Composer & Master Percussionist Adam Rudolph
Tours in March & April With Moving Pictures Quintet and Octet
(Boston, New Haven, Teaneck, Philadelphia, New York City)

Yeyi Duet With Multi-Instrumentalist Ralph Jones Tours Midwest
(Champaign-Urbana, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor, Oberlin)

This March and April, master percussionist Adam Rudolph will tour the East Coast with a brand new edition of his Moving Pictures Quintet and Octet. Rudolph originally founded the group in the late 1980s as a vehicle for his explorations of what would later come to be known as “world music,” a field he has been exploring since his first recordings in the 1970s.

Rudolph recently received his second Chamber Music America “New Works” commissioning grant. On this tour, Moving Pictures will premier new compositions he wrote for the current lineup with the help of the CMA grant. The new lineup features veteran bassist Jerome Harris, the saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist Ralph Jones, the trombonist and percussion player Joseph Bowie (brother of the late Lester Bowie) and percussionist Matt Kilmer.  Members of the ensemble continuing in the current incarnation include cornetist/flugelhornist Graham Haynes, guitarist Kenny Wessel and the Moroccan-born oudist/percussionist Brahim Fribgane. Together the musical credits of theses artists span the entirety of contemporary instrumental music from Ornette Coleman to L. Shankar.

With a pair of new releases on his own Meta Records label, Rudolph celebrates two decades-long partnerships in which he’s found just that kind of alchemy. On Towards the Unknown, the string section from Rudolph’s Go: Organic Orchestra is woven into a concerto for the percussionist and legendary saxophonist Yusef Lateef; Rudolph is then featured in a second concerto, composed for him by Lateef and featuring thirteen members of the S.E.M. Ensemble conducted by Czech composer Petr Kotik. And with Yeyi, Ralph Jones employs an arsenal of woodwind instruments to complement Rudolph’s percussion battery in a wide-ranging, deeply spiritual dialogue.

Rudolph and Jones’ partnership dates back more then thirty years to the 1974 Ann Arbor Blues and Jazz Festival, where they performed on a bill that also included Sun Ra and James Brown. They were brought together by trumpeter Charles Moore, with whom they later cofounded the Eternal Wind Quartet.

Yeyi & Towards The Unknown CD Release Date: April 20, 2010

ADAM RUDOLPH UPCOMING PERFORMANCE DATES

Mondays:  March 8, 15, 22, 29, 2010
Go: Organic Orchestra (42 musicians)
Roulette Intermedium – 8:30 pm
20 Greene St
New York, NY 10013
(212) 219-8242
composed & conducted by Adam Rudolph
www.roulette.org

Friday March 26, 2010
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA
Moving Pictures Quintet with gnawa master Hassan Hakmoun
with Adam Rudolph, Ralph Jones, Graham Haynes, Kenny Wessel, Brahim Fribgane
7:30 pm – $20 general admission; $16 members, students, and seniors
100 Northern Avenue
Boston, MA 02210
(617) 478-3100
www.icaboston.org

Friday April 2, 2010
Firehouse 12, New Haven, CT
Moving Pictures Quintet with Adam Rudolph, Joseph Bowie, Graham Haynes, Kenny Wessel, Brahim Fribgane
8:30 pm – $18
10:00 pm – $12
45 Crown St
New Haven, CT 06510
(203) 785.0468
www.firehouse12.com

Saturday April 3, 2010
Puffin Foundation, Teaneck, NJ.
Moving Pictures Quintet with Adam Rudolph, Joseph Bowie, Graham Haynes, Kenny Wessel, Brahim Fribgane
8:00 pm – $10 suggested donation
20 East Oakdene Avenue
Teaneck, NJ 07666
(201) 836-8923
www.puffinfoundation.org

Friday April 9, 2010
The Painted Bride, Philadelphia, PA
Moving Pictures Octet with Adam Rudolph, Joseph Bowie, Graham Haynes, Ralph Jones, Matt Kilmer, Kenny Wessel, Jerome Harris, Brahim Fribgane
8:00 pm – General Admission – $ 25; Crush Card holder – $ 20; Member – $ 12.50
230 Vine Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106-1293
(215) 925-9914
www.paintedbride.org

Saturday April 10, 2010
(le) Poisson Rouge, New York, NY presented by World Music Institute
Moving Pictures Octet with Adam Rudolph, Joseph Bowie, Graham Haynes, Ralph Jones, Matt Kilmer, Kenny Wessel, Jerome Harris, Brahim Fribgane
7:00 pm – $25 General Admission
158 Bleecker Street
New York, NY 10012-1408
(212) 228-4854
www.lepoissonrouge.com

Thursday April 22, 2010
University of Illinois-Champagne-Urbana
Yeyi – Adam Rudolph/Ralph Jones Duet
7:30 pm – FREE
500 Peabody Drive
Champaign, IL 61820-6986
(217) 333-1861
www.illinois.edu/calendar/

