Joe Lovano & Shabaka at Dizzy’s Club NYC

NYC’s Winter Jazzfest is celebrating 20 years of midwinter programming this January, and doing it in style, with Shabaka as artist-in-residence. For an NYC-based Londoner, this is of course a point of pride – the London scene being so respectfully represented in this great cauldron of jazz – and also good news for NYC jazz fans, as we get to see Shabaka play five nights in a row.

This wasn’t Shabaka’s first showing at Winter Jazzfest – since 2017 he’s been here with Sons of Kemet, The Comet is Coming, and Shabaka and the Ancestors, as well as a saxophone for hire filling in for dropped out shows. This was Shabaka’s first time at Winter Jazzfest without his saxophone, and this was the first night of his residency, held at Dizzy’s and presented by Jazz at Lincoln Center in collaboration with Winter Jazzfest.

Shabaka’s change of instrument family was still clearly catching people by surprise; the venue’s website – Dizzy’s Club – was selling the tickets for this first gig of Shabaka’s residency as a two-tenor saxophone duel between him and Joe Lovano and Shabaka. As Shabaka started methodically soundchecking a battery of different types of flute (*) , it became clear this would be a night different to its billing. And as they started playing, it also became clear that the billing order – Lovano with Shabaka – should probably have been reversed, too.

Shabaka started quietly with the shakuhachi – the Japanese longitudinal flute we heard on his 2020 solo release Afrikan Culture. leading Lovano in, working the upper register of his tenor with his left hand while giving a percussive shake with his right hand. The attention was on the less-familiar sounds of the flute, and as Shabaka went on a musical exploration drawing from traditions from multiple continents with what felt like a never ending and magical array of different traditional flutes – end blown, side blown, fipple, vessel – he easily pulled the crowd along with him.

His transverse bamboo flute was delightfully breathy, with clipped short notes and Lovano supporting delicately on balance drum. His ocarina, accompanied by buddhist cymbal crashes. His long thin flute, controlled with a rapid finger covering and uncovering the opening at the end, produced a seemingly unbroken sequence of fleeting notes in the embouchure-only harmonic range of a simple bugle – hints of military tones meeting near-circular breathing.

The set of drone flutes – native american, mesoamerican and chinese, and made from wood, bamboo, and clay – really sung: one which looked like a set of bulky binoculars produced an otherworldly, almost theremin-style in its range switching and vibration; another a gourd-like flute which was richly chordal, with a fluttering multi-note drone; another flute with a flatter body and a strapped-on block, which Shabaka played almost in a gaelic folk style, sounding like the clearest bagpipes you’ve ever heard. The mastery of this diversity of flutes is of course in itself impressive, but more so was the familiarity of the musical ground – the same relentless rhythmic energy that ties all these flute impressions together, with a clear throughline from the exciting hype style of Shabaka’s previous band work.

Throughout the show Lovano added texture with his own small music shop of instruments: soprano, clarinet, rattles and gongs. It was only on the final piece in their concise set that the dynamic between Lovano and Shabaka switched. To close, Shabaka swapped woodwinds for a kalimba. And while Shabaka was engrossed, looking as if he was busy on a gameboy, Lovano let loose the long expressive and sorrowful tenor solo that he’d been holding back, to audible rapture from the crowd. But up until that point, the space and support Lovano gave to Shabaka throughout the show was in itself the highest mark of respect for Shabaka’s musicality, and testament to Lovano as a caring musician. When I spoke with Lovano in 2022 (LINK TO INTERVIEW) about his tribute album to Paul Motian Once Around the Room, he referenced how he cherished the different way in which Motian ran a band – sharing the space, without the formally defined role of improviser and supporter. My opinion of Lovano was already sky high – but his delicate support and partnership throughout this unusual show only reinforced it.

So, how much of a break from the past was Flute Shabaka? Was this Miles going electric? Was this Dylan going electric? For sure, this was less seismic. In the noise spectrum, Shabaka has moved in the introspective direction: more acoustic, more variation, more tradition. And it seems Shabaka’s songwriting and playing style easily cuts through, whether it is through a saxophone or otherwise. But still, in his closing words to the crowd, he understatedly implies that the cohesive musical decision that we witnessed maybe hadn’t been straightforward. “Change is never easy”.

Winter Jazzfest has changed, too. The inclusion of Brooklyn in the multi-venue marathon nights has been a real bonus, but for LJN jazz fans, there has also been a scaled back representation from London, with the noted absence in particular of the excellent Gilles Peterson-hosted BBC Music and PRS showcases of past years. Peterson is still here dj-ing this year, but perhaps the visa situation that caused so much trouble for line-ups in January 2020 (LINK TO REVIEW) before other events broke live music put an end to the transatlantic travel. This crowd was just glad Shabaka has made it back, and has moved in for the week.

(*) NOTE by Dan: I am not a flute expert… I was too shy to beat my way through the crowd to ask for names and historical references. But I would welcome any comments, clarifications and corrections on the names and types of flute referenced.