From NYTimes.com:
BASSCENTRIC (Friday) Joëlle Léandre, Mark Helias and Mark Dresser are the three bassists who give this engagement its name and raison d’être: all are virtuoso texturalists and averse to the obvious gesture. Beyond that, their subtle differences may be what illuminates the music here. At 9 and 10:30 p.m., Cornelia Street Café, 29 Cornelia Street, West Village , (212) 989-9319, corneliastreetcafe.com; $15 cover, with a one-drink minimum. ( Chinen)
MARY HALVORSON QUINTET (Wednesday and Thursday) Mary Halvorson, a guitarist of engagingly prickly prominence in new-music circles, recently expanded her sharp working trio, adding a trumpeter and an alto saxophonist – in this case, Jonathan Finlayson and Tim Berne. Here that group plays new material, obliquely inspired by the music of the 1950s-era Jazz Messengers. At 8 p.m., Roulette at Location One, 20 Greene Street, at Grand Street, SoHo , (212) 219-8242, roulette.org; $15; $10 for students and 60+; $30 for 30 and younger; and free for members. (Nate Chinen)
HUNTSVILLE/OPSVIK & JENNINGS (Friday) Huntsville is an improvising electro-acoustic Norwegian band – with Ivar Grydeland on guitars, Tonny Kluften on upright bass and Ingar Zach on percussion – that specializes in an absorbingly detailed species of drone. The group appears alongside an equally shrewd but more melodic New York counterpart, spearheaded by the (Norwegian) bassist Eivind Opsvik and the (Midwestern) guitarist Aaron Jennings. At 7 p.m., Joe’s Pub, at the Public Theater, 425 Lafayette Street, at Astor Place, East Village , (212) 967-7555, joespub.org; $15, with a two-drink or $12 food minimum. (Chinen)
PIERANUNZI-JOHNSON-MOTIAN TRIO (Tuesday through Thursday) One of the finest jazz pianists in Italy, Enrico Pieranunzi is a careful rhapsodist with a more than casual appreciation of the Bill Evans style. Both his partners in this all-star trio are former Evans sidemen, from different eras: Marc Johnson, a deeply sonorous bassist, and Paul Motian, a wise and enigmatic drummer. (Through July 11.) At 9 and 11 p.m., Village Vanguard, 178 Seventh Avenue South, at 11th Street, West Village , (212) 255-4037, villagevanguard.com; $25 cover, with a $10 minimum. (Chinen)
MIKE PRIDE’S FROM BACTERIA TO BOYS (Monday) Mr. Pride, an intense and searching drummer, brings the full measure of his concentration to this working band, featuring the alto saxophonist Darius Jones, the keyboardist Alexis Marcelo and the bassist Peter Bitenc. At 9 p.m., Local 269, 269 East Houston Street, at Suffolk Street, Lower East Side , thelocal269.com; $10. (Chinen)
