Bye Bye Blackbird

The Asch, Davis, Mitchell Trio at The Pizza Man

For Rick Lightburn

Last night, in an attempt to uphold my self-identity as an up-and-coming “metro-textual”* I hit The Pizza Man on Downer Avenue to snag some “live” music. Serious metro-textuals don’t “go” or “attend.” They hit and snag. So off I went, with an old high-school buddy visiting from Chicago, to hear Glenn Asch, Neil Davis, and Emily Mitchell play chestnuts (and an occasional burnished almond) from the Songbook. “American Songbook” wouldn’t be accurate to say because the band’s set list occasionally dipped into pieces from other places. Autumn Leaves is from a French bistro on the Rue Mouffetard, and Garota de Ipanema comes from a Brazilian beach house. “Global Songbook” would be more apt. But American music predominated: Bye Bye Blackbird, Get Out of Town, On the Sunny Side of the Street, and the expected but always welcome Summertime. These tunes are as American as apple pie.**

Does the band have a name? “Pick-up” or occasional groups often don’t. For the purpose of this note, I’ll call them, using in alphabetical order the names of its members, the “Asch, Davis, Mitchell Trio.” “Alphabetically” is stressed because the list order is not meant to infer that any particular member had a prominent role. Musical equality was the modus operandi of these musicians. No one stood out, and they all stood out. Their work arrived at a sonically tasteful tie. In achieving that, they were able to do this intimate music right; their work became luminous work. Each brought to the occasion their own particular genius. Asch with viola and violin, Mitchell plucked strings and voice, and Neil Davis with plucked strings. As a trio, they together tied up a weighty and welcome package.

Glenn Asch has been giving to various Milwaukee music genres his violin work for decades. Jazz, chamber music, symphonic, country (both alt- and traditional), zydeco, etc. Name me a musical style in the “Western” (or beyond) canon that he hasn’t sounded out over the years, and please let me know. You name it; he has done it. The endlessly expressive chanteuse Emily Mitchell did what wise artists do: when higher in tessitura, that musician became softer in volume. And sprinkled here and there, at just the right moments, would come a “dying fall.” “Dying falls” don’t happen enough in Milwaukee County. With this musician, that old gesture has come home. A dapper Neil Davis plucked counterpoints and judicious modal melismas with unerring aplomb.

This was, is a fine, fine band. May it continue and flourish!

My friend at the pizza table is now mentioned because of his audience credentials. Behind him, he has forty years of discerningly sensitive listening to all the musics that Chicago has to offer. Early music, avant-garde, chamber, symphonic, choral; he has heard it all. His most remarkable and singular listening achievement cannot be left out of this narration: when the late, lamented Spektral Quartet performed Morton Feldman’s Second String Quartet at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago in 2017, he was the only person in the audience who stayed seated throughout the entire performance. He had invited me down for the show, but, having a cursory knowledge of the work’s challenges, I politely declined. My excuse could not be argued with: a surprise bout of incontinence. Feldman’s quartet, if played at a stately tempo, lasts six hours.

But this is not a medical report.

Given his distinguished and record-breaking audience adventures, I studied, across the expanse of a respectable “Milwaukee Style” Margherita Pizza, my friend’s facial expressions. Was he pleased with what he was hearing? His smile told me that he was. The clink and clatter of that East Side restaurant made it difficult to catch his critique, but, as best as I could hear, he told me that he was happy to get out of town and to be with music that was good for him.

I agreed. It was a sweet revelation to hear Bye Bye Blackbird as a new song.

Hello Blackbird.

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*I don’t know what that is. If you do, please tell me. I’m curious.

**Come to think of it, “it ain’t necessarily so” that apple pie is exclusively American. The best slab of the stuff I ever put down the hatch was on a side street in Koudum, a Friesian-speaking village in northern Holland (17 Hoofdstraat, just in case you find yourself in the neighborhood). Iconographic evidence of the tart is found at the top of this article.