Bay Area Bassist Lisa Mezzacappa Emerges As A Dynamic Bandleader On Two Recent Albums

I’ve been a fan of Bay Area bassist Lisa Mezzacappa for years now, especially her work in several strong collectives—including Cylinder with reedist Aram Shelton (a former Chicagoan) and a nameless quartet with trumpeter Darren Johnston, saxophonist Aaron Bennett, and drummer Frank Rosaly (another former Chicagoan). But she came up big in 2017 with two impressive and very different albums, each of which reveals talents as a bandleader and conceptual composer that I hadn’t known she had.

As strong as Mezzacappa’s composing is on AvantNoir, she really opens up her range here, referencing Charles Mingus, Sun Ra (especially in the group chants on “Make No Plans”), Harry Partch, and the large-group projects of Max Roach and Ornette Coleman. Like the sextet album, it moves nimbly among styles, embroidering its muscular charts with buoyant multilinear improvisation. The huge lineup consists of excellent improvisers: flutist Nicole Mitchell, reedists Vinny Golia and Cory Wright, oboist Kyle Bruckmann, pianist Myra Melford, bassist Mark Dresser, trombonist Michael Dessen, violinist and violist Dina Maccabee, and vibist Kjell Nordeson, as well as Glenn, Perkis, Finkbeiner, and Johnston from the bandleader’s other projects.