Original image by There Stands the Glass.
I didn’t include The Bunker Center for the Arts in the feature I recently wrote for KCUR about music venues in Kansas City. Yet there was nowhere I would rather have been on Tuesday, March 14.
A stellar array of new music improvisers performed at the art gallery. The three-part concert opened with a riveting set by saxophonist Benjamin Baker, guitarist Seth Andrew Davis, bassist Krista Kopper and drummer Evan Verploegh.
Davis and Verploegh are the reigning Plastic Sax People of the Year. Almost every time I hear the core members of the Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society of Kansas City- and that’s been about a dozen times in the past 12 months- I think it’s their best outing to date. The simmering improvisation on Tuesday was no exception.
Guitarist Joshua Gerowitz and multi-instrumentalist Vinny Golia played next. The serpentine extemporizations of the Los Angeles based artists were striking, partly because Golia possesses a swagger that makes him the free jazz version of Ronnie James Dio.
The touring band CRAG Quartet headlined. Golia, violinist/composer Christian Asplund (violinist/composer), Steve Ricks (trombone/electronics) and Ron Coulter (percussion) made a stupendous racket that sometimes resembled an emergency siren. And as with many of the most imaginative new music improvisers, their playing possessed a delightful undercurrent of humor.