It's a bustling Sunday night at Bar 355, and Oakland guitarist Ava Mendoza is leading her avant-garde trio Unnatural Ways through a particularly exhausting section of music, when suddenly, Dominique Leone's keyboard cuts out. He glances at drummer Nick Tamburro, who fiddles with Leone's amplifier while maintaining a frantic rhythm single-handedly. Tamburro remedies Leone's synth, Mendoza stares at each player, grins, and the group intuitively restarts the section. That knowing smile is signature Mendoza — she's made an art out of improvisation.
Unnatural Ways had just returned from its European tour, and the group was clearly tightened by rigorous nightly performances. The stylistic breadth of Unnatural Ways' material lent the set a thrilling unpredictability: Clamorous cymbals gave way to an R&B beat beneath Leone's keyboard solo, but suddenly the track spiraled into tonal dissonance and Mendoza throttled her guitar strings with a screwdriver.
There's grace and ease in Mendoza's experimental sound. At Bar 355, she didn't pander to the crowd with banter or engage onlookers with a forced smile. Her gaze moved from Leone's fingers to his focused expression and back to her instrument, then quickly signaled a change with her guitar neck. Mendoza's virtuosity is staggering, but more important is her ability to make expressive guitar work meaningful to the audience. Her fans span the gamut from academic experimental music aficionados to guitar virtuoso sycophants to followers of progressive rock and free jazz. And the kinds of venues she plays are just as diverse: "I'll play a squat one night and a high-brow jazz venue the next and what I do doesn't fit in either," she said.
Read more: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/ava-mendozas-natural-way/Content?oid=3509539
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