of trumpet encouragement, and that's all it takes for White to release his frustration all over the keyboard, slashing out creative beauty and pounding aggressive dissonances. When White has said his piece, Ferber settles down to a thrumping, considered drum solo that turns into a dialogue with Rosenboom's concise horn.
That was a transition, it turns out. Rosenboom picks up his big-belled flugelhorn, and now we hear the warmth of the human heart, the kind of melodic directness that can reach anyone. White finds a way to stroll along beside him, and then takes a solo as gentle and quick as a young deer. Did this polar swing happen in just a few minutes?
White clusters dense harmonies and gets off one more series of broadsides before making room for a lyrical solo by Revis, who moves around the bass neck like a harvester seeking out just the ripest notes. The sound field empties out for a quick-paced statement by Rosenboom's trumpet, which rouses Revis and Ferber into a sparring match that congeals into a hard-tripping groove when White hits THAT chord. It rips along for a while, Rosenboom's trumpet jumping in and out, then suddenly gears down as White's chords take on a strong blues shading and Rosenboom snatches up his piccolo trumpet to engage in piercing discourse.
When they stop, the audience are almost too stunned to clap. "I thought we got into some nice spaces," Rosenboom says later of the night's music, which is entirely improvised by this all-star quartet. Uh, yeah.
Beginning with one-note sustains from White's keyboard and Revis' bowed bass, the second set evolves into a convocation just as furious and varied, with highlights including Rosenboom's flugelhorn imitation of a crutchbound old man arguing with himself, and the contrast between Ferber's spaced-out facial expression and the hurricane transpiring around his kit in response to White's intergalactic rocketry. We also get perspective on the breadth of Revis' artistry: Where in the first set he mostly stayed glued to Ferber to create a powerful, flexible rhythmic unit, in the second he's more assertive, first with the bow and later with a plucked solo as spare and considered as a composition. This kind of 360-degree ability (which includes enormous rhythmic sophistication) is what has kept Revis in constant demand for decades. He has a bunch of exceptional recordings as a leader, too.
Rosenboom, with his group leadership, sideman ubiquity and Orenda Records label, has become something like L.A.'s Dizzy Gillespie. His name is a seal of quality. So thanks!
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In recent months, the High Low bar in Atwater has been booking top jazz on Monday nights in its neatly separated lounge. The place has good Tex-Mex food, too. A much-needed addition to the scene and worthy of support. In 2025, watch for the reopening of the dearly missed Blue Whale, relocated to Frogtown a couple of miles from the High Low.
PHOTOS BY FUZZY BOURGOIS.