Igor Lumpert Quartet at Cornelia Street Cafe

About

Igor absorbs the clatter and racket of the once (and maybe once again) great city of New York. Fragmented words that you pass on the street or that seep into your ears in bars. He can make everyone in a room grow silent enough to hear his breath over the long notes of a ballad. The way he plays bop makes you feel like you're in a fight for your life. The folk music of the Balkans is in his blood and bones, and he weaves extended lines over 11/8 like it’s a two-beat polka. He can veer and swerve outside the margins, leaving structure and melody in the dust and turning sound into emotion and making you feel like you’re being psychoanalyzed.