You never know what might happen at a debut gig. Surprises are all but guaranteed when a band takes the stage for the first time, but for TRIAD, the collective of Dominick Farinacci, Christian Tamburr and Michael Ward-Bergeman, the biggest surprise came at load-in.
“Gianni Valenti, the owner of Birdland, gave me three nights,” Farinacci recalled. “I said, ‘I still want to do it under my name but have TRIAD because it’ll be a great experience.” Valenti agreed, but a few months later when the band arrived at the storied New York club, Valenti bellowed “What the hell is this instrumentation? Where is the bass player?”
There wasn’t one. And when TRIAD loads in to The Treelawn Music Hall Friday, there won’t be a bass player just Farinacci on trumpet, vibes and marimba by Tamburr and Ward-Bergeman’s accordion.
That answers Valenti’s second question, but what about the first? What inspires an instrumental chimera like TRIAD?
To find the answer, you have to set the dial for London where the three players convened on project intended for the West End and ultimately the BBC. That’s the practical explanation, but it only tells half the story. “The music started to happen almost immediately, and then the personalities started to reveal themselves.” Tamburr told me. “We were all just a bunch of goofballs that loved hanging out and telling jokes and laughing as much as we enjoy playing the music. So that’s how it all came together.”
That sense of camaraderie, rollicking good humor, easy rapport and yes, love, lit up the video calls with TRIAD’s members. I got the feeling that if a VFW hall in South Dakota offered these guys $100 for a one-nighter, they’d jump on the next plane for the sheer pleasure of being in one another’s company.
But that shouldn’t discount the seriousness of their musicianship nor the difficulty of making such an unprecedented project work. There was no template for what TRIAD was attempting nor any repertoire for trumpet, mallets and accordion.
Still, a blank slate is one that offers free rein for creativity, one that Farinacci, Tamburr and Ward-Bergeman embraced with gusto. The results, which form an unlikely Venn diagram of dance band, chamber ensemble and jazz supergroup, are showcased on TRIAD’s eponymous debut release.
To the March release on Ropeadope Records Ward-Bergeman brought his love of Argentinian folk rhythms and tango with the whirling molto perpetuo “Domingando” and an arrangement of Astor Piazzolla’s “Libertango.” The dance inspired Tamburr’s “La Lucha Dura,” which showcases the band’s whipsaw unity and instrumental brilliance.
The darker side is represented with a menacing cover of Clevelander Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ “I Put A Spell On You” and a truly hair-raising extended arrangement of the ancient New Orleans standard “St. James Infirmary Blues.” Both are delivered with utter commitment and without a trace of camp by vocalist Shenel Johns, who with hometown hero Jamey Haddad, is one of the album’s two guest artists.
But the recording’s emotional centerpiece is Farinacci’s “A Prayer For You,” written when the trumpeter learned that his mother had been diagnosed with cancer from which she has fully recovered. ” I wrote this piece as kind of an exercise for myself, processing the different emotions that I was feeling . . . that presented the opposite qualities of what I was feeling.”
It’s a mark of the unshakeable musical trust binding the members of TRIAD that, as Farinacci notes about this most personal of compositions, “I hardly play on it in this version. Michael and Christian had a conception, a vision for building it out. I think I left the room. I’m like, “Okay, you guys just work it out, whatever you are hearing.” When I came back they had this vision of my place within the song, and listening back, I can’t think of how better it could have come together.”
TRIAD is an unlikely collaboration bringing together three distinctive but disparate instrumental voices, and yet it’s hard to think of how better it could have come together.
Tying a neat bow on TRIAD’s debut run at Birdland, the initial three nights were so successful that three more nights were added. All six were sold out.
So, one final question: do you have your tickets for The Treelawn yet?
Portions of this preview are excerpted from a forthcoming feature article about TRIAD to be published at AllAboutJazz.com
TRIAD, Fri., July 26, 8 p.m., Treelawn Music Hall, 15335 Waterloo Rd., Cleveland, tickets $15-50 available here
NOTE: This article was written by a real human being. No artificial intelligence or generative language models were used in its creation.
Red beans and ricely yours,
jc
