Listen to Otherlands Trio, at Thursday’s New Ghosts concert at BOP STOP or on Star Mountain, and you won’t hear chord changes. You won’t hear conventional song forms, either. The band, Crump told me in that interview, “is all spontaneous composition. We just move into the music without any kind of plan.”
In lesser hands, this approach can be a recipe for tedium and self-indulgence, but the trio’s deep empathy, quick-twitch reflexes and commanding individual voices give you something substantial to chew on at every turn.
About those voices. Crump’s has been frequently and gratefully heard in Cleveland, most recently in April when he brought his Slow Water project to the Cleveland Museum of Art, a concert I previewed here. In Otherlands he’s a bit like a basketball player who excels off the ball, always in the right place at the right time, making things happen (Crump’s namesake, Steph Curry, comes to mind).
Jones, who last played Cleveland in 2018 with Omaha drummer Dana Murray, has a huge, room-filling tone (I know this from experience having heard him send waves of sound into San Francisco’s vast Taube Atrium Theater in 2021). It’s hot and thick, a steaming and often spicy gravy. Jones never plays patterns or licks. What emerges from his horn is pure emotion.
In Otherlands, he and McPherson often play a two-man game, volleying ideas back and forth like touch passes on a basketball fast break. The drummer has great court vision. He hears everything, yet his moment-to-moment responsiveness always happens within the broader rhythmic flow of the music.
All three players share this trait, which makes the music of Otherlands Trio a high-risk, high-reward proposition. “It’s about ego dissolution and trusting each other and going, moment to moment, where the music needs to go,” Crump said. “It’s so deep and rich.”
No matter where it goes, there’s this powerful magnetism to it. It’s always grooving. It’s both always expanding and evolving and developing yet magnetically charged and grooving at the same time. It’s very special.”
New Ghosts presents Otherlands Trio, Thursday, June 18, 7 p.m., BOP STOP, 2901 Detroit Ave. Cleveland, tickets $25 available here
You can buy your own copy of Star Mountain at this Bandcamp link.
For the most complete listing of jazz and jazz-adjacent events., look to Jim Szabo’s essential, weekly Northeast Ohio jazz calendar.
