Grdina/Allemano/West

Mixing intensity and imagination, the Nomad power trio dominated the night’s final set during Toronto’s ongoing TONE festival June 24. Consisting of Vancouver’s Gordon Grdina’s guitar and oud plus Americans Matt Mitchell on piano and Jim Black on drums, the three shook their way through a collection of originals that would gladden a Metalhead’s metal heart, but never sacrificed improvisational polish for pressure. Grdina’s one oud outing showed how Maghreb-like stop-time echoes could be integrated into foot-tapping rhythm projected by contrapuntal piano chording and a relaxed Jazz feel from the drummer. Still, distinctive musical alchemy was also performed on the other tunes.

The drummer’s backbeat and rebounds, often performed with crucified arm-like stretches connected perfectly with the guitarist’s ruptured flanges and repeated slinky frails as did the near-harpsichord-like accents, subtle comping and occasional soundboard echoes from the pianist. Mitchell also added lightless but not delicacy into the tripartite improvisations. Sweeping up and down high energy themes with a collection of slurred fingering (Grdina), ruffs and paradiddles (Black) and purposeful key patterns (Mitchell), the confident expositions belied the fact that this was the trio’s first joint concert in many months.

Also uniting after time apart was the duo of Toronto-based Mike Smith, whose electronic interface included processing and effects and Lina, adding objects to her trumpet excursions, who now divides her time between Toronto and Berlin. Dedicated to portamento runs and exposing varied technical approaches with her instrument’s valves. bell and body tube, Allemano worked out her strategies over the oscillations, whooshes and whorls from Smith’s programming. Producing brassy fanfares if inclined, most trumpet work was purposely kept understated – though not always by inserting a Harmon mute – as Allemano produced obtuse tones by using a metal cake box as a mute. Besides the harsh vibrations and burbling she forced through the horn’s body tube, Allemano reacted to Smith’s one-time wave of ascending organ-like pitches with a retreat to hushed treble sighing. Other times she shook bells or other objects near her horn for additional resonations. Viewing the performance as one unbroken sound channel which dissolved rather than ended, another notable interlude came when she unscrewed her piston valves to test novel tremolo wisps.

Between these two performances was a set was local alto saxophonist Brodie West’s Quintet, which featured dual drummers Nick Fraser and Evan Cartwright, pianist Tania Gill and bassist Josh Cole. With Cartwright providing the backbeat and Fraser coloring the tunes with rim shots, nerve beats and other sticks, mallet and bushes asides, the group rolled quickly through a collection of West originals. Always establishing a groove due to the drummers and Cole’s bass stopping, the pieces benefitted from perceptive parcelling of lead lines and commentary between Gill’s diffident chording or measured response to the melody and Werst’s reed extensions. While there were dips into split tones and altissimo runs, mostly the altoist’s improvisations were measured and kept the pieces moving in a linear fashion. Usually the tunes evolved from interesting themes, one of which in particular included jumping jack-in-the-box-like surprises in the head. But while notable work was turned in as each player dealt with the material, the brevity of each creation, led to frustration that there wasn’t more development.

Overall the evening’s performances were both sympathetic and surprising, confirming both the talents of the player and how they were organized into distinctive configurations.