In 2023, The Jazz Gallery is expanding the weekly schedule to include Wednesday night performances. Kicking off this new night of music this week is pianist Cory Smythe. Equally active in contemporary concert music and improv circles, Smythe has sought to expand the color palette of the piano through microtonality, electronics, and mysterious resonance.

This past year, Smythe released Smoke Gets In Your Eyes (Pyroclastic Records), a collection of large ensemble pieces and oblique takes on the well-worn songbook standard of the same name. In the album’s notes, Smythe describes that song as

an object lesson in the transmutation of weather and grief into sound, its titular metaphor for desire, delusion, and disaster spilling out in shapely ringlets of billowing melody.

In Smythe’s renditions, those shapely ringlets become both more abstract and more tactile, the song shrouded in seemingly literal clouds. Before hearing Smythe continue this sonic exploration at the Gallery, check out the ensemble piece Combustion 1 and one of his recorded “Smoke” renditions, below.

Cory Smythe plays The Jazz Gallery on Wednesday, January 18, 2023. Sets are at 7:30 and 9:30 P.M. E.S.T. $20 general admission (FREE for members), $30 reserved table seating ($20 for members) for each set. Purchase tickets here.