Frog Squad has been turning heads for a few years now, especially among free jazz aficionados. But unlike, say, Dopolarians or other strictly “free” combos based solely on improvisation, Frog Squad has a secret weapon: composition. Memphis Flyer readers know of Frog Squad founder David Collins’ compositions from our feature from this March, focused on his album Memphis, painstakingly scored for quintet. But fewer know that his gift for jazz ensemble scoring overlaps with his Frog Squad work.
Yet that was abundantly clear last night, when Frog Squad took to the stage in The Green Room at Crosstown Arts. And, ironically, Collins’ talent for arranging was brought to light not through his own compositions, but through his interpretations of the work of Erik Satie.
It was intriguing from the start: the work of one of classical music’s most minimalist composers re-imagined by an eight-piece free jazz ensemble. But this wasn’t just any ensemble. The group featured Hope Clayburn on alto saxophone and flute, Franko Coleman on tenor sax and flute, Aaron Phillips on baritone sax and bass flute, Cedric Taylor on keyboards, Khari Wynn on bass, Jon Harrison on drums, and Collins on guitar, with occasional group member Chad Fowler joining on saxello, C Melody sax, alto sax, and flute. This is a heavy band under any circumstances, but especially so when guided by Collins’ arrangements and one of the greatest composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The final sound achieved by the group revealed just how versatile and open to improvisation Satie’s music is. Collins’ approach was to transpose pieces most often known as piano works to full band voicings, using the four horn players sometimes as an integrated unit, sometimes as individual soloists. And solo they did, with great passion and abandon. Fowler and Clayburn especially made use of the full range of their reed instruments’ possibilities for honks, shrieks, and wails, then reined themselves in on a dime to return to the horn section’s arrangements. Meanwhile, the guitar, bass, keyboard, and drums held down funk/jazz grooves the likes of which have never been applied to Satie, one can be sure.
In all, eight pieces were featured: “Gnossiennes” 1-4, “Je Te Veux,” and “Gymnopédies” 1-3. Surely the highlight was Satie’s ethereal “First Gymnopédie,” with the delicate, waltzing chords played by the horn section, as Collins outlined the melody with echoing guitar.
The end result was beyond category. One might compare it to the finer instrumental work of Frank Zappa, or perhaps the wilder, latter day efforts by Gil Evans, but ultimately it was its own sound. There were even lighthearted moments, as when the horn section’s oom-pah-pah dynamics were amplified by all the players doing knee bends in time to their parts. And an intriguing bit of futurism was added by effects pedals that Clayburn and Phillips played through, not to mention some fine synth renderings by Taylor.
The nearly-full Green Room audience was fully engaged, cheering loudly for each fresh take on Satie, then demanding an encore and rounding off the night with uproarious applause.
As the band packed their instruments, I asked Collins how long it had taken him to craft this approach to Satie. “For about a month and a half, that was all I thought about,” he said, as he described driving, walking, or eating with Satie’s music looping through his head. Then there was one full band rehearsal, a smattering of play-throughs with the rhythm section, and a recent ‘incognito’ gig at B-Side Memphis, also known as “a rehearsal,” to quote saxophonist Chad Fowler.
“We recorded the B-Side show, and for tonight we have both the audio and video,” said Collins. “Soon I’ll be taking the best tracks from both shows and making an album out of it.”