Vermont Cynic

Issue date: 3/7/06 Section: Arts and Entertainment

Toth wailing away at his trumpet

As I walk into the Radio Bean on the edge of downtown Burlington, Alex Toth, a senior and jazz-concentrated music major here at UVM, raises a "hold on one second" finger while the other hand grasps his trumpet. Toth and this particular ensemble, intimately crunched together in the corner of the barroom, are a last-minute assembly to fill a gig and have never before played together.

Still, the notes of each instrument lace together a perfectly loose knot of free form jazz. Nothing is written here except the vocals, sung by Toth's girlfriend, Annakalmia "Kal" Traver, and the rest of the sound is simply an improvised conversation between horn, string, percussion, and voice. Toth would tell you that is a lot of what the jazz tradition is about-being untraditional.

"There's all kinds of things that are called tradition," he explains. "Tying your shoes, getting potty trained…there's a way that you're taught things. I'm not just pulling [music] out of the air, there's a jazz tradition man, an approach." One of Toth's approaches, he says, is improvisation, and Toth exhibited this in his senior recital last Sunday.

Anyone who attended was probably impressed with his creative approach to the music major's equivalent of a senior thesis. As he walked onto the stage he looked a little nervous, but any discernable uneasiness on his face vanished when he bussed the trumpet's mouthpiece and, head to the sky, squeezed out a soft crooning tone which turned out to be the calm before the storm-actually, more like a tempest.

Onstage with Toth were pianist Peter Krag, alto saxophonist and vocalist Kal Traver, Dan Ryan on drums and John Rogone plucking the upright bass. All are members of UVM's young jazz department but they also make up Toth's major project, Alex Toth and the Lazybirds who are releasing their debut album this month.

Towards the end of their first piece, an original called "Birdhhead," I thought my head was playing tricks on me when, out of the blue, the quintet began to whistle over the piano and percussion-yes, as in bluebirds welcoming the arrival of spring, which is still months away here in Burlington.

"I was going to go out in nature or on the internet and transcribe bird calls," Toth recounts. The only problem with nature right now is that it's cold and there aren't any birds."

Even without real birds the audience got a taste of spring, because the collage of sounds resonated an attractive celestial hum (especially when the audience joined in) which would become a precursor to the surprises on the way. Toth's decision to implement such things so fascinatingly out of the ordinary is perhaps why it was so effective in purveying the jazz tradition.

Continued...

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