"There’s no better ticket for those who want to expand their knowledge beyond Miles and Trane but are sick of paying tourist prices to do it.” –New York Magazine
Named the “Best Jazz Show” by New York Magazine, The Checkout: Live from 92YTribeca is a not-to-be-missed monthly concert series presented by 92YTribeca and WBGO 88.3 FM, a world leader in jazz radio and one of the most respected jazz presenters in the country. Host Josh Jackson takes his broadcast music magazine The Checkout from WBGO’s airwaves to 92YTribeca’s Mainstage each month, giving audiences a chance to see the most exciting jazz performers on the scene today and discover the innovative musicians who are shaping its future.
Allison Miller’s Boom Tic Boom
When Downbeat Magazine wrote that “Allison Miller’s sponge-like love of all things musical could only mean she was destined to play it all,” the venerable jazz publication had not yet even heard the drummer and composer’s sophomore release with her Boom Tic Boom band, No Morphine, No Lilies. Yet they were right on the money: this leading-edge quartet’s new music—featuring Myra Melford on piano, Jenny Scheinman on violin, Todd Sickafoose on bass and Miller on drums—is at turns challenging and accessible, teasing and tough, virtuosic but never overbearing. It thrives on surprises and projects a vast array of tonal colors, rhythmic and harmonic shape-shifts and rich emotions. Recorded last year at Berkeley’s Fantasy Studios, No Morphine, No Lilies—co-produced by Miller and Sickafoose and featuring 11 compelling and far-reaching compositions—delivers on the promise first suggested by Boom Tic Boom’s acclaimed 2010 self-titled debut. Miller calls the album “a journey, meant to be listened to from the beginning to the end. I believe in creating a full album, and not single tracks.” When consensus is had, No Morphine, No Lilies is sure to be viewed as one of 2013’s cornerstone jazz recordings, energizing the genre and demanding that the music remains visceral, elevated and relevant to its time.
Sexmob
17 years strong, Sexmob is a venerable New York City music institution. The band's four founding members—Steven Bernstein, Briggan Krauss, Tony Scherr and Kenny Wolleson—defy genre, instead replacing it with their own inimitable musical language. It's fitting then that for their first new album in over seven years, Sexmob would choose to re-imagine the music of Nino Rota. It was Rota's imaginative compositions that set the tone for the surrealist films of the legendary director Federico Fellini. The Italian filmmaker once said, "My films, like my life, are summed up in circus, spaghetti, sex, and cinema." And thus accordingly Sexmob presents Cinema, Circus & Spaghetti (Sexmob Plays Fellini: The Music Of Nino Rota). Their latest 13-track collection is a welcome return to form by these giants of the NYC downtown scene as they dive headlong into Rota's iconic Fellini film melodies. Sexmob fearlessly explode musical parameters whether steering the arrangements through gutbucket swing or igniting them with New Orleans brass band second-line fervor, dubbing them out into ether or blasting them with punk jazz abandon. These classic themes are the perfect foil for Sexmob's improvisational psychedelia, old world beauty and hypnotic groove.
Tickets: $12 in advance / $15 day of show.