By Peter Lyons Hall
On the summer solstice weekend the five members of the Savage & Smit Quintet played before an appreciative audience at the intimate Amity Gallery venue in the Amity hamlet of Warwick NY.
Free verse poets express themselves without rhyme or meter, preferring to not be bound by conventional constraints that determine the outcomes of phrases that describe ideas that come to mind. And in like fashion these musicians were set free to converse with one another without having to be bound by rhythm or melody. And the result was an extraordinary display of new music that held the attention of the audience throughout the performance. But this music was not for the Shazam users to be able to identify.
At times it was like Pat Metheny was having a musical conversation with Phillip Glass, with precise rhythms delivered by drummer Pete MacDonald drums and Ryan Berg, on the acoustic bass, while the other musicians interspersed relevant comments to the topic. Their music has been described as “meditative”, “healing”, and “adventurous.” Savage & Smit improvise their performances entirely, in a broad style similar to “jazz” music released on ECM records. Their latest release “Of Course” is available on all platforms with recommended listening on BandCamp. The Quintet was led by Rick Savage on trumpet/flugelhorn and Ian Smit guitar/fx, with Joe Vincent Tranchina expertly filling in the phrases with just the right touch on his Yamaha keyboard.
Sometimes, Tranchina started off the performance; at other times it was Ian Smit who began a riff. The music was totally engaging with the attentive guests and, at times, the members of the band exchanged answers to questions and/or comments that were encouraged by Savage. One member of the audience even suggested that Berg and MacDonald begin the next piece with a rhythm of their own to see how the others would join in. What followed was a brilliant improvisation of another spontaneous composition without a name. Savage, meanwhile, was quietly recording the music for future reference.
The quintet performed while displays of art from the Warwick Drawing Group adorned the walls of the venue, as part of the monthly exhibits at the gallery. The July Exhibit at the Amity Gallery presents “Dreamscapes” the multi-media works from Warwick, NY-based printmaker Sharon Lindenfeld. Beginning with observational drawings and past print works, she engages small moments from one piece to form the basis of another, creating vast, dreamlike spaces. The images are repeatedly altered through various printmaking, hand, and digital processes, including etching, engraving, painting, collage, Photoshop, and artificial intelligence, allowing for spaces to emerge and transform. Creating landscape in this prolonged way of etching, carving and reimagining echoes geological processes such as erosion and metamorphism.
To learn more about the Amity Gallery and its unique presentations throughout the season, click on www.amitygallery.org. The Gallery at 110 Newport Bridge Road, Warwick, NY 10990 is open on weekends on Saturdays and Sundays, from 1-4pm.
Photo credit: Peter Lyons Hall
L to R: Ryan Berg, Ian Smit, Joe Vincent Tranchina, Pete MacDonald, and Rick Savage
