Medeski, Martin & Wood, a jazz-fusion trio from Brooklyn, brought some hot funk jams to the Port City Music Hall on the first snowy evening of the year, last Saturday, Dec. 5. The band played without an opener, grooving almost nonstop for three hours with only a twenty minute break in between their two sets.
The band consists of three guys in their forties and an arsenal of instruments large enough to require an 18-wheeler moving truck.
John Medeski, a balding, broad-shouldered man, plays keys. Walled in by a veritable cage of synthesizers, keyboards and a Steinway piano, Medeski hopped around to his different instruments, at times flapping his arms like a giant bird as he jams on two keyboards at once. At other times, he pushed the keys with grand motions that start in his shoulders, mouthing the notes he played, his eyebrows furrowed intently.
While Billy Martin’s drum set was relatively small in comparison, including only two cymbals, Martin had two large tables of handbells, cowbells, tambourines and shakers spread out behind him. When the band was really cooking on an uptempo funk tune, Martin raced around his kit, playing lightning-fast tom fills and drivingly energetic snare backbeats. When the mood was mellower, his style migrated to undulating rhythmic ride patterns and ambient sounds played with hand percussion.
Bassist Chris Wood, a skinny guy with a sly grin and an intense stare, completed the lineup. Standing behind a sea of pedals, Wood played both upright and electric basses, switching relatively frequently to match the band’s constantly changing moods.
Indeed, this variety in the band’s sound is one of the most impressive things about them. They navigated fluidly from atonal, free-form improvisations to hot groove-driven funk tunes to classy jazz waltzes, often doing all of this without stopping. Instead, they’d simmer down to quietly rolling rhythms that slowly transform into new styles. While these transitions often had some element of structure, for the most part, they happened through careful listening and eye contact among the three musicians.
This ability to communicate seamlessly has been forged over the 18 years the trio has spent playing together. From their origins as an acoustic jazz trio performing around New York City in the early 90s, the band has released 20 records, including an album for children and two recordings with the world-class jazz guitarist John Scofield. The show on Saturday drew a diverse crowd and had everyone from older fans of their traditional jazz tracks to young hippies digging their electric jams.
The show ended with an insanely fast and funky encore, warming up the crowd one last time before we all headed back out into the snowy night.