Pier 17 KnitJaz Reviews Two Avant-Gardes, Idealistic as Ever, Without the Shock Value By JON PARELES NEW YORK -- Over time old avant-gardes become less fearsome than they were on arrival. Yet an avant-garde that does not depend on shock value need not become obsolete. Instead, it turns into both a messenger from the era that shaped its attempts to break free and a guardian of its favorite extremes. The Bell Atlantic Jazz Festival ended on Sunday night at the South Street Seaport Atrium with representatives of two avant-gardes: free jazz from the New York Art Quartet, which formed in 1964 and disbanded in 1966, and avant-rock from Sonic Youth, which formed in 1981. Each group was of its time. The New York Art Quartet held the anarchic idealism and racial ferment of the 1960s, while Sonic Youth reflected the rock experiments, minimalism and arty strategies of the 1980s. Each group was also making vital music in a language it had pioneered and mastered, creating effects that could be achieved no other way. The New York Art Quartet had not rehearsed for its first New York show since 1965. But it fell right back into the headlong free improvisation that had made it so fondly remembered. The quartet -- John Tchicai on saxophones, Roswell Rudd on trombone, Lewis Worrell on bass and Milford Graves on drums, with Amiri Baraka (then called Leroi Jones) intoning poetry on one piece -- made one album for the quixotic ESP-Disk label in 1964 and another in Holland before its members scattered. Worrell disappeared from jazz; he was replaced in 1965 and on Sunday by Reggie Workman. From the first note, the music was all ferment and rush. Graves bound the group together, pacing the 90-minute set with gusty, continuous motion as his cymbals whispered and splashed and his bass drum created an almost melodic counterpoint to Workman's bowed meditations, throbbing drones and scampering lines. Tchicai was the earnest voice, playing terse, rifflike lines and then racing up to whorls and cries. Rudd was a jokester, using his plunger mute to play elbow-in-the-ribs hoots and whinnies, or sparring with Tchicai in quick lines, or playing alongside him in not-quite-unisons suggesting a drunk leaning on a friend. Baraka joined the musicians through the entire set. He declaimed percussive or rolling phrases as an auctioneer, preacher or cantor does, hurling accusations and aphorisms against racism. Yet the music was less a protest than an affirmation of liberty and camaraderie. Sonic Youth, joined by Ikue Mori on synthesized percussion, played a sublimely otherworldly set, as carefully plotted as the New York Art Quartet was free-form. Its music is based in the physical and acoustic properties of guitars and drums. But long stretches of Sunday's set had little to do with rock. The music was a meditation on consonance and dissonance, each within the other. James Tenney's "Having Never Written a Note for Percussion" was a long metamorphosis, hovering and swelling to a grand clatter, then slowly evaporating. The next piece was all choppy noise: feedback, static, sudden rending guitar swoops. The band grew more earthbound, paradoxically, when it paid homage to spiritually-tinged 1960s jazz, with Thurston Moore playing a long, raga-tinged guitar lead; the background drone, magnificently calibrated, was more compelling. For its final pieces, Sonic Youth returned more or less to rock, strumming recognizable chords in songs like "Expressway to Yr Skull" and dwindling in the end to a single folky bit of finger-picking. After all the band's enthralling abstractions, suddenly a guitar just sounded like a guitar. Subject: Last night @ Pier 17... From: Adriaan Tijsseling Boy, was I glad it was a 6 game series. The concert at the seaportatrium was the best SY concert I've been to (and I've been to severalof them). It was fantafuckintastic. Similar to Sonic Death, but morelike Sonic Carnage. A couple of new songs I suspect will be on the nextSYR. According to the set list also "Stil", "Composition" (anyone knowwhich album this one is coming from?), "Expressway" and I thought"Green Light", but I am probably wrong here (anyone care to enlightenme on this: it's the only song Thurston sang). Most songs wereinstrumental. All of them a mix of the old Sonic Youth and the SYR typemusic, a mix of the Bad Moon Rising atmosphere with A Thousand Leavesinjection, in my humble opinion. Thurston, Lee, and Kim were not justplaying the guitars: They _were_ the guitars, pulling all out what isin them, using whatever means or tool necessary: ecstatic guitarsmoaning... and controlled by Steve drumming his consistent qualitativeperformance. All in all, marvellous, brilliant, terrific. Adriaan totally rawked! they played only 5 compositions total but they were all longand good. they started with two new songs both instrumental that i assumewill be on the one of the upcoming syrz and they were both very, very goodand alas hard to describe; very noisy and complex. They followed that with a8 or 9 minute or so long cover. i was distracted when they said who it wasby, but it was called according to thurston it was called,"never written anote for percussion". after that they announced that the next song wascalled expressway to yr skull which drew a laod and gleeful response fromthe crowd were upon they jumped into 10+ minutes of the most choatic atonalimprovisational guitar mess ive ever heard. it was crazy; at one point leewas even playing a keyboard of some sortand there was some seeminglyimprovisational muttering/singing by kim ala syr3. this eventually did leadinto xpressway which was of course extended and reconstructed.they then took a few minutes off and and came back for the encore which wasan unbelievably good version of stil. probably the highlight of the showdespite how good the first 2 songs were... Amazing show, only five songs butfor the kind of music they are making now i would say they are doing on alevel now has ever come close to touching. they seem to keep getting betterand better. I cant wait for the new eps.dan