Nomad Trio// Horvitz Larsen Duo

Doors: 6:30pm

COVID PROTOCOLS: All our staff are fully vaccinated, and we ask that our patrons be vaccinated as well. Our staff will be masked, and we encourage our audience to wear masks as much as possible.

Advance tickets can only be purchased online-we do not sell advance tickets at the venue. Refunds are not available within 48 hours of the event. Tickets do not guarantee seating during shows at the Royal Room. Seating is first come first served. The Royal Room is All Ages until 10pm.

Guitarist and oud player Gordon Grdina lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, but more and more, he is interacting with creative musicians in New York. His latest recording, which features his guitar work in the main, is with a trio including pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Jim Black, both card-carrying members of a Brooklyn scene that long ago stopped feeling like it could be contained by the word “jazz”. 

Nomad is a potent mix. Grdina’s music sometimes incorporates themes and influences from Iraq or Egypt, with his oud playing helping to blend traditions. He is also an accomplished free improviser and a player with strong instincts for motivic improvising in the post-bop tradition. As with so many other Vancouver musicians, he crosses the borders of harmonic and rhythmic daring without much fuss. The music here sets up loose structures for wild improvising but also includes a healthy menu of hot unison licks and fleet melodies.

The partnership with Mitchell and Black, then, makes sense. Black, of course, was the rocking jazz drummer who powered so many brilliant “downtown” sessions 20 years ago (with, for example, Chris Speed) and has since made both sensitive and flashy sessions with so many musicians. Mitchell leaps from relatively mainstream playing (with trumpeter Dave Douglas) to frenetic New Jazz that blends complex composition in wild time patterns with near-heavy metal veins of power. With Grdina bringing his slightly acid-toned guitar into this conversation, the result sounds natural and fiery.

Opening the evening will be Wayne Horvitz and Ray Larsen.