The Durham-based percussionist, composer, and improviser Joe Westerlund is a sonic explorer. On each of his solo outings he uses drums and other percussive instruments to create textures that descriptively range from meditative to cinematic, and on his latest outing “Curiosities From The Shift,” he’s tapping into dance music in a way that he hasn’t before.
The record started taking shape during the COVID lockdown, and came together after Westerlund spent years studying the clave, the rhythmic pattern often associated with Brazilian and Cuban music.
“I was writing a lot of this music while I started this process of peeling back layers of the types of rhythms and percussion I was interested in,” Westerlund said. “Clave was always something that came up when I was getting my education in jazz.”…