Moody jazz

Sonic Explorers toss another string of pearls before swine

by John O'Neill

I have this vision I just can't shake. It's just before daybreak, and the clubs on St. Mark's Place have cast out the last of the stragglers. Steam rises in a slow, steady belch from the manhole covers. The first pigeon wing cracks overhead, as the remaining few wander out of the cigarette-smoke darkness onto the desolate street, step over the discarded McDonalds bags, suck in the last of the evening, and begin the trek home. The smell of bread baking. The sound of feet on cobblestone. A transvestite heading home on broken heels. Across town another garbage barge rides the current down to the fetid mouth of the Hudson. Another night withers, the vampires head for the shadow of concrete and steel, and the street sweeper swishes past, lingering as a hum in the distance. Maybe the muted strains of the Sonic Explorers' "Beatnik Oblivion" had transported me, because it sure felt real. More likely, the music had just thrown the mind's eye a tremendous curveball, because the next time it plays, I never leave the empty sprawl of downtown Worcester. The third time ends in imagined gridlock. But it never feels any less real. Jerry Sabatini, the song's author and de facto leader of the Sonic Explorers, has seven more moody tricks up his sleeve on the band's outstanding second disc, Beatnik Oblivion (Nada Brahma). The CD-release party will be held this Saturday, January 16, at the Above Club, and it promises to be an evening of incredibly sublime and passionate entertainment.

"When I compose, I get visions that I expand on," says Sabatini from his home in Leominster. "There's a lot that goes through my mind. The main thing is, I try to reflect my current life experience, to write music in the present. If you approach [songwriting] with the utmost sincerity, people can relate to it. . . . It is a personal statement. Region, day, year, all the tunes I've written were people I knew, places I knew. I had Leominster, 1998. This is my folk music."

Since forming five years ago, Sabatini and his (mostly) steady line-up have explored a range of sound while producing the most interesting, refreshing, and honest jazz compositions in the area. It is modern, improvisation coupled with obvious influences rooted in the Great American Songbook; the result of which is an astounding soundscape that sails a steady course between safe landmarks and uncharted waters. More important, the Sonic Explorers are practitioners of pushing jazz in new directions while remaining relevant. Free jazz, thought to be the ultimate in improv-expression, seems automatically inconsequential by virtue of its inherent lack of structure. There is no where left to go except back to structure -- which is exactly where the Sonic Explorers reside. Through high-caliber musicianship, Beatnik Oblivion resonates with the joy of unlimited freedom, breathes new life into the art of jazz, and stretches horizons, all while remaining completely accessible to the casual fan.

"I wanted to get more composition, more structure in there," Sabatini says, when comparing Oblivion to the group's more improvisational 1995 effort, Birth of the Kakalla. "I'm getting more involved with composition, but we still wanted improv playing that could generate the energy of the first [CD]. We wanted to cover as much ground as possible."

Beginning with the title track, the Sonic Explorers cover plenty of turf. Sabatini's trumpet intertwines beautifully with John Vaillencourt's sax playing and Joe Parillo's piano on the moody and cool jazz of "Election Year Jive," while the groove-bottomed "Ol' Man Pops" finds the trumpet and sax almost heading off the chart in the opening measure, back to shadow each other, locked in a point/counterpoint dogfight that threatens to break out of control, but just as quickly taking a sharp turn back into shadowing each other. The 13-plus-minute "Cafe Barada" takes the listener on an Eastern-influenced trip that showcases the entire ensemble's improvisational skills (Sabatini's flügelhorn trilling is especially fleet, and his vocabulary of tonal resources deep) as well as their ability to exercise restraint. It's a perfect balance of plumbing the depths to find what's inside each musician's soul, while retaining a reverence for the framework of classic arrangement. What makes it so fun, is the specter of the unexpected that lingers around the corner in every piece. It's an element that is also vital to their live shows.

"When you play with a high caliber of musician, you leave it up to their instinct where to take a song. You take it where you want. I don't worry about what happens, because even if it isn't like it was written to be, it's still going to be good," Sabatini explains. "It's like being in the woods without a compass, and the sun just went down. It's a little scary, but it's also exciting."

If nothing else, the Sonic Explorers prove beyond a shadow of doubt that they are a world-class ensemble lost in a city where the jazz community is far more interested in more conventional fare. The same "traditionalists" who champion the Great American Songbook have reacted to Sabatini's original material with much the same reaction you might get if you gave a lab monkey a bright rubber ball to inspect. Maybe a glimmer of recognition, perhaps holding their attention briefly, more likely uninformed indifference. The fact that the Explorers have performed in front of an audience of 10,000 at Vermont's Discover Jazz Festival, while never earning an invite to neither the WICN Brown Bag Lunch Concerts nor the Jazz at Sunset series speaks volumes of the Worcester jazz elite. A band as original as the Sonic Explorers may never find a home among a crowd that generally regards Toni Ballard and Emil Haddad and Dick Odgren the final word on cool.

"I'm scrambling to get two gigs a month," says Sabatini, who, for the record, is cordial and complimentary of the Worcester jazz scene. "We're still working up to making a name. Hopefully the CD will get us into other rooms. The bigger clubs are looking to talk to an agent . . . so we're looking into getting one. I don't have the time to correctly market the band."

The thought of eventually becoming something more than an oasis of beauty in an ocean full of crap would seem to be a reasonable final destination for the band, though it wouldn't make much difference in the end to Sabatini, who admits, "I'm in it for the long haul, because it's so personal. I'll be doing this forever."

In a perfect world, we'd all be listening to Sabatini's life-as-music experiences from a front row seat at a sold-out Mechanics Hall.

Local Buzz

In the works for nearly a month, Woodgrain Theory finally decided to sign on with Providence-based Big Noise Records. The label will release Woodgrain's as-yet-untitled second disc, as well as include them on 10 promotional compilation albums during the upcoming year. Big Noise hopes to generate some major-label attention for the band. Erick Godin has left Paco in order to concentrate on the (still up-in-the-air) Lucky Dog Music Hall and his own Egg Productions. Besides graphic art, Egg will be getting into the CD- replication biz. The Espresso Bar's Eric Spencer, who currently books the Commercial Street Cafe along with Eric Marcos (the talent buyer for the former Mama Kin), is also hopping into CD reproduction with ex-Mezzoman Josh Latham with their new company CD Simple. They'll also book bands locally out of their office under the name Main Street Talent. Call (508) 752-5577. Junk Sculpture may be headed for the junk heap with the departure of guitarist Wayne Winslow. One of '98's pleasant and more volatile surprises was always close to imploding, so it comes as no great shock here at HQ. Still, it's a shame, as Arista Records had recently expressed some cordial interest in the group. Congrats to Karen Michalson (Point of Ares) who has finally found a home for her book trilogy, Enemy Glory. Tor Books will be releasing the first installment in spring 2000. POA's second disc, The Sorrow's of Young Apollo, was also featured as "CD of the Week" on the StarVoice Web site. Hopefully, with a half-million hits per week, the band moved some discs. Members of Candlebox dropped by the Commercial Street Cafe for BBQ ribs and a photo-op after their gig at the Centrum. The new music hall/restaurant voiced confidence that, in the immediate future, they'll also attract major acts that don't blow.