Live Jazz Tuesday: Syzygy Trio ∴ Boyd, Sanders & Hall

A syzygy is the moment three celestial bodies fall into a single line. It is not a permanent condition. Sun, earth, and moon spend most of their existence scattered across the ecliptic, and then for a few hours the geometry snaps shut and something happens: an eclipse, a spring tide, a shadow crossing a face. Then it passes.

Syzygy Trio is built on that principle. Three players, three orbits, and a music that exists only in the intervals when they line up.

Jay Sanders anchors the low end on bass and moves to guitar and Erae Touch, a pressure-sensitive control surface that reads position, force, and the smallest lateral drift of a fingertip. It responds less like a keyboard than like a membrane, which means the synthesizer parts breathe and bend the way a bowed instrument does. Will Boyd plays saxophone and EWI, feeding both through an effects chain that can leave a tenor unaccompanied and naked or scatter it into a chorus of itself. Alan Hall plays drums with the patience of someone who understands that a trio is defined by its barycenter, the shared center of mass that all three bodies actually orbit.

Every Monday and Tuesday, Little Jumbo brings live jazz to your ears. littlejumbobar.com

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