There’s something especially great about stepping into an unassuming, low-profile performance space -- preferably down a flight or two of stairs -- and seeing an amazing musical performance that seems like it should have a whole lot more people paying a whole lot more attention to it. (Well, it’s great from the music fan’s point of view; the musicians may or may not find it as charming).
Whether it was seeing the great free-jazz trio The Fringe play a raging set in a ballet studio above a Marxist education center in Cambridge (complete with traffic sounds from Massachusetts Avenue below), or bluegrass great David Grisman putting on a clinic in a small park in Telluride, Colo., I’ve had the chance to experience this sense of stolen musical excitement more than once.
Many of those memories were created by Club d’Elf, a band that has staked out a more-or-less biweekly residency at the Lizard Lounge in Cambridge since 1998. It’s hard to spot the venue from the street, unless you know you’re looking for the basement of Cambridge Common, a perfectly fine but essentially standard pub catering to a mainstream college crowd. Down a tightly curled staircase, one encounters a red-carpeted enclave that houses the likes of poetry slams and the more experimental musical conjurations available in Boston on a given evening.
There are many times I’ve been convinced that a d’Elf show there just had to be the most exciting and important live music happening anywhere on that particular evening within a very wide radius.
Before its flight to Hudson, N.Y., Club Helsinki in Great Barrington was one of the few venues in the Berkshires to house that sense of intimate, unassuming musical brilliance. Its new digs are much grander, but the spirit endures, and on Saturday, Oct. 15, the new Helsinki Hudson will house a show by Club d’Elf.
Club d’Elf is an ensemble of rotating membership, featuring leader and bassist Mike Rivard and an ever-changing musical coterie culled from the ranks of top-notch session types, as well as international world music stars and avant-jazz experimenters. Players rotate in and out with varying levels of frequency, based on their availability and Rivard’s scheduling tastes. Their highest-profile shows tend to come with longtime collaborator and keyboard master John Medeski on hand, and this holds true for the Helsinki date.The core of the sound is a Moroccan-infused, groove-oriented set of trance vamps, approached with a jazz sensibility and covered with a splash of electronica. Depending on the personnel at a given gig, the sound can tip toward that of a heavily percussive, North African dance party, or employ those rhythms as the foundation for some dissonant, outre-jazz explorations. Each show is an event unto itself.
Unlike other Medeski excursions, this one is not part of a mini-tour of the Northeast.
"It’s been awhile since we’ve been there," Rivard said in a telephone interview, referencing the band’s previous appearance at Helsinki Hudson in April, also with Medeski on board. "We’re just trying to keep the music happening in that part of the country. And John was available, so we said, ‘Let’s put on a show.’"
Club d’Elf played the old Club Helsinki in Great Barrington on at least three occasions, but visits to the Berkshires and environs have never been a regular part of the band’s itinerary. Right now the band is focused on expanding its geographic reach, Rivard said.
"We just try to keep pushing the boundaries, to take it to places we haven’t taken it to before," he said, adding that he has applied for some grants to bring the group to Morocco. "We’d like to take what we’ve taken from Morocco, and kind of digested and added our own special sauce, and bring it back and show them what we’ve done."
Much like the group’s circular improvisational style, Club d’Elf has seemingly hovered at the same place on the periphery of the jazz and jamband worlds for some time, never quite becoming a hot commodity but always remaining an exciting and relevant musical recommendation to the uninitiated. In addition to Medeski, also in the band that night will be Moroccan oud and doumbek master Brahim Fribgane (in one man, the heart and soul of the d’Elf approach) and first-chair drummer Dean Johnston. As of two weeks before the gig, Rivard was still nailing down the personnel, and had received word that former David Bowie guitarist Reeves Gabrels might be able to make it.
Whatever the lineup, it’s a good club to be a part of.
Upcoming
Concerts of note this week around the Berkshires include "The Love Show," featuring five of New York’s most acclaimed soul vocalists at 8 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 1, at Mass MoCA in North Adams, and the Emerson String Quartet at the South Mountain Concert Hall in Pittsfield at 3 p.m. Sunday, Oct. 2. For details of these concerts and others, check out the calendar pages on IB 13-18 or visit advocateweekly.com.
