Vinny Golia - Trios and Sextet

By Lee Rice Epstein

In addition to the many ensembles Vinny Golia leads and directs, he is also a steady sideman and featured player with a number of groups led by younger players. Among several he’s played on this year, three stood out.

Vinny Golia, Max Johnson and Weasel Walter - No Refunds (Unbroken Sounds, 2023) 

Bassist Max Johnson recently released this trio date from 2014. Along with drummer Weasel Walter, Johnson is a brilliantly free improviser. The set runs just under an hour, flying so fast and free with Golia performing Dolphy-esque leaps alongside Walter’s percussive fills. A fascinating drummer, Walter has a wind player’s knack for pulling back suddenly before a roaring processional. And Johnson playfully jumps from a kind of supporting role to one more goading and directional. His round tone is sometimes reminiscent of Ronnie Boykins (the set overall displays an early ESP-Disk’ energy, especially some runs where Golia evokes John Tchicai).

 

Vinny Golia, Stueart Liebig and Nathan Hubbard - There Is a Light That Goes On Automatically (Castor & Pollux Music, 2023) 

The second release for the trio of drummer Nathan Hubbard with Golia and Liebig, who plays fretted and fretless basses. Hubbard's another one of Golia's longtime collaborators, and the three are so beautifully in sync throughout two sets recorded over a weekend in August 2019, "There Is a Light That Goes On Automatically" (from Santa Barbara) and "Was It a Lost Weekend?" (from Long Beach). As a melodic, percussive player, Hubbard sets a tone for the group that calls back to John Stevens and Eddie Prévost small groups. 

Vijay Anderson’s Silverscreen Sextet - Urban Jungle: Los Angeles (self-released, 2023) 

Urban Jungle is Vijay Anderson’s second album with his Silverscreen Sextet. This time around, he’s shuffled the lineup slightly: cornetist Bobby Bradford, saxophonist Vinny Golia, tubaist William Roper, and bassist Adam Lane form the core band, while artist crushed blacks created an immersive video that functions as another instrument. Anderson has deep roots in the Los Angeles creative-music scene, born and raised in Southern California, he’s played with many West Coast luminaries (including Bradford, Golia, and Roper) for decades. And on several other projects he’s worked on with Bradford, Golia, Roper, and Lane, he’s consistently drawn inspiration from visual media.

To go a little deeper on this one, Urban Jungle: Los Angeles explores the city’s complexities through five chapters and interludes, which include dedications to historian and critic Mike Davis, the brilliant artist Simon Rodia (best known for his Nuestro Pueblo, or Watts Towers), firefighter Sam Haskins (both the first Black firefighter at the Los Angeles Fire Department and the first LAFD firefighter to die in the course of duty), streetcar operator Arcola Philpot (the first Black operator for the Los Angeles Railway) and the humanitarian Father Luis Olivares (who lived by his religious ethics and made his church a haven for El Salvadoran refugees in the 1980s).

Through both Anderson’s composing and the group’s improvising, the evocation of these stories weaves a complicated tapestry. Come to this album ready to learn, ready to think, and ready to have your complacency challenged.

And some visuals: