New Haven Jazz Underground plays above ground at Lilypad on Saturday, 14 October 2023.

What is creative music? Music that uses imagination to craft sounds in new and innovative forms.

You might think, unless you’re a cover artist (which, by the way, won’t get you into the New England Music Hall of Fame), you’re a creative musician making creative music.

No one on Planet Earth has ever heard your lyrical ode to sweet potatoes set to the chord progression G, A, C, or whatever. You’re breaking new ground, right?

Wrong. At least according to the fine purveyors of ‘creative music’ as a genre. Here’s how AllMusic describes it:

“Continuing the tradition of the '50s to '60s free-jazz mode, Modern Creative musicians may incorporate free playing into structured modes -- or play just about anything. Major proponents of modern creative jazz include John Zorn, Henry Kaiser, Eugene Chadbourne, Tim Berne, Bill Frisell, Steve Lacy, Cecil Taylor, Ornette Coleman, and Ray Anderson.”

“Just about anything” – that is, jazz, or jazz-adjacent improvisational music.

Jazz made its reputation on improvisation. But at some point the Jazz Industrial Complex must have grown stale and establishment enough that dissatisfied factions within its ranks broke off to form new subdivisions and breakaway islands to do what jazz used to do.

Innovate. Be new. Be a little dangerous.

Creative music, as genre or otherwise, is brought to you by Alex Lemski and the Creative Music Series. With generous, if partial, support from the Somerville Arts Council.

Venmo accepted to split the difference.

New Haven Jazz Underground

Is the New Haven Jazz Underground innovative? New? Dangerous?

The Facebook bio reads: “The New Haven Jazz Underground is a grass roots community based organization dedicated to producing c” (sic).

No one knows what “c” is. Cocaine? Cancer? Cute teddy bears?

Or maybe it’s a community just producing more community, which is what you want with experimental and improvisational music. New blood, fresh faces, strange sounds, trading in and out to create an amorphous sonic spectre.

Amorphous — there was no sheet music in front of the five players on the night: guitar, trumpet, percussion, standup bass, and a switch hitter switch hitting between saxophones and clarinet.

Amorphous — but not entirely without form. Instead of playing by sheet music, the musicians played by feel, familiarity, and training. The training was jazz, no doubt. The ducks were still swimming on that pond. The elastic had not yet snapped into farther flung realms for this version of the Jazz Underground.

Maybe the collective is waiting for a waltz noodler with a jaw harp fetish to take the next step.

Shout out to the indefatigable bass player. Shout out to the versatility of the saxophone and clarinet player.

Extra points for an extraordinarily reserved jazz guitarist who sat out long stretches of the jams. Quiet, barely there. Looked a little out of place in this consonant Horn World. But the second set didn’t start to cook until he stirred the pot with a few open string ejaculations.

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