Mitch Marcus focuses on original music
This article appeared in Jazz Steps San Francisco, April 2002
The Cork Room at the back of Bruno’s in San Francisco’s Mission District is full on a Sunday night, as the Mitch Marcus Quintet holds forth. The cigar box-sized rectangle of a room is filled with the Quintet’s jagged-edge progressive jazz sound. The band is set up in the middle of the room, with the bar to the right, a few small tables to the left, and barely room for a row of listeners to stand up flat against the wall in front of the musicians. Yet despite the cramped quarters and unorthodox layout, the recently reopened Bruno’s is home to some of the Bay Area’s most inventive musicians, and squeezing yourself into the mix is usually worth it when the jazz lamp is lit.
The Mitch Marcus Quintet fills this bill with style. The band includes Marcus on tenor; Sylvain Carton, alto; Chad Wagner, piano; Ches Smith, drums; and Lorenzo Farrell, bass. The group uses complex and often surprising arrangements as a context for challenging solo excursions. It’s highly rewarding “outside” jazz. Accessible, yes, but not necessarily for the faint of heart.
The band has been together for two years, and Marcus and Carton have been playing together for ten, since their days at the Indiana University’s Jazz Studies program under jazz veteran Dave Baker. Marcus, 26, a Long Island native, came to the Bay Area four years ago, fresh from his Indiana experience, and Carton followed soon after.
Asked to comment on the group’s style, Marcus, interviewed in his Berkeley home, says simply, “We take risks.”
Marcus offers the quality of the group’s compositions as one the band’s hallmarks. “Our group is trying extra hard to focus on original music. Every single person in the quintet contributes. And the non-original music that we do, we create our own arrangements for.”
The group’s composing skills, along with the band members’ considerable chops, are on display on the quintet’s second CD, the recently released Entropious. Eight originals and a spirited reworking of Dizzy Gillespie’s “Bebop” show off the band’s writing, playing and ensemble work to great effect. Both the energy level and intimacy of the effort were enhanced by recording the CD in Marcus’ living room, a process that, perhaps amazingly, does not cost the recording anything in sound quality.
Although Marcus describes the group as a thorough collaboration, he says his ten-year partnership with Carton provides a special dynamic. “You just get to know how a person thinks,” he explains. “When you’re writing, you know that whatever you’re imagining, it can be played. We have fun just writing stuff to challenge each other, whether it be time signature, complex rhythms or harmonies.”
Marcus explains that working in intricate time structures often seems to come naturally for the group. “Not just to be different,” he says. “Only if it works for the melody. Usually, we end up stunned by it. I’ll be playing a melody and say, ‘What’s that? Let’s keep it.’ Ches is a master at that. He can break down anything and layer it, put polyrhythms on top of it. He constantly teaches me new things.”
The group has a tour tentatively scheduled for the summer, and a headlining date at Yoshi’s in June. But they may also have an adjustment to make, as pianist Wagner has recently moved to New York. “I still consider him the piano player,” Marcus says. “He’s still contributing music. We’re fine playing without a chordal instrument. We’ve been doing some gigs with Graham Connah, and Matt Clark’s going to do some gigs with us. Those guys are all great. But we love playing with Chad, obviously. He’ll be flying in for the Yoshi’s gig.”
For Marcus, the Quintet is just the beginning of the story. He’s beginning a regular Sunday night trio engagement at Raleigh’s Grill in Berkeley with Quintet members Smith and Farrell. A partial list of his other projects includes two electric funk and jazz groups, Blue and Tan and Mood Food. Then there’s the Japonize Elephants (a 10-piece acoustic group with influences including bluegrass, klezmer, and Zappa), and Mega-Mousse (more or less an electric version of the Elephants).
With all this going on, Marcus acknowledges, if a bit reluctantly, that the Quintet is his number one focus. “It’s so awesome working with this group,” he says. “Everybody always has something original to contribute. Sometimes we say, ‘Let’s add this here and this here,’ but usually we just start playing and it happens. ‘Oh yeah, let’s keep that.’”
« Go back