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Le Voyage Preaches The Whole Story


Le Voyage Preaches The Whole Story

Minnesota’s experimental jazz navigators, Le Voyage, played two sets at Icehouse in Minneapolis on April 2. 

Spiritual affiliates of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM), the quartet played all originals. They explored the full range of dynamics with intensity that was unstinting, whether it was drummer Steve Hirsh’s quiet finger-taps setting up the combustibles of several tunes or reed man Donald Washington’s vocal by-play with his partners. 

Between creative solos and choruses on tenor and baritone saxes and clarinet, Washington syncopated Hirsch’s beats with tambourine, rang a cowbell with a vigor that warned off any evil spirits haunting Icehouse. Throughout the performance Washington’s vocals, somewhere between shouts and scatting praise songs, urged the band, particularly tenor man Matt Trice, to tell “The Whole Story.” 
To the suggestion that he was inspired by Mingus and a better singer, he chuckled appreciatively and later said he had not come to the show with plans to sing but responded when the spirits called. And call they did, with at least one audience member taking up Washington’s calls’ demands for like responses. The vocals in the last piece, at first with Washington seated behind his array of horns, started with percussive grunts and progressed during the solos by Trice, bassist Dick Studer and Hirsh into full-blown full-body, arms-beseeching exhortations that worked a kinetic juju to invoke the African soul of jazz. 
Washington and Trice traded apt leadership on the saxes, blowing slow or fast, solo or complimenting the other’s lead. Trice’s breath sometimes barely teased a quavering series of notes through the reed when the sound of finger taps on his keys seemed as deliberate a part of the piece as the following crescendo of the full quartet. Hirsh’s drumming was most unique when creating the initial moods for the music to follow, using finger taps, scrapes on cymbals or muffled sticks on toms but his attacks in the band’s full bore choruses were vigorous and left only the essential openings unfilled. Studer, playing a reduced-depth upright bass, would pluck or bow with abandon and later rub strings to build a quiet solo drone for listeners. 
This writer is insufficiently educated in post-bop musical nomenclature but I think that Le Voyage navigates AACM territory, ventures into Sun Ra’s universe and down Coleman’s avant guard tracks. Le Voyage’s pieces, some stretching to 20 minutes or more, are both improvisational and fully composed.  

Listeners who get sometimes lost in the subtleties of modern recorded jazz, most of us, I think, will find that experiencing the same kind of music live, in-person, will up the entrancement factor significantly.
While at Icehouse, do some deeper reading in the drinks menu. Some of the concoctions outrage the laws of single malt — Laphroig, even just as a “rinse” - with rye, hibiscus orange oleo-saccharum, lemon, coffee and orgeat! Laphroig !!! There, my snobbishness is showing. 
Be adventuresome though, next time I order “For His Majesty” (sazerac, black pepper gin & pine smoke absinthe rinsed glass), it will be a double! 

Sound is excellent in the modestly sized Icehouse room, with mics and amps turned down except for the bass and kick drum. If it’s not too packed, take “His Majesty” for a tour of the room and balcony space for alternative sight lines and sound experiences. 
Sample here:  https://soundcloud.com/user-865188252/whos-driving. Follow this way:  https://www.facebook.com/hearlevoyage/. Thanks for hosting:  www.icehousempls.com.
Hear Le Voyage at Saint Paul’s Khyber Pass on Grand and Snelling on May 31. 9:30. No cover.
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