William Parker and Hamid Drake Trio, Baltic

hmm. I actually thought Mr Strigalev held his own rather well. And if he wasn't looking at his bandmates (since when has that meant anything?), he was certainly listening to them. And though I was there (like most of the audience) for the rhythm section I did find myself occasionally bored by their tendency to stick to what felt like cod rock grooving. Possibly that was due to the noise levels in the venue (anything too subtle would have been lost ), but I'd have liked a bit more of a dynamic range...

I thought William Parker and Hamid Drake were both amazing (especially given the background noise). Zhenya Strigalev i thought held his own, as the previous comment says, and i put his tendency to close his eyes etc down as signs of nervousness (who could blame him?). I've mentioned the noise. It really was awful: one woman in particular never shut up and even though she was several feet away from me i could hear every word she said. This noisiness plus the poor acoustics made the subtleties of the music hard to hear (especially the double bass). It was even worse yesterday for the Stephan Kerecki gig: i walked out of that part way through because it was just ridiculous. I could barely hear the music at all.