For Anderson, 38, the combination is just about right: a comic sideshow effect that walks the edge of heartbreak. It is silly and deeply affecting at the same time.
This is a fair description of Anderson’s music as a whole, including the new “Wishbone” album, which features one example of his singing. Raised on Dixieland jazz-he picked up the trombone when he was 8 after listening to his father’s Dixieland records-and schooled in the avantgarde bands of Anthony Braxton and Barry Altschul, Anderson pulls apart the music of his roots and puts it back together with a spirit of mischievous invention. “I never went in for the idea that music was linear,” he says, “that Dixieland begat swing, and swing begat bop, and so on.”
Anderson mashes the eras together, as his trombone skitters out on its own, chasing often sophisticated ideas with a giddy joy. He’s an approachable face of the avantgarde, as rich in humor as in musical adventure.
J.L.
