Jake Richter’s Double Drum Octet
Barbès
Brooklyn
1/25/24
What would possess a drummer so lighting-limbed as Jake Richter to enlist the aid of second percussionist? I wondered this as I watched his band set up, an experience akin to being a bystander of a lesser Babel’s construction.
The small showroom at Barbès could hardly hold the octet of three saxophones, two trumpets, upright basses, and two full drum kits. A full read of the night would require this, in some way, to act as the beginning of the aesthetic case Richter was to soon make. Where one would ungenerously assume an arrogant maximalism, Richter rendered a vibrant community.
The set’s opening blasted with a polymetric bombast between Richter and his compatriot percussionist Chris Garriga. Here any questions considering the necessity of two drumkits were answered in full — it’s a sound rarely experienced, a counterpoint of rhythm.
Richter would later say, between tunes, that this octet was constructed for the sake of posing and answering questions regarding what he terms “folkloric music.”
If one of the aspects of Richter’s folkloricism is the leveling of hierarchy, the equal participation of all musicians involved, there couldn’t have been a better illustration than this unifying of two drummers in conversation with each other.
Thesis established, the first tune began proper: Crunchy harmony from the horns, lugubrious and oily over the rhythmic barrage. Opposites co-existing. An unpredictable build to a sudden break and—Bam!—the roiling shimmer of a solo tenor saxophone wrestled by the hands and breath of Xavier del Castillo.
By and large the solos featured in the ensemble’s two sets were of a variety that is very close to my heart. It’s that sort of improvisation that aims to tear the moment to shreds — hot, fiery, violent, and near cosmic. There is often, though, a risk in this approach. Namely, it can sound forced if a case hasn’t been made for such ecstasy, for the necessity of this reaching for transcendence.
As precondition, this type of playing risks alienating an uninitiated audience, of sounding solipsistic and masturbatory.
And here we have the brilliance of Richter’s compositional approach, which — spectacle of the ensemble aside — was the real star of the evening.
Richter’s pieces, eight altogether I believe, demonstrated a deep and abiding respect not only for the art of musical composition, but also for the musicians tasked to play it. Composers often suffer from a sadistic temperament, constructing twisted puzzles and games for their ensembles to flounder through. This is far from the case with Jake Richter — the games he constructed were fun to play and all built on his developing folkloric approach.
“It’s about community,” he said during the set. One’s traditions and story melding with all the others.
Richter, being a Midwesterner, brings a sort of equanimous Protestantism and ethic to his work as a composer, the most naked examples of which would be his tendency toward hymnody and the primacy of call-and-response in his structuring of musical forms.
It’s a rare treat to listen to a percussionist with such an earnest and tuneful ear. One tune in particular (most were unnamed), toward the end of the first set, rocked me in its simple sophistication: A long, winding ensemble melody, the likes of which one might expect from high-period Ornette Coleman, giving over not to the expected solo-section riff and changes, but instead to several completely open, unaccompanied solos. The tune comes back, and process repeats—
This sort of music is difficult to write about, and I’m struggling to convey what was so moving about this very simple tune. It’s the completion of Richter’s communal argument: a place for each voice in the collective and time for each voice to be heard alone. It’s about trust, mutual respect, and sanctity of good music, good art, good folks.
So, why the octet? Why the two drummers? Why so much?
Not to be chintzy or overly saccharine, but the answer to these questions can only be: The more, the merrier. Richter’s achievement here was the summary elevation of everyone involved. For a few hours on Thursday night, eight people were inarguably one. Richter’s on some deep souled shit — humility as strength, kindness as power, music as message.
