Lock in your Lexington Saturday night plans: Friends & Neighbors at The Kentucky School

 

It would be a pretty good idea to be in Lexington, KY on Saturday night.  The quintet Friends & Neighbors is gonna be in town tomorrow night for an April 6th show at The Kentucky School.  The Norwegian group will bring their intriguing mix of old-school free jazz and new-school avant-bop.  The cadences and whirlwind free-for-all echoes the 1960s improvisational era when names like Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry were obliterating conventional jazz structures, but there’s a stomp and a sway to their music that reflects the modern approach of warping traditional music into something far less familiar.  But, hell, there’s not going to be any test, so don’t feel compelled to learn or understand anything I just typed.  What’s most important is to know that this is a band that has tons of energy and performs music that’ll be lively and fun and electric.  It’s exactly the kind of show you want to spend your Saturday night enjoying.

The show is going down at The Kentucky School, over in the North Limestone neighborhood and sharing the same intersection as Al’s Bar, Arcadium, Beach House and North Lime Donuts.

This is the 15-year anniversary, and Event #209, of Ross Compton’s Outside the Spotlight series.  Ross is one of those local music scene heroes who devotes a ton of sweatwork bringing great music to his community.  There have been a ridiculous wealth of talent from the experimental and jazz pool that has performed in Lexington because of Ross’s efforts.  And most of those shows, like this one, is free to the public.

The shows happens tomorrow, Saturday, April 6th.  Doors open at 6:30pm, show starts at 7pm.

The band is:  Thomas Johansson (trumpet), André Roligheten (tenor saxophone & clarinets), Oscar Grönberg (piano), Jon Rune Strøm (double bass) and Tollef Østvang (drums).

Here’s a track off their solid 2016 release What’s Wrong? We have no way of knowing what any one live show will ultimately sound like, but here’s a sense of what’s what:

You can buy this album on Amazon.  It was released by Clean Feed Records, and you can buy the album direct from their store.

The show details:

When:  Saturday, April 6th, 2019 at 7:00pm

Where:  The Kentucky School.  607 North Limestone, Lexington, KY.

It’s a free show.

The Facebook Event page-> LINK

The Kentucky School’s site-> LINK

The artist’s site-> LINK

Here’s a video from their gig at the Portalegre JazzFest 2017…


And take note, this show is just the precursor of many other excellent shows coming through Lexington over the next sixty days.  That list includes:

  • Friday, April 12 – TIm Daisy & Raleigh Dailey @ UK’s Niles Gallery
  • Tuesday, April 16 – Dave Rempis, Brandon Lopez, Ryan Packard @ KY Fun Mall
  • Friday, April 20 – Keigo Hirakawa @ TeeDee’s Progressive Bluegrass Club
  • Tuesday, April 30 – The Chicago Plan (of Steve Swell, Gebhard Ullmann, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Michael Zerang) plus the quartet of Keefe Jackson, Christoph Erb, Jason Roebke, Tim Barnes @ UK’s Niles Gallery
  • Friday, May 3 – Regina Carter & Xavier Davis @ First Presbyterian Church of Lexington
  • Wednesday, May 15 – Brian Krock’s liddle @ JGumbosLex

Details for all of the above shows to follow soon.