HEART Trio tonight at Zebulon
Saw the HEART Trio of William Parker, Cooper-Moore, and Hamid Drake tonight and it’s one of those performances that can’t be put into words. At one point Cooper brought out what looked like a two-by-four with a string lined between two blocks of wood and hit a bass tone so deep that it shook us in the front row. I mean the guy was playing hand-made, one-of-a-kind instruments that looked like they’d been assembled from things found on the side of the road (and some of them were), but damn if these guys couldn’t play.
The show wasn’t sold out, so that means under 300 people in a city of eight million saw this incredible performance. Which is fine, different strokes for different folks. But it’s such a cool thing to live in a place where on any given night I can go to a club and sit in the front row as some jazz legends blow my fucking hair back with some improvisational music that has no counter.
After the show ended the guys talked about the instruments they played and how they related to the history of music and really brought their performance full circle into shifting from hearing those relationships in sound to comprehending them through language. This was music that seemed to transcend the bullshit of the world and tap into something pure. Absolutely wonderful.
