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For next week’s paper I’ve written a Critic’s Choice about upcoming gigs at the Hungry Brain (10/19) and the Chicago Cultural Center (10/20) by New York saxophonist Tony Malaby, bassist Ingebrigt Haaker Flaten, and drummer Nasheet Waits; in it I discuss two of Malaby’s recent trio recordings. What I didn’t get around to was his very different Cello Trio, which celebrates the release of a brand-new album called Warblepeck (Songlines) Wednesday night at the Hideout. It was recorded earlier this year with percussionist John Hollenbeck (Claudia Quintet) and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm, who’ll both join Malaby here.
The huge distance between these two extremes helps the group keep things lively and varied. The three players work in pretty disparate scenes these days–Malaby mostly in freebop contexts, Lonberg-Holm in sometimes woolly, sometimes introspective free improv, and Hollenbeck in increasingly composition-oriented settings–which gives the group a big palette. But each musician can also operate comfortably in either of his partners’ area of specialization.
