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If anyone wonders why terms like “jazz” and “improvised music” don’t cut it, look no further than two musicians performing in town this weekend: Boston saxophonist David Gross and Denver trumpeter Ron Miles. Gross, who plays Sunday at Enemy, reduces free improvisation to its most elemental qualities. Although he has a jazz background, over the years he’s eliminated all traces of jazz harmony, melody, and rhythm from his playing. In fact, he’s one of those guys (like fellow Beantowners Greg Kelley and Bhob Rainey of nmperign) who’s managed to make his horn sound unrecognizable. For Gross, the saxophone is just a sound generator. On last year’s Things I Found to be True (Sedimental), he doesn’t merely employ extended technique–he eschews any sort of conventional approach to the instrument. Miniature scraping sounds, breathy columns of spilled air, tongue flutters, reed pops, vocal cries muffled by the tubing of his alto sax—those are just the things I feel relatively confident identifying. At other times it sounds like he’s drinking something with a contact mike attached to his throat while jiggling a crumpled piece of aluminum foil in the bell of his horn. Gross will surely test the limits of most listeners, but I really enjoy giving myself over to his alien sound world. He’ll be joined by Chicagoans Jerome Bryerton (drums) and Jason Roebke (bass); all three will do solo sets and then improvise together.
