Cooking it up

“On Monday at Culver City’s Royal-T, a privileged few experienced a multimedia improvisational spectacle — music, video, dance and food — whose ambition and execution couldn’t have been duplicated in the loftiest palaces of world culture. Wringing his hands with trepidation at the beginning, promoter Rocco Somazzi was soon beaming with delight as everything fell together.

First, a Nels Cline guitar made into art by Yoshitomo Nara was auctioned off (the event was a fest fund-raiser) for $70,000. Then pianist Myra Melford set the tone with a graceful composition lent even deeper beauty by the sensitive multilogue of bassist Mark Dresser, guitarist Nels Cline, percussionist Alex Cline, keyboardist Yuka Honda and violinist Jeff Gauthier. More remarkable, the ensemble maintained the delicate balance for two hours of the most joyfully grave elevation and psychedelic samadhi blues as butoh dancer Oguri slowly edged between tables channeling fiery ghosts, and Carole Kim’s video projections on a gauze screen provided clean, ever-changing frameworks and instant portraits of the musicians in transport.

Chef Paul Canales, meanwhile, struck an ideal counterpoint with multicourse presentations, from infernal peppers to a red-and-brown vegetable melange on a bed of green melon. In Morocco, they have a word for this kind of extended healing conjuration: a lila.”

Greg Burk – metaljazz.com

Artist Yoshitomo Nara painting the guitar that Nels Cline donated to Angel City Jazz Festival at his workshop in New York

A detail of the Nara guitar during the painting process. The finished guitar sold for $70K during the Angel City Jazz Fest fundraiser documented on this page