Call of the Tarogato New York Performances

“Call of the Tarogato” arrives at Smalls Jazz Club as a live set built around the tarogato, a Hungarian reed instrument that sits between clarinet and soprano sax in tone and history. Featured performer Scott Robinson treats it less as a novelty than as a working voice inside a jazz ensemble. The program points to New York’s long habit of folding immigrant instruments into club-band language, though this appearance does not appear to be billed as an NYC premiere. One clear effect is how the tarogato’s grainy timbre changes the band’s center of gravity, pulling lines toward folk-inflected phrasing without leaving jazz behind.