with special guests Feller, and Zander Raymond

Doors at 8:00pm, show at 8:30pm

Eli Winter’s new album, A Trick of the Light, is an elegantly crafted and vibrant collection that finds the composer and bandleader at the height of his powers. The album opens with a dazzlingly intense arrangement of Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s “Arabian Nightingale” – a statement of intent that whips up a sonic storm. From there, Winter showcases his own compositions, from the muscular “Cracking the Jaw” to the dreamy expanse of the title track. Elsewhere, an abstract and concentrated rendering of Carla Bley’s masterpiece “Ida Lupino” forms the literal and emotional centrepiece of the record. 

Winter remains a natural collaborator, and A Trick of the Light welcomes star turns from David Grubbs, Mike Watt, Kiran Leonard (on a left-handed cittern, no less), among others. It’s testament to his restless curiosity and omnivorous musical sensibilities. In his own words, it’s a record that has “nothing to do with genre or idiom or homage or pastiche. It has everything to do with learning what the music wants, how it feels, and trusting when it wants something or doesn’t want it.”

The record is a marked departure from her previous full-length, 2022's celebrated On the Ranch. Whereas that effort saw Nenni uproot herself to lend a hand — and write — while assisting at a ranch in southern Colorado, Drive & Cry drops the listener smack in the middle of her boisterous and bustling Nashville world. The album kicks off with "Get to Know Ya," a honky-tonk rave-up that celebrates the end of the work day and the beginning of a music-filled, come-what-may night. Nenni busts out her biggest hoops, jumps into the jeans she can "really only stand up in," and heads to the local bar. "Play 'til the sun'll come / when the daylight's done," she sings as the instrumental accompaniment races in step behind her.