Glenn Jones to make Sunday more interesting

Glenn Jones

Adding to Lexington’s growing number of Sunday evening live music options is this weekend’s performance by acoustic guitar stylist Glenn Jones.

Over the course of six albums, the Washington state native has explored numerous Americana styles through clean and expressive finger-picking. His forte is American primitive guitar, a sound removed from conventional folk that explores soundscapes pioneered by the vanguard instrumentalist John Fahey. Jones’ playing is not as fast and brittle as Fahey’s, nor as orchestrated as that of Fahey’s best-known disciple, Leo Kottke. Jones’ tone and musical temperament sound more exact and serene.

Such differences are beautifully on display throughout Jones’ sublime new Thrill Jockey album, Fleeting, from the elegiac In Durance Vile to the understated diversions from guitar atmospherics on the muted banjo pieces Cleo Awake and Spokane River Falls.

But on Mother’s Day, the spirit of Fahey is eerily at hand, with a beautifully spacious arrangement that allows for the barest hint of echo to highlight the tune’s wistful feel.

Lexington faves Bear Medicine and Everyone Lives Everyone Wins will open Sunday’s show.

Here’s the real distinction of the performance. It will be presented not in a conventional music venue or listening room, but at the wellness and health fitness center Source on High, which features art and music therapy along with nutrition, yoga and massage, among its therapeutic services.

Desert muse

The nomadic guitarist known as Bombino is back in Louisville next week. A veteran of previous club shows as well as a Forecastle appearance, the Tuareg artist hails from the desert regions spanning Mali, Libya, Niger and Algeria. His music has undergone a degree of Americanization in recent years. That was especially true on his previous album, 2013’s Nomad, which boasted the Black Keys’ Dan Auerbach as producer. The new album, Azel, turns to Dave Longstreth of the Dirty Projectors and retreats into a slightly more rugged mesh of American blues, desert drones and psychedelia.

Bombino brings the blend to life with a Monday show at the New Vintage, 2126 South Preston in Louisville, with Last Good Tooth and Appalatin opening (8 p.m.; $15, $20). Call 502-749-4050 or go to Newvintagelouisville.com.

Sosa in Berea

From the desert of Mali (by way of Louisville), we go to the new-generation music of Cuba (by way of Berea). Taking his cue from the alliance of American jazz with Cuban and Afro-Cuban music that began more than 50 years ago, pianist Omar Sosa crosses continents both literal and figurative with his playing. A native of Camaguey, Cuba, Sosa studied in Ecuador before moving to San Francisco.

Playful Monk-ish turns abound in his playing, but so do layers of electronic ambience, groove and swing colored by African percussion — a blend that has some of his compositions recalling the mid ’70s music of Weather Report. Otherwise, Sosa’s compositions seldom stay tied to one set musical tradition. At the heart of his globally conscious music, though, is a piano sound full of honest drama and tremendous dynamics.

Sosa’s newest recordings include 2015’s Ile, with his working group Quarteto Afro Cubano, and a 2016 collaboration with German trumpeter Joo Kraus and Venezuelan percussionist Gustavo Ovalles titled Jog.

Sosa will perform a free 8 p.m. convocation concert on April 14 at Berea College’s Phelps-Stokes Chapel. For more information, call 859-985-3965 or go to Bit.ly/1SMmXBE.

This story was originally published April 5, 2016 at 4:22 PM with the headline "Glenn Jones to make Sunday more interesting."