Review: Trioscape at Lyric’s Underground

Trioscape at Lyric’s Underground
w/ Jessica Carlton Trio and Fjord Sounds
Thursday, January 4, 2024

A quiet Thursday night at Lyric’s Underground saw a dedicated and enthusiastic audience treated to two startlingly original ensembles: the Jessica Carlton Trio and Fjord Sounds.

Trumpeter Jessica Carlton’s trio du jour was Harry Mitchell on keys and Alex Reid on drums. Last July, in Carlton’s performance at a mixed RTRFM jazz bill, Josiah Padmanabham commanded the keys in a quintet with Reid, Kristian Borring (guitar), and Alistair Peel (bass). This leaner format worked just as well, bringing out a different aspect of Carlton’s commanding compositional skill.

The fusion was intense. Most of the tunes in the all-original, seven-number set began quietly. Carlton and Mitchell worked closely together, counterpointing, harmonising, and underlying each other to create a mellow, smooth, and at times haunting sound. But as the momentum in each piece built to a climax, they began to strain against each other. The lines ran awry, her up to his down, his quiet to her crescendo, often ending in a fractious dissonance, like a rope twisting up your spine or climbing a cliff face to reach the summit. It was master-drummer Reid’s role to hold them both together. With subtle, often understated cymbals, snare, and a suitably syncopated kick, he succeeded superbly.

As Carlton said at the end of the first piece, “it’s hard to play the trumpet when you’re pregnant.” Dexterously working against her physical state added another dimension to her fine performance, explained the occasional wavering note, and completely won the audience’s heart.

Carlton often takes her inspiration from poetry, especially from female poets. The first tune, Hope Is A Thing With Feathers, was inspired by Emily Dickinson, the melody mimicking the poem’s phrasing, while The Ghosts of Women Once Girls was inspired by American contemporary poet, writer, lyricist, and activist Aja Monet, at age 19 (2007), the youngest poet to be the Nuyorican Poets Café Grand Slam Champion and the last woman to win this title.

Carlton’s own titles also possess both a feminine and poetic resonance. Remember Mirror, Without Words, and The Valley were all composed for her five-year-old daughter, often deriving from the words spoken by and the empathically imagined experiences of the little girl.

A lush and impressive set, Carlton, Mitchell, and Reid delivered these complex and beautiful compositions as an air-tight unit.

The second act, the multi-cultural Fjord Sounds, comprised a startling original combination of instruments—electric violin (Daniel Tsang), Telecaster (Bryn Larkin), and trombone (American Eric Quinn). For their debut and possibly only performance in this combination (Quinn is soon to relocate to New Zealand), they delivered a set of European music (largely Scandinavian, hence the band’s name) with one Tsang original.

Tsang, the leader of the band, has a degree in jazz and popular studies from Monash University. Having grown up in Hong Kong, he returned there after graduating in 2015 and abandoned music. After moving to Perth in 2020, just in time for COVID, he was inspired to take it up again and now teaches private students. He met his band-mates at jazz gigs around town: Quinn, who hails from Maine, at The Ellington; and Larkin, a Perth person, at Pete Jeavon’s Hyde Park Wednesdays.

Although Tsang cites as their precedent Jean-Luc Ponty’s Rights of Strings trio (violin, guitar, and bass), he was surprised to discover that he and guitarist Larkin shared a love of Polish violinist, composer, and music producer Adam Baldytch. Larkin had adapted various Baldytch tunes to the electric guitar. This formed the basis of the band, with Quinn’s trombone adding a delightfully unusual edge to their initial jam sessions.

Their repertoire the other night included three Baldytch compositions: The Room of Imagination, Village Underground, and Floricel. These were respectively, a folky violin piece underpinned by a finger-picked Telecaster and trembling trombone; an avant-garde/semi-classical round robin with each player taking turns to solo while the other two doubled on a slightly stubborn ostinato; and a beautifully lyrical, peaceful, and reflective meditation.

After a powerful opening with the first Baldytch, the second piece, an adaptation of Bela Bartok’s A Fairy Tale, was possibly a little too complicated and challenging for both the audience and the ensemble. They seemed to lose their stride, only to recapture it when they returned to Baldytch for their third tune.

From there on, the set became increasingly strong. Tsang’s Sunnu, a melancholy piece written in memoriam for one of his students, was very special, while Wolfgang Muthspiel’s guitar-driven Father and Son really took off. Larkin’s guitar came to the fore with his looped finger-picked chords overlain with fuzz lead, though Quinn’s horn melody and Tsang’s violin solo that rounded out the piece were both superb, especially when the two started duelling.

After the final Baldytch, the trio ended the set with a run of Scandinavian works: Espen Eriksen’s mellow, melancholic To Whom It May Concern; Brian Blake’s Born to Be Good, the perfect score for a Nordi Noir thriller; and Lars Danielsson’s chill Agnus Dei (Lamb of God).

The unusual combination of violin, electric guitar, and trombone worked extremely well. They created an unexpected and very, very funky sound that truly rocked along and took the audience onto a unique aural terrain. They may get in another gig before the end of the month when Quinn departs, but if they don’t, Tsang and Larkin intend to keep playing together and will look for a replacement—if not another trombone, probably another horn.

It's worth noting that Tsang’s electric violin uses a pickup system developed by New York Luthier Eric Acetheo. A maker of guitars and mandolins as well as violins, Acetheo is famous for his six-string electric violin, used by virtuosos Jean-Luc Ponty and Zach Brock. Tsang has one on order. Watch out for it.

IAN LILBURNE

Photos by Alan Holbrook