Special Sauce
Cosmo D (aka Greg Heffernan) is a cellist who, with innovation and pathos, makes people incredibly happy with his music. His soundscapes spread a pure joy thats uninhibited and childlike but also suggest an adults sensitivity and knowing. Using his cello and computers, he created his album Plantastic Joyage in 2006. Listening to it is like watching a child run wild with paintbrushes in hand, unafraid of making a mess that ultimately results in a strange, magical mural buttressed by amazing technique yet completely unimpeded by rules of structure. His unclassifiable music betrays hints of jazz, Baroque, Renaissance, hip-hop, Hawaiian, Prairie Home Companion, Pink Panther and Roger Rabbit.
I met Cosmo D randomly in 2005 when we were both cellist extras and stand partners for a fake New York Philharmonic in the movie August Rush. He was 22, a fresh NYU grad, and I was 24, a nanny who was writing and learning opera in my spare time. He said he also did the nanny gig for a short time. But one day while heating up a Hot Pocket he realized that this isnt what I want to be doing! I want to be playing my cello! which stirred him to pursue work as a full-time freelance cellist.
We also discovered we shared a cello teacher. The teacher I had when I was 16 was his teacher when he was eight. When I got home and checked Gregs webpage, I was shocked to see that he played in The Lee Konitz Nonet. Konitz was the legendary saxophonist on Miles Davis Birth of the Cool, and the Nonet was directed by award-winning Ohad Talmor. Greg also had about 20 gigs lined up all over the city for the next month. How did this 22-year-old know how to get it together?
I later heard Greg play in Paradox Trio, led by The Klezmatics Grammy-winner Matt Dariau, which was virtuosic gypsy-jazz Balkan rock n roll. Greg went on to play with Fred Hersch in Leaves of Grass Ensemble at Lincoln Center and for Vijay Iyer in the off-Broadway show Betrothed, and hes always playing for multiple groups.
Cosmo Ds new group Sauce has a self-titled album that uses sounds of kitchen appliances for beats, blending the sounds of his cello, the lap steel of Myk Freedman, rhythm guitar with Todd Neufeld, saxophone and reeds with Ohad Talmor, upright electric bass with Josh Myers and live percussion with Rich Stein and Max Goldman. The eclectic combo elicits feelings and images of spelunking, cave exploration, detectives and mysterious beauty. The Pink Panther and Roger Rabbit allusions were elicited in the tune Kings Vision, Deli Backroom. But more than anything, the music makes me (and others) happy. Not the Its your birthday head-banging jump-up-and-down type of happy, but a the-universe-is-so-wonderfully-wacky type of happy. Its smart with an emotional connection that doesnt rely on sentimentality or self-conscious irony, which is what so much art falls back on.
I heard Sauce at the Williamsburg Music Center recently, and their live performance is not as tightly knit and structured as the recorded version. When they played live, there were moments of non-melodic stuff and non-forward moving space going on. Cosmo D said the moments of cacophony were meant to be cathartic, a break from the order. The musicians had free reign to react in their own personal ways and responded in a loose, playful style to contrast the structure of the kitchen beats. It wasnt jarring or annoying, just different from the album. Nnons Secret, Cosmo Ds ode to his girlfriend, is an audience favorite, which also carries a Hawaiian and a detective-on-tiptoes feel.
Sauce is a fitting name for the group and their music, as it really did feel like we were in a kitchen watching them stir up sounds with pot banging mixed with fun and passion. Im glad I was able to have a taste of Cosmo D music to quench my ear thirst.
Sauce plays at the elastiCity Festival in Brooklyn on Feb. 18, Spike Hill, 184 & 186 Bedford Ave., Bklyn, 718-218-9737; 8, free.