Some people can’t get enough Christmas music, but others can’t run away from it fast enough. For more than ten years, Chicago free-jazz veteran Mars Williams (born in Elmhurst in 1955) has been refining a concept that can bring the two camps together under the same roof. Bringing things together is what he does: a prodigal multi-instrumentalist (his tools include most of the saxophone family, clarinets, Autoharp, and a tabletop full of small percussion instruments and toys), he’s played rock with the Psychedelic Furs and the Waitresses, free jazz with the likes of Hal Russell, Peter Brötzmann, and Paal Nilssen-Love, and a bit of everything in the long-running Liquid Soul, whose freewheeling fusion combines jazz, funk, dance music, hip-hop, and more.
Mars Williams presents An Ayler Xmas featuring Witches & Devils and more Sat 12/14, 7:30 PM, and Sun 12/15, 9 PM, Hungry Brain, 2319 W. Belmont, $10, 21+
The resulting music is intense enough to vaporize typical holiday treacle, but it’s still recognizably seasonal. Ayler’s hymnlike melodies, which bear names such as “Spirits” and “Truth Is Marching In,” not only sit comfortably next to the likes of “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” but can also be combined with them more creatively. Sometimes Williams and his bandmates place a Christmas theme atop of one of Ayler’s songs, and at other times they improvise transitions between them.
Mars Williams Presents: An Ayler Xmas Vol. 3, the first edition to be recorded entirely outside Chicago, is being released by Not Two Records just in time for the holidays. It was recorded in 2018 in Krakow, Poland, with an international ensemble joining Williams: German drummer Klaus Kugel, Ukrainian bassist Mark Tokar, expatriate American guitarist Knox Chandler, and former Chicagoan and rising star Jaimie Branch on trumpet. The performances attest to how well the Ayler Xmas concept travels: The rhythm section brings a particularly muscular energy, and Chandler’s effects-drenched guitar lights the music up like a Christmas tree. Williams and Branch tangle ferociously, but she also keeps him on track during a giddy recitation of “The Night Before Christmas.”
