Southside Pride

Twin Cities avant-garde jazz master Carei Thomas has been making music for decades. Even a near-fatal illness, from which he has emerged literally resurrected, couldn’t stop him from bombarding the music milieu with his restless inventions. His 2002 CD, Mining Our Bid’ness, (on the Roaratorio label) summarizes his major trains of thought. His substantial body of work is made up of disparate and surprising forms: There are the numerous abstract improvisational blueprints like “poemmetrics” “phononomaly” or the visually wonderful written music, the snaking pentagrams caked with flurries of dots linked together as sixteenth or thirty-second notes, which, when translated into music, sound like a frenzy of controlled mayhem; or like sculpted squawks, silly putty plunks, bellers, whines and wails; or like energy fields repelling and attracting one another. And there are the sumptuous pieces: the strikingly intelligent and deeply satisfying note-for-note composed tunes that reflect a deep knowledge of sound, and are crafted into just plain beautiful songs.

Thomas’ other, less well-known, gift is his talent for creating community. He has probably put as much, or more, energy into his relationships as into his art. For him there is no chasm between art and life. When he performs, he tells stories and shares himself in a way that makes his audience a community for that moment. A nurtured friendship with his cadre of brilliant collaborators is obvious. (He’ll perform with eight of them on Sunday.) He rejects the role of unapproachable guru, or whacky inventor isolated in a lonely room somewhere twisting and turning his ideas. His neighborhood, his wife and family are all woven into his creative life.

This composer/keyboard player who started out in Pittsburgh, worked with Sun Ra in Chicago and moved on to become a legend in the Twin Cities will celebrate the life of Martin Luther King Jr. in “For Hymn,” as part of the month-long exhibit featuring Martin Luther King at the Weisman.