The Brunt of Jazz at Sugar Maple

by

Saxophonist Gerrit Hatcher veers to the extremes of jazz with the quartet of which he is part, The Brunt. To make the group’s avant-garde sound approachable to newcomers. He suggests a visual analogy. 

“As someone who has enjoyed this variety of music for years, on recordings and in-person,” Hatcher declares, “I have to remind myself periodically how much more rewarding it tends to be as a live experience for a new listener. The work put into long-form improvised music is essentially sculptural in many ways, and the audience member is a witness to a piece, or a few pieces, that are each unique works wrought in that moment. It’s something to share in, and I think most listeners tap into this feeling of bearing witness to a creative work process pretty quickly if they are the kind of person who will ultimately have an affinity for the music.” 

Fledgling and full-fledged fans of experimental jazz can test or reengage their affinity for The Brunt’s kind of challenging creativity 7 p.m. Friday, Aug. 16 when Hacher and his fellow Chicagoans take the stage of Sugar Maple. Though the sax has become the means by which Hatcher makes his musical attacks, it wasn’t his first instrument. 

“I was a trombone player during my grade school through high school days,” recalls Hatcher, who has been playing saxophone for about 14 years, “and I learned jazz as a trombonist. I was pretty fixated on jazz from high school onwards and the majority of my favorite players were saxophonists. When it became clear in college that I was not on a path of being a particularly outstanding or interesting trombonist, I took up the tenor (saxophone) for the pleasure of playing the instrument of my favorite players—but most prominently Archie Shepp, Sonny Rollins, Albert Ayler, John Coltrane, Coleman Hawkins, Gene Ammons, Pharoah Sanders and Peter Broztmann. My favorite trombonists had much more patient personalities and economies of ideas than I really could deeply relate to as a player, and the saxophone immediately presented a set of tools I preferred.”

Sonic Stratosphere

Hatcher plies his tenor beside Dave Rempis’ multiple saxophones, Kent Kessler’s upright bass, and Bill Harris’ drums. The Brunts’ take on jazz is rooted is in the music's history yet striving for the sonic stratosphere of what they can do as co-improvisers. Though Hatch is inclined to leave descriptions of the ensemble's sound to critics, he encapsulates a Brunt show about as well as mere words may. 

“It’s the sweet spot of having an ensemble that will play to its absolute limits of density and intensity, but who also unabashedly share an essential jazz/blues idiom, at least as a sort of home space for this ensemble. Bill and Kent are masters of not making this sort of ‘home space’ hackneyed or overfamiliar but just the land we share, full of unique and novel features, and Dave and I are both down to push ourselves and our instruments to their limits without worrying formally over how we will land. It’s really just a good combination of artistic intuitions and pallets of taste, in my opinion,” Hatcher shares. Asking him what is about the City of Broad Shoulders he and his bandmates call home prompts a reply that considers multiple aspects of Chicago musical life. 

“It’s a question of how much the musical environment we have today in Chicago is attributable to the unique force and approach of individual lodestar musicians building the music in Chicago at large beyond their own careers, and how much is the material conditions of Chicago, like economics, demography and geography,” Hatcher posits. “So, it’s the connective tissue of collaborative ensembles and musician-led series and venues that creates the silhouette of such a huge family tree. In a break with almost all other contemporary art scenes, it creates a concrete sense of generational respect and continuity that you can go experience in a room in town any given week. The material conditions of the city come in in the sense that, with lower rents and in a certain sense more space than New York, for one example, the ecosystem we have is simply more favorable to continuity, to next year's state of play resembling last year's, to hanging out in the same bars and art spaces for consecutive years of your life, knowing where you'll find people, and the music, which fosters a type of musical development that cannot be cloned in isolation.” 

Sonic Assault

He is more direct as to how the foursome arrived at a name so descriptive of the force of their sound. "We are called The Brunt because Kent said he always liked the idea of calling a band The Brunt. We then agreed upon that immediately; I don’t think there was a single other contender or even another idea voiced." 

Though sonic assault may be most-often employed medium for The Brunt's musical sculptures, the members can sometimes surprise themselves with the paths their creations take them.

As Hatcher relates, “At a recent show at Chicago’s Constellation venue, we paused for a period of total silence in the middle of a piece, or I suppose it could have been an ending; but we all stood dead still, all convinced someone was about to continue. We make a lot of whistle stops with this ensemble. and it was just testament to the difference of this silence that it became a silent section, maybe a minute or two, rather than an ending.”

Will their Sugar Maple include any such pregnant pauses?

“The audience will get to see and hear some fellows wear themselves out real good, and most likely reach toward highs that are not curated climactic moments but still somehow inevitable. I cannot presage what they will take away, precisely,” Hatcher says. “A listener to another ensemble of mine at the Maple once told me we seemed like soldiers and the music like warfare, or something to that effect, maybe spiritual warfare. I say this because that's probably the last thing any of us would say, but it's an angle.” 

Here The Brunt are last year at Chicago's Elastic Arts performance space...