Two instruments meet here that seem to have been built on opposite ends of the same planet. Kevin Spears plays the kalimba, a handful of metal tines you pluck with your thumbs, run through electronics until every note arrives as a bright, ringing point of light. Will Boyd answers on saxophones and woodwinds, all breath and wood and the low pull of the blues. Spears sends the sound upward; Boyd keeps it in orbit. The duo calls what happens between them outer space jazz, and the name they perform under, Kinetic Earth, gets at the rest: a world in motion, energy and gravity working at the same time. They bring it to Little Jumbo on Monday, July 27, another free night in the bar's curated series.

Spears is regarded by many as one of the finest kalimba players alive, and he has spent a career rewriting what the traditional African thumb piano is allowed to do. Working with electric kalimba, guitar effects, and a shelf of instruments most listeners have never seen, he layers loops and lines into something closer to a full ensemble than a single pair of hands. That work has carried him to Japan, Germany, and China, onto a TED stage, into a feature on Afropop Worldwide, and onto bills alongside Victor Wooten, India.Arie, Roy "Futureman" Wooten, and Beyoncé's bassist Divinity, among many others.

Boyd is the gravity in the pairing, a multi-reed instrumentalist, composer, and educator who came up out of Orangeburg, South Carolina, and now calls Asheville home. He teaches applied woodwinds and jazz at both Warren Wilson College and UNC Asheville, and he moves freely across flute, alto flute, clarinet, oboe, bass clarinet, and the full family of saxophones, drawing on the deep soul lineage of Eddie Harris, Grover Washington, and Houston Person. Set his warmth beside Spears' electricity, in a room where the creature keeps its watch from the corner, and you get a Monday that stays rooted while it wanders the far reaches, and like the whole series, it costs nothing to walk in.

Featuring: Kevin Spears - Kalimba, Will Boyd - Sax, Flute, Clarinet, EWI