Vandermark at Tonic

I often think that everything is better than Chicago; certainly, the music is. The Second City may not have anything like Jazz at Lincoln Center, but then, New York doesn't have anyone like Ken Vandermark, saxophonist, clarinetist, curator of the Empty Bottle's Wednesday Night Jazz Series and leader of a bewildering variety of groups united by their leader's uncompromising vision. Last Tuesday, with the Vandermark 5 at Tonic, he was breathing fire.

This is a group unafraid of beauty, and unafraid of cacophony as well. Leading their second set with "That Was Now," a composition from the group's recent double CD The Color of Memory that starts off with a melody as simple and lovely as that of "Lonely Woman" and moves on from there, taking in everything from straight breakbeats to the transformation of a cello passage from mournfulness into electric noise, the group displayed the sheer, brash power besides which the music of any number of their more traditional contemporaries seems utterly tame in comparison. Their intricate counterpoint, split-second turns, unexpected time signatures and complex tone palette can seem odd fits with the muscular hard bop style that inflects much of what they play; really, they aren't. This kind of music is at its best the fulfillment of the promise of what happened in jazz in the late '60s, an integration of the lessons of that time with those of what happened before and since.

This group is really best experienced live; they are better in person than on record by orders of magnitude, probably because the stifling intensity of the music needs to be offset by the kinds of subtle dynamic shifts that play far better on stage than over speakers. The tradeoff is that live they play their jazz a bit less straight; while their ability to set traditional, and traditionally swinging, passages in pieces that are at times reminiscent of a more musically sophisticated late-period Tom Waits is tremendously impressive, one does wish they'd play it a bit straighter at times. Discordant passages of skittering bass and free, drumless skronking work best when served in a bit more moderation than they were at this show.

It's a minor criticism, though, and the energy, density, texture and beauty of this music overwhelms it. Elegiac without being sentimental, graceful yet powerful and devoted to the best tradition of free jazz as a form of collective self-discipline, this group is something to hear.