Expressive Echoes

Portland-based jazz trumpeter Rob Blakeslee, a thoughtful, free-minded and technically gifted player, makes his Ventura debut tonight at Ventura City Hall, but he’s no stranger to these general parts. And therein lies a tale of creative willpower, impressive beyond the notes themselves.

Thanks to Blakeslee’s involvement in a loose network of West Coast jazz musicians outside the mainstream, he’s part of a self-reliant circuit up and down the coast. It’s a post-free jazz circuit, built on the zealous efforts of musicians who, after being left out of the traditional jazz scene, are doing it for themselves. They create opportunities for one another even as they create music of importance, in co-op fashion.

By necessity, musicians wear more pragmatic hats to make it all work. In Los Angeles, the catalyst is reed player Vinnie Golia, who has frequently played with Blakeslee and on whose Nine Winds label Blakeslee has released several well-received CDs. In Ventura, we have trumpeter-composer-concert presenter Jeff Kaiser. Kaiser, along with partner Keith McMullen, has brought venturesome new music concerts to town under the aegis of their company with the cryptic, consonant-rich name, pfMENTUM.

Tonight’s City Hall concert promises to be a classical pfMENTUM affair, a doubleheader with Blakeslee’s quintet, made up of musicians from Portland, the Bay Area and L.A., and Kaiser’s trio, including guitarist Woody Aplanap and bassist Steuart Liebig--also part of the L.A. creative music fringe. Kaiser’s portion is also a CD release party for his new mind-bending duo recording “Asphalt Buddhas.”

For his part, Blakeslee brings new music events to the Portland area through the efforts of the Creative Music Guild, in cooperation with Bay Area saxophonist Rich Halley. Blakeslee keeps busy, leading his own group and collaborating with others, including gigs with such well-known musicians as Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake and Wayne Horvitz.

As heard on his newest--and, amazingly, 20th--album, “Waterloo Ice House” (Louie Records), Blakeslee belongs firmly in the class of players deserving wider recognition, with an assured voice that manages to be lyrical and expressionistic, all at once. In this chordless quartet setting, Blakeslee has ample room to assert his expressive sound--with echoes of Miles Davis, Kenny Wheeler and Bill Dixon.

As a bandleader, he keeps a loose rein over the blend of planned and improvised activity in the group, maintaining links with jazz tradition via phrasing and an implicit sense of swing, but always pushing toward the outside of that tradition. They play everything, but “Just What’s Written,” as the opening track is ironically titled.

If Blakeslee works on a far shore of jazz, per se, Kaiser’s “Asphalt Buddha” (pfMENTUM) has a much more experimental, noise-embracing character. Noise, in this case, is not a dirty word, but the base ingredient in a style of abstract sound collage. Kaiser is the antic collagist, the stitcher and paster, who blends improvised patches of electronic sound, trumpet playing of various degrees of purity, the furtive guitar work of Aplanap, mouth-made sounds and occasional snippets of sound filched from CD radio by artist Jeff Overlie (whose photography series provides the tracks and the CD with their titles).

This is music without a net and with only scant mapping. Alternately mumbling and howling, the CD requires--and rewards--an open mind. No doubt, the same will be true of the live model. It should be a hot, strange, cathartic night in City Hall.

DETAILS

Rob Blakeslee Quintet and the Jeff Kaiser Trio, at 8 tonight at Ventura City Hall, 500 Poli St. Tickets are $7.

Josef Woodard, who writes about art and music, can be reached by e-mail at joeinfo@aol.com