Apricot Glow in performance June 30 at Cap Gun Studios in the West Bottoms (photo by Andrew Johnson)
Tomorrow morning at a coff — …No, wait. Not yet. For now, tonight. For now, the music itself. Now: Mallets ripple across crash cymbals. Saxophone, trombone, bassoon and sousaphone swell and rise. Bass guitar, electric guitar and congas trickle in. No one counted off here. None are in any sort of discernible sync. It begins wherever it begins, without precise location in time.
Tomorrow morning at a coffee shop up the bluff from the bottoms, drummer Evan Verplough and sousaphonist Rosie O’Brien will tell me about the beginnings of their band. They will tell stories of each of the eight musicians carving their own paths across the musical landscape of Kansas City, moving across different instruments, genres and cities to arrive here, forming what Verplough calls “collective spontaneous composition.” They call themselves Apricot Glow.
But stay with me tonight: Here, in a West Bottoms music venue, just a few blocks from where two rivers converge, churn and mix in the act of confluence. Stay with me here, where it’s not clear what is happening, or if anything is going to happen. The arrhythmic and discordant sound of a symphony warming up comes to mind — yet even that sound at least contains the forward-moving act of tuning instruments. But here, with eight absurdly incongruent instruments, each literally playing their own tune all at the same time, there’s no obvious forward movement, no path ahead. Polyphony, cacophony — what is this?
At the coffee shop tomorrow morning I will ask basic questions and receive simple answers: In addition to Verplough on drums and O’Brien on sousaphone and vocals, Apricot Glow includes bassist Aaron Osborne, percussionist RJ Shultze, bassoonist Rachel Lovelace, guitarist Fritz Hutchison, Leslie Butsch on alto sax and Alberto Racanati on trumpet. Beyond Apricot Glow these musicians play in a diverse range of music and arts groups ranging from True Lions to Sass-a-Brass, from The Swallowtails to the Kansas City Ballet, from Extemporaneous Music and Arts Society to Country Club Christian Church to Alber. Verplough will say how much he enjoys improvisational music and wanted to create music that is “experimental but sexier,” bringing in elements of funk and groove. “When we play,” he says, “I trust everyone is listening to each other deeply, listening for sounds, beats, moments that might be worth locking into for a few minutes.”
The music itself, tonight, here: The drums are the concrete foundation, the bass and bassoon and sousaphone are the frame, and the guitar, sax and trumpet are the windows. No, that’s not right. The bass is the spine, the saxophone and guitar are the nerves, and the sousaphone is… No, not right, either. How about this: The guitar is the root, the drums become the trunk, the bassoon branches out. No. Common metaphors for building or growing refuse to attach themselves clearly to the music of Apricot Glow. Who here is holding down the rhythm, who is choosing the key, which player is tasked with locating a melody and moving it forward?
Moving forward: tomorrow, coffee shop, questions. O’Brien shares her journey as a professionally trained soprano, and how much of her professional work as a musician is governed by the canon, perfection and limits, and how everything changed for her when she encountered carnival street music while living in New Orleans. Needing respite from her life as a professional singer, she found freedom when she picked up the sousaphone. She brings this freedom along with the avant-garde spirit of her vocals and auxiliary instruments into the spontaneous creative moments with Apricot Glow as well as her other creative project, Sass-a-Brass. “Some days I just need to get drunk in the street and play this huge horn with my friends.”
Suddenly. Tonight. Suddenly such questions, such expectations matter little. Suddenly something is happening. But again, there is no precise moment in time. The musical synchronicity here does not begin and end. It emerges. It ebbs and flows, rises and falls, churns and swells. Among the eight players improvising for several minutes, from within the sounds they’ve been playing, an idea has emerged among many. Which musician presented the idea does not matter; what matters is that the idea has arrived and gradually they are assenting to the strength of the idea’s wave washing over them. They lock in. Verplough keeps a beat going. A trickle of a melody passes from trumpet to guitar, from guitar to bassoon to sax to O’Brien’s voice and back to trumpet. Everything swirls and for a moment shares a shape. And then it’s gone. It lingers, not only in memory but in the traces of the music that follows. But it has shifted and become something new once again. This happens four or five times over the course of an hour, this expansion and retraction.
Questions, coffee, tomorrow. What are they after here? “We listen deeply,” says Verplough, “and we feel out when an idea has reached a conclusion. And then we agree it’s time to leave it and explore some more.”
Tonight the sun sets over train tracks and rivers as the band begins to wind down. Seems to wind down, wrap up, find conclusions. In the West Bottoms the sound of train brakes surrounds you if you listen long enough. Chh… chhh… chhhhh. Is that sound coming from the tracks outside? Chh chhh. No. The sound is emerging from in here. From which player, from which instrument is not clear. But the sound is there. And then the sound is an idea. Hutchison leans in on the guitar. Chh… chunk chunk. Down strokes come fast and hard. Verplough looks up and gives in, bringing the beat back to a train at full speed. Everyone jumps on board. For a few minutes everyone in the room is along for a ride. Then it slows down again, pulls into the station, the idea halts, the sounds disperse and scatter and slow down to a quiet Shh… shhhh… sshhhhhhh…
Apricot Glow will perform at 7 p.m. Sept. 26 at Kessler Park Reservoir, and will appear with Shy Boys, ROD and Bit-O-Honey from 6 to 9 p.m. Sept. 29 at Replay Lounge in Lawrence.
