Earshot Jazz Festival

October 19
3rd Man
Chapel Performance Space, 7:30 $18 BUY ONLINE

You’re more than two minutes past Michael Moore’s bass clarinet yawp that opens the Clusone Trio’s 1993 take on I’m an Indian, Too before you catch the melody, meekly stated. And that’s when Han Bennink starts adding little cymbal touches, almost offhandedly. In this short snippet, you understand the chemistry that Moore and Bennink have shared for more than a quarter century. It’s goofball kitsch (try their delectable ersatz swing on “I Never Had a Chance”), but then it crackles tightly and bursts through. It burbles here, waves its arms about spastically there. Now with accordionist Will Holshouser, the pair have moved past the Clusone Trio and into what they call 3rd Man, a trio of equal thirds that mashes up whimsy and dizzying talent explosions.

The main detonator, Han Bennink, hardly needs an introduction, but his role as a Zelig-like figure across the post-bop European music skyline is worth underscoring. He played it fairly straight with longtime collaborator Misha Mengelberg back in 1964 on Eric Dolphy’s Last Date. He kept popping up everywhere afterward, as the avant-garde improvised music scene developed in Germany, England, and Holland. He anchored the Instant Composers Pool (ICP) from its 1967 inception, and within a short time was well-known for being a phenomenal time-keeper on the drum kit and, equally, the most likely to unhinge a performance by using whatever manner of object on a stage to engage his drums. So he can – and does – play Irving Berlin and free skronk and every touchpoint between, always with authority and vigor.

You’d think that Michael Moore would provide a foil to Bennink’s madcap clatter. Twelve years Bennink’s junior, Moore emerged from Humboldt State and the New England Conservatory, joining the ICP in 1982. His alto saxophone playing, whistling high and probingly low in leaps and dives, along with a clarinet range that spans similar ranges, made a nice counterpoint to Bennink’s sense of play (as in freeplay), and Moore, having relocated to Amsterdam, seemed from that point always somewhere in the drummer’s orbit. Most famously as two-thirds of the Clusone Trio, the good-cop/bad-cop pair make funny, restless, serious din at all points. It’s a visceral jolt to hear them tackle the songbooks they make their own, because theirs is an indelible stamp.

The most junior of the 3rd Man crew, Will Holshouser brings an almost tailor-made broadness along with Moore and Bennink. Holshouser’s played with David Krakauer’s Klezmer Madness, Matt Munisteri’s brand of guitar-chorded musette and neo-swing, and even ballet music from Bruno Moretti. So he’s familiar with the kinetics that can ensue when Bennink comes away from the drum stool (or enlists the stool as part of a tune). The accordion is a keenly exciting rig in the midst of Moore and Bennink, since it can create a wafting flow and then a slash across the harmonic spectrum (think of Piazzolla’s tangos and the sharp turns that drive the dancers’ feet). Holshouser’s years playing the field, making the meeting of rhythm and harmony really swing as he chugs along, leaping and bounding with Krakauer’s mayhem-tinged take on Yiddish traditions, make him perhaps the ideal 3rd Man. Maybe he’s just one of the three 3rd Man players, though.

–Andrew Bartlett

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