Evan Christopher’s Heartfelt Return to The Cock ’N’ Bull on Sunday, August 27th

New Orleans-style clarinetist Evan Christopher is semi-retired but makes an exception for the Cock ’N’ Bull, returning on Sunday. 

“I dialed my gigging activities way back when the pandemic and the kid in school gave me perfect excuses not to travel except for musical emergencies, which are rare!” he told me on Saturday, with a laugh.

He said, “For people with special places, like Rick Sleeper and the Cock ‘n Bull, who make me feel appreciated, I’ll always find excuses to drop in.”

“To help me out on this return to the Cock ’N’ Bull, I have David Gleason on keys and his right-hand man (left-hand, I suppose) Mike Lawrence on bass,” said Christopher, promising “swinging summertime fun with some New Orleans roots.” (Gleason and Lawrence play with drummer Pete Sweeney as the Art D’Echo Trio.)

The “kid in school” is Christopher’s precocious cellist daughter; he left New Orleans for New York so she can attend PS 859 near Lincoln Center and Juilliard.

Christopher still misses New Orleans after two years in New York, especially, “the city’s musicians, past and present.” He said, “It’s family. They are why I first moved there in 1994 and through my clarinet style, I try to stay connected to their legacy. “

“I was a student of New Orleans music and swing from the time I first picked up the clarinet (at 11),” Christopher told The Saratogian’s James Lamperetta before his June 2018 performance at Freihofer’s Saratoga Jazz Festival. He said, “I loved the earthy vocal style of Johnny Dodds with Louis Armstrong’s Hot Five. I also loved Artie Shaw’s lyricism. I’ve always wanted my style to be between those two worlds.”

Christopher also plays between tradition and innovation. He told The Saratogian, “As long as my voice is anchored in the style-specific vocabulary that gives New Orleans clarinet its distinct identity and also try to reflect my personal aesthetic, the music stays contemporary even though it draws upon tradition.”

This approach has powered Christopher’s non-stop creativity, creating more than a dozen albums as a leader and busy touring. In 2018, he played New Orleans musical history at SPAC. “New Orleans @ 300” featured Christopher with hand-picked giants mixing tradition with modernism. 

In the Gazette, I hailed Christopher for “…boxing 300 years of culture into 65 minutes.”

The New York Times called his respect for the music traditions of New Orleans “a triumph, joining the present seamlessly to a glorious past.”

Like Dr. Michael White, New Orleans’s other contemporary clarinet eminence, Christopher plays with well-schooled technical precision and a strong emphasis on feel.

Christopher began his formal training at the Idyllwild School of Music and the Arts in southern California, continued at the University of Southern California (on saxophone) and California State University (clarinet) at Long Beach. Christopher fell in love with New Orleans on a day off from touring with A.J. Croce and lived there from 1994 to 2005 (apart from three years with the Jim Cullum Jazz Band in San Antonio). After Katrina, he moved to Paris and brought gypsy jazz elements into his playing. Returning to New Orleans, he played with Irvin Mayfield and studied musicology at Tulane University. 

While his education built musical smarts, Christopher also plays from the heart, as I’ve seen at SPAC (2020 and (2018) and an August 2018 show at the Cock ’N Bull with pianist Eli Yamin.

As I reported in the Gazette, “Mixing reverence with swagger and skill, Christopher and Yamin knew just what to do with these limber, luscious tunes, suitable for fluent free-associating, for both depth and fun… they closed hot with ‘Cock ‘N Bull Blues,’ written on a previous gig here; they had to retrieve the framed sheet-music from the wall to recall their parts….The music was all about memory and movement; songs we know, with new tempos and chords giving everything familiar a fresh feel.”

Sunday at the Cock ’N’ Bull, “The plan with (bassist) Mike (Lawrence) and (pianist) David (Gleason) is to simply do what we do and have some fun.” He said, “I sent them a few things that I’d been thinking about, but there won’t be a set program.”

“It be what it be.”

Evan Christopher plays the Cock ’N’ Bull (5342 Parkis Mills Rd., Galway) Sunday; outdoors on the music patio, weather permitting, at 6 p.m. No cover. Nearly full dinner menu. 518-882-6962 www.thecocknbull.com