You could call Dave Douglas’s partners in High Risk the quintessential 21st-century rhythm section – except the quartet’s time-bending mashup of electronic music, hip-hop, rock and improv jazz could as easily be from the 22nd. The brilliant US trumpeter is touring with the traditional jazz trio of piano, bass and drums – except the pianist is replaced by DJ Shigeto on turntables. Groove Collective bass guitarist Jonathan Maron and the astonishing Son Lux drummer Ian Chang round out the group.
Douglas played with a brassy, full-toned lyricism and in shapely jazz lines for much of this unusual show – while all hell broke loose around him. When Chang delivered fusillades of jolting backbeats and clattering reverberations, like a pool player’s break shot replayed on a loop, Douglas was sometimes unperturbed, but other times provoked into wild rejoinders. In a lyrical duet with the leader, Shigeto sounded orchestral and percussive at once. The group briefly veered toward jazz swing, with Chang playing his own wayward notion of the concept almost entirely on cymbals. Late in the set they delivered a powerful valediction to Michael Brown, who was killed by police in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014.
There were a couple of longeurs in this packed show, and High Risk could have eased off the throttle more often, but Douglas issued a telling reminder that few jazz-rooted leaders can splice traditional and fearlessly genre-busting music more intriguingly than he can.
