Like fire and ice, the two emerging bands that played Wednesday night at HotHouse hardly could have been more diametrically opposed.
Yet despite stylistic differences, they shared at least one critical trait: Each was determined to toss jazz convention to the winds and did so with unmistakable eloquence.
Dutch saxophonist Jorrit Dijkstra created the Flatlands Collective not long after he moved to to the U.S. in 2002 and began collaborating with Chicago musicians. But if the Midwest’s topography inspired the name of the band, it had scant effect on the nature of Dijkstra’s music, which was anything but flat.
Richly textured, subtly nuanced and built on multiple layers of melody, the music of the Collective merged the free-thinking nature of the Chicago avant-garde with elements of contemporary European classical composition. Much of this music suggested an intensely cerebral exercise, with carefully engineered stop-start rhythms, delicate dabs of electronically produced sound and a nearly complete avoidance of a straightforward beat.
When the band ventured into the occasional swing passage, one was startled to hear it, since practically everything else about this ensemble steered clear of the jazz mainstream.
If at first the music sounded so diffuse and muted as to lack coherence, before long the repertoire became more lucid and structured (or did our ears simply become adjusted to its aesthetic?). The other-worldly hums and drones that Dijkstra produced on lyricon, which might be described as a kind of digital clarinet wired to a computer, were answered by pungent bursts of dissonance from the rest of the band in a piece titled “Slitch.”
And in the last work of the set, “Dipje,” the band produced the exquisite blends of instrumental color one might sooner expect from a classical chamber ensemble.
In the end, the Flatlands Collective linked the intellectual firepower of the Dutch free-jazz scene with the instrumental virtuosity of some of Chicago’s most accomplished creative improvisers, including trombonist Jeb Bishop and cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm.
Though the band still must be considered a work-in-progress, it deserves respect for the unorthodox musical direction it’s pursuing.
If the Flatlands Collective aimed for a studious brand of jazz, the comparably adventurous Kneebody–making its Chicago debut–strove for a much more visceral, accessible, beat-driven sound. Though not exactly dance music, the band’s rock-tinged backbeats, back-to-basics riffs and motor-rhythm passages suggested it was playing for an audience that approaches jazz from a pop perspective.
Even so, there was much more here than a casual listening might suggest. Just when the band seemed to be sinking into a rhythmic groove, it sabotaged expectations by changing or suspending its tempo or meter. And by juicing up its acoustic work with keyboard electronics and other computer-processed sound, Kneebody italicized its every gesture.
Some of the most impressive work came from keyboardist Adam Benjamin, who produced a galaxy of space-age sound, while trumpeter Shane Endsley and tenor saxophonist Ben Wendel formed a taut and muscular front line.
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hreich@tribune.com
