Ches Smith’s Clone Row

Ches Smith is one of music’s most powerful and playful drummers, a bandleader and collaborator who engages serious concepts and intense communication but who consistently brings a welcome sense of humor to outré jazz and modern composition. His 2009 solo album, after all, was titled Noise to Men. Smith has perhaps never had a better vehicle for these complementary sides of his personality and playing than Clone Row, a dazzling new quartet whose name is indeed a Schoenberg pun. He is the band’s composer and core, playing not only drums and vibraphones but adding electronic rhythms and samples in an intense exchange with bassist Nick Dunston. But the band’s key feature is its two-guitar interplay between Mary Halvorson and Liberty Ellman, two of the most distinctive guitarists working.

Smith wrote each piece on Clone Row’s self-titled 2025 debut to emphasize a distinct approach to two-guitar interplay. During the sublime “Heart Breakthrough,” for instance, Ellman and Halvorson split a complex melody in two, their tones moving around one another like voices in a hocket. They lock in and splinter apart during “Abrade With Me,” walls and wails of distortion and dissonance passing between the channels. (That’s Ellman on the left, Halvorson on the right.) And on the title track, the entire band participates in a seemingly impossible counterpoint, Smith’s vibes and drum machines serving as the frame through which Ellman and Halvorson bob and weave. After a European tour late last year, Ches Smith’s Clone Row makes a rare American appearance at Big Ears 2026.