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Vox Arcana
Hideout; Wed 11
Drummer-led jazz groups can be dicey business. Witness overindulgent percussive assaults driven by ego and rapid-fire chops. Not so with Tim Daisy. Though technically accomplished—a steady presence behind the kit with Ken Vandermark speaks to his gift—the 34-year-old drummer’s more concerned with conceptual touchstones when driving his chamber-jazz vehicle Vox Arcana.
Daisy approaches the trio’s repertoire with the discipline of a doctoral student, influenced as much by visual art as avant-garde composers. He’s demonstrated a voracious appetite, devouring the work of minimalist guru Terry Riley and AACM heavyweight Anthony Braxton but also nodding to Robert Rauschenberg, whose multimedia dissections inform Daisy’s musical mobiles.
Flanked by cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and clarinetist James Falzone, Daisy lithely navigates improvisational terrain with gracious restraint. That exceptional sensitivity’s been honed over countless gigs with Lonberg-Holm in the Vandermark 5 and Frame Quartet, as well as Falzone’s KLANG. Here the former’s supple bowing is supplemented with glitchy electronic bursts. Falzone counters with a more conservative voice, his woody tone balancing Lonberg-Holm’s rambunctious flights.
On its second album, Aerial Age, the unit simmers and swells over eight tracks of ruminative improv. Daisy dances on marimba around the disc’s centerpiece, “Chi Harp Call in E,” while Falzone’s reedy chirp flutters about, underscored by the walking pluck of Lonberg-Holm’s cello, before descending into a squawk. Though this is the percussionist’s vehicle, never does it feel dominated by his clatter. Maybe not a power trio, but an energy efficient one.
