Little Women/Where From Here?

Thu., Jan. 17, 8 p.m., free, Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., arsnovaworkshop.com.

by Shaun Brady

jazz/experimental

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Little Women (pictured) are neither. Four men — guitarist Ben Greenberg, saxophonists Darius Jones and Travis Laplante and drummer Jason Nazary — blow so unrelentlessly big that you begin to feel sorry for their long-suffering instruments. The quartet favors punk-Ayler fanfares that climb screeching into the upper reaches of the audio spectrum, then come tumbling down in an avalanche of cacophony. Percussionist/composer Aaron Siegel takes quite the opposite approach, preferring isolated gestures offered in juxtaposition, almost a montage approach to composition. His Where From Here? ensemble is named for the query that fuels much of his work, namely how sections of a piece transition into one another. But the operative question would seem to be not where but how. His pieces, in this case composed for a sextet, illuminate the transitional nature of existence, the way that memory weaves a narrative out of fleeting moments. So think on that while under Little Women's bludgeoning attack, and be assured that the assault will be over soon.

Thu., Jan. 17, 8 p.m., free, Rotunda, 4014 Walnut St., arsnovaworkshop.com.