Recording: Mary Halvorson's Code Girl

Artist: Mary Halvorson's Code Girl

Song: Muzzling Unwashed

Recorded at The Tranzac's Main Hall (TONE Festival), June 26, 2022.

Mary Halvorson's Code Girl - Muzzling Unwashed

A full house came out for this TONE Fest show that saw a smartly-combined lineup of two groups approaching the intersection of pop forms and sonic questing from different directions. This sextet, anchored by guitarist Mary Halvorson's compositions, hinted at sophisticated jazz-pop (especially in Amirtha Kidambi's vocal work) but wasn't beholden to the pop form, with the pieces stretching out and finding different spaces and combinations to explore within the band, giving Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Brian Settles (tenor saxophone), Michael Formanek (double bass), and Tomas Fujiwara (drums) all room to shine. The very setup of the group on stage, an inverted V with Halvorson at the centre and furthest back (where the drummer would usually be) spoke to the anti-frontperson vibes — this is a deninitely meant to be considered as a group effort, and a chance for some Serious Listening.

Recording: The Out Louds

Artist: The Out Louds

Songs: [two excerpts]

Recorded at Array Space (The Music Gallery's Departures Series), June 18, 2016.

The Out Louds - [excerpt 1]

The Out Louds - [excerpt 2]

This Music Gallery off-site show brought together three guitar heroes in quite different contexts. Ironically, in the immediate aftermath of MTT's full-on set, one might have concluded that the night's final band was neither the most "out" nor the loudest group of the night. But this trio exchanged pure volume for some interesting new dimensions in sound-bending, many of which were thanks to Mary Halvorson's guitar work, which had a tendency to fold, twist and blip in unexpected ways. That made her an interesting foil to clarinettist Ben Goldberg as they wound their way through drummer Tomas Fujiwara's rhythms. More than the night's other sets, the improvisations here felt like explorations on more formally-prepared ideas, but from pretty ballads to reedy reels this was a rather intriguing ride.