Ars Nova Presents: Chad Taylor Quintet
Solar Myth
1131 S Broad St.
Philadelphia
November 16, 2025
This weekend gave way to a singular show from The Chad Taylor Quintet at Solar Myth (which I keep wanting to just call “The Myth”; whether it catches on or not, don’t mind me, I’m doing it). The Philly jazz unit is led, no surprise here, by the great drummer and percussionist Chad Taylor. Though nominally Taylor's group, I was pleased that the collective presented, and played, like a true band of equals, sharing compositional duties — they were not just trading solos, but trading roles.
The ensemble played several long pieces, essentially performing their new album Smoke Shifter front to back, and the program was surprisingly faithful to the record, but with much more energy, edge and snarl. As good as Smoke Shifter is, the live show was sonically and improvisationally altogether more intense, more exciting and more gorgeous; sitting in the second row, the power and volume of the drums and the most emphatic vibraphone hits were overwhelming (in a good way!) at times. Credit where it’s due to the great sound at Solar Myth.
The late, great Derek Bailey wrote in his book Improvisation: Its Nature and Practice in Music something to the effect (I’m paraphrasing) that there is no such thing as a recorded improvisation: it only exists, truly, in the moment, and the recording is just that: a recording. Basically, “you had to be there” in the way the actual experience plays on your senses differently than a recording ever could. (I’d go further and say that the same goes for live music in general, of course, one of the many reasons I love covering shows for Midbrow.) I was somewhat surprised, listening to Smoke Shifter today, that the Quintet more or less played the LP front to back, but no matter how loud I turned it up in my car, it just didn’t hit as hard as it did live.
It was in the way Victor Vieira-Branco’s vibraphone sounded: far fuller, an almost frighteningly potent and enveloping texture, a far cry from the relative smallness of the album’s mix. It was in the way that Taylor clearly drove the ensemble, playing with greater dynamics, louder than loud, the intricacies of his rhythms (and all the details) infinitely more vivid in the flesh. And honestly, they just didn’t seem to be holding back much at all. All five players soloed adventurously and bombastically, especially the rhythm section (Vieira-Branco included) and especially Taylor, who seemed an endless repository of rhythmic ideas, from Latin and Cuban patterns and muscular fills to rim-shot funk that recalled his work with Jeff Parker, double-time grooves and furious tom rolls that brought Jon Bonham to mind. Odd-metered pieces, like the title track, were tricky and propulsive, and Taylor utilized exciting polyrhythms not just for flourishes or flashes of mastery but, more importantly, to lay down a hard-driving groove. I especially loved the quickening tempo in “Waltz for Meghan," the way it snapped and shook off any threat of stasis, its stately melody like a nostalgic memory that raises the heart rate, beating harder as the tune unfolds.
Speaking to bassist Matt Engle after, I expressed my curiosity about the more adventurous forms they used (some were fairly simple song forms, others were far more convoluted and impenetrable on the first listen), and mentioned something about group improvisation requiring a degree of trust falling. He told me a story about his brother breaking his collarbone while skateboarding. The point being: you gotta learn how to roll into the fall. The Chad Taylor Quintet made it look, by turns, easy, graceful, and explosive.
