Tenure under the tutelage of jazz legend Anthony Braxton and a decade onstage with the Dirty Projectors has helped Nat Baldwin become a premiere player in the avant-garde jazz scene. His songwriting bears the heavy weight of melancholia—a haunting and foreboding tone that is carried by gravelly vocals over a bowed upright bass. Baldwin’s ominous timbre and choral charisma are featured on albums by Vampire Weekend, Grizzly Bear, Phosphorescent, and Department of Eagles, but his solo performances epitomize his distinctive jazz-pop sound by pairing stripped-down strings with a mysteriously eerie and guttural libretto.
Thursday 6/26. $8, 9pm. Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, 414 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 293-9947.