Nate Wooley is a visionary. At age 38, he has already developed an entire vocabulary all his own–a difficult thing on any instrument, even more so on one so well-explored as the trumpet. With eyes closed and without a mouthpiece, he led his band Seven Storey Mountain before an electrified crowd at Issue Project Room last night. His music is both deeply personal and readily accessible, making his reference to Thomas Merton’s autobiographical tale of spiritual vision all the more appropriate.  The one long piece that he performed with his band, timed at just over an hour, evoked profound images from ones life journey ranging from first consciousness to last reflection.

The music began with drummers Chris Corsano and Ryan Sawyer lightly using brushes as if to breathe life into the silence. All else was still. The musicians barely moved, even the audience seemed frozen in vivid anticipation of each building sound upon sound. The two vibraphonists Chris Dingman and Matt Moran melded with the other percussionists adding heart beats of vitality to a growing musical organism. Then electronicist Ben Vida and violinist C. Spencer Yeh folded texture and shape into the sound, still growing, evolving, transforming. From this world of music set in motion, Wooley’s trumpet emerged in breaths, amped so that even the movement of keys produced rhythmic pulses. Wooley’s lines were sometimes barely audible in their gentleness, but gradually crescendoed towards the apex as he employed a variety of techniques including vocalization. The TILT Brass Sextet, composed of three trumpets and three bass trombones, joined this breathing, pulsing, visceral experience adding their voices, like an angelic chorus, from which Wooley soared to profound heights with soulful elations, bold cries, and tender resonances over the rolling thunder of percussion. Then, this vital life beat of sound receded, casting a feeling of inner peace over an audience, changed and transformed.

This performance by Seven Storey Mountain was oceanic in its depth of feeling and emotion and serves as a bold example of how profoundly modern music can be both beautiful and challenging at the same time: innovative in its sound, gripping in its intensity, fierce in its determination, transcendent in its impact.

The new Issue Project Room space on Boerum Place was an ideal setting for the performance of the work, allowing for a full audience and a room large enough to contain the sound, but also acoustically sensitive to draw out the subtle elements of Wooley’s detailed artistic vision.

Nate Wooley’s next public performance is in a duo with Zeena Parkins at The Stone, June 25, at 8 and 10 pm.