There’s little question that Northampton’s Iron Horse is a great space in which to hear music; it’s big enough to pack in a good crowd, small enough to earn that charming moniker “intimate.” It’s the sort of place where you can interact up close with the musicians—often prominent ones—who are the evening’s entertainment.
Little wonder, then, that Agawam native and highly praised New York jazz guitarist Mike Baggetta wanted to celebrate the release of his new CD, Source Material, at the Iron Horse. That space can be a tough one to fill, however, and when, Baggetta says, advance ticket sales for his show hadn’t fulfilled expectations, the Iron Horse Entertainment Group told him, with two days to go before the show, that they’d pulled the plug on the event.
Baggetta wrote an email about the experience to his fans, in which he called IHEG’s actions “unfair and disrespectful.” He explained that he had contracted musicians and spent a lot of time and money publicizing the event, and that advance ticket prices were, thanks to extra charges, slightly higher than door prices. That, he posits, kept advance sale numbers low. He asked fans to write IHEG to make their feelings known.
In response to a recent query about the Mike Baggetta show, Marketing Director for the Iron Horse Entertainment Group Jim Neill said, “There [was] some miscommunication about what the expectations were for the show, and Mike and [Talent Buyer] Brendan [Leith] have come to an understanding about this.”
Regardless, Baggetta took a very Valley approach in response to his cancellation: he drummed up a show with a very different, promising alternative business model. Last weekend, he brought his CD release celebration to a newer Northampton institution, The Dirty Truth, at the suggestion of Baggetta’s friend and Dirty Truth co-owner Nathan Blehar.
“To do something nice for all the folks put out by the cancellation of Oct. 2, we wanted to make this show’s attendance by donation only,” says Baggetta. “People can pay whatever they like to attend and listen. The idea was to generate some interest through the idea of pre-donations online to the show.”
It was a clever re-casting of the difficulty, the sort of thing that Baggetta seems to be up to in his music as well. From his Valley roots, Baggetta’s gone on to some happening places, even the Montreux Jazz Festival, and gained some major praise.
It’s well deserved—Baggetta is an unusual and unusually confident sort of jazz guitarist. In a realm where many a guitarist feels the inexorable pull to seek blazing virtuosity in order to merely keep up with the competition, Baggetta instead focuses on composition. His guitar work is more often chord-based accompaniment than fast lead, and his sense of composition seems to hail from outside the usual bounds of jazz. The opening to a Baggetta composition is as likely to call up rock or even ambient music as it is jazz. That said, he and the players in his quartet find ample opportunity to distinguish themselves from anything like “light” jazz, veering at times into bop territory.
When Baggetta solos, his penchant for unspooling melodies in interesting, less-traveled directions is clear. His works feel more like contemplative musical voyages than the merely technical displays that can sink jazz efforts. Source Material is a sophisticated, often beautiful listen, the product of a fertile musical sense that hails from the jazz world but employs a much broader palette.
Another Baggetta project, Tin/Bag, pairs Baggetta’s guitar work with the trumpet stylings of Kris Tiner. It’s a perfect vehicle for Baggetta, one which starkly reveals his ease and his distinctive sense of melody. He may have left the Valley, but his is a musical voice that’s nonetheless well worth discovering.
