Free concerts: JazzPOP brings new sounds to the Hammer
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Think of this month’s small helping of free concerts in the Hammer Museum courtyard as a mini-appetizer to this fall’s Angel City Jazz Festival. Following a similar mission as the festival in highlighting artists taking jazz into a variety of innovative new directions, the first of three planned concerts happens this Thursday with Bay Area-born bassist Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors ensemble.
Released in 2008 on the daring local label Cryptogramophone, Sickafoose’s most recent album was one of that year’s best with atmospheric, Americana-dusted flourishes reminiscent of Bill Frisell and an easy-swaying groove braced by woozy brass and top-flight violinist Jenny Scheinman. Though seldom seen on the West Coast since moving to Brooklyn in 2005, Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors is also scheduled to perform at REDCAT as part of the Angel City festival’s lineup in late September.
Curated by San Francisco-based bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, JazzPOP’s lineup also includes bass clarinetist Aaron Novik’s Thorny Brocky (Aug. 11) and the raucous Empty Cage Quartet (Aug. 18). The only downside to a such a menu of unfettered jazz at no cost? That three weeks in August can pass so quickly.
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-- Chris Barton