Friday April 23, 2010
The Velvet Lounge, Chicago, IL
Yeyi – Adam Rudolph/Ralph Jones Duet
67 East Cermak Road
Chicago, IL 60616-2122
(312) 791-9050
www.velvetlounge.net/calendar.html

Saturday April 24, 2010
Mexicains Sans Frontieres, Grand Rapids, MI presented by Blue Lake Public Radio
Yeyi – Adam Rudolph/Ralph Jones Duet
8:00 pm – $10
120 S Division Av #226
Grand Rapids, MI 49503
www.myspace.com/mexicainssansfrontieres

Sunday April 25, 2010
Kerrytown Concert House, Ann Arbor, MI
Yeyi – Adam Rudolph/Ralph Jones Duet
7:30 pm – $25 Assigned Rows 1-2; $15 Assigned Rows 3-5; $10 General Admission; $5 Student
415 North 4th Avenue
Ann Arbor, MI 48104-1103
(734) 769-2999
www.kerrytownconcerthouse.com

Monday April 26, 2010
Oberlin College, Fairchild Chapel, Oberlin, OH
Yeyi – Adam Rudolph/Ralph Jones Duet
Concert Time TBA – FREE
39 W. College St.,
Oberlin, OH 44074
www.oberlin.edu

ADAM RUDOLPH BIO

Born in 1955, handrummer, percussionist, composer, multi instrumentalist and improviser Adam Rudolph has been hailed as “a pioneer in world music” by the New York Times. Currently he composes for his groups Moving Pictures, Hu: Vibrational, and Go: Organic Orchestra, a 15 – 50 piece ensemble for which he has developed an original music notation and conducting system. Over the past 25 years he has developed a unique syncretic approach to hand drumming in creative collaborations with outstanding artists of cross-cultural and improvised music, including Don Cherry, Jon Hassell, L. Shankar, Pharaoh Sanders, Fred Anderson, Hassan Hakmoun and Wadada Leo Smith among others.

The example that Allison Miller sets on BOOM TIC BOOM (sic) is that of a powerhouse drummer with an unerring sense of swing and a moving melodicism; an inventive composer with a gift for memorable tunes that leave ample space for bright improvisations; and a bandleader who ably marries these pieces with the right collaborators to breathe life into them. Here, those collaborators are pianist/composer Myra Melford; longtime collaborator Todd Sickafoose on bass; and guest violinist Jenny Scheinman.

Raised in the Washington D.C. area, Miller began playing the drums at the age of ten and was featured in Down Beat magazine’s “Up and Coming” section in 1991. Five years later, after graduating from West Virginia University she moved to New York City to pursue what has became a fruitful career as a freelance drummer. Miller’s talents have landed her gigs in the mainstream music world, with artists like Natalie Merchant, Ani DiFranco, and most recently, folk singer Brandi Carlile; and her jazz skills have been embraced by everyone from saxophonist Marty Ehrlich to organ legend Dr. Lonnie Smith, with a wide range of leaders in between, including Erik Friedlander, Mark Helias, Steven Bernstein, Ray Drummond, Peter Bernstein, Sheila Jordan, George Garzone, Mike Stern, Rachel Z, Kevin Mahogany, Bruce Barth, Mark Soskin, andHarvie S.Sunday,

March 21st – Washington, DC
Bossa
8pm
2463 18th Street Northwest
Washington, DC 20009-2003
(202) 667-0088
www.bossaproject.com

Monday, March 22nd – Bryn Mawr, PA
Q&A at Bryn Mawr College
7pm-10pm
Goodhart Music Room (in Goodhart Hall).
101 N. Merion Ave
Bryn Mawr, PA 19010

Tuesday, March 23rd – Pittsburgh, PA
Club Cafe
7pm doors;  7:30pm – Jeff Berman’s EARLY WARNING; 8:30 pm BOOM TIC BOOM ($8 in advance, $10 at door)
56 South 12th Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15203
(412) 431-4950
www.clubcafelive.com

Wednesday, March 24th – Morgantown, WV
West Virginia University – College of Creative Arts – Creative Arts Center (CAC)
Large Rehearsal Room 200B
5pm-7pm
Morgantown, WV 26506-6111

Thursday, March 25th – New York, NY
Cornelia St. Cafe
2 shows: 8:30pm and 10pm ($10 – call for reservations)
29 Cornelia St
Manhattan, New York, NY 10014
(212) 989-9319
www.corneliastreetcafe.com

Friday, March 26th – Philadelphia, PA
Ars Nova presents Allison Miller’s BOOM TIC BOOM
Philadelphia Arts Alliance
8pm ($12)
251 S. 18th Street
www.arsnovaworkshop.org

Saturday, March 27th – Baltimore, MD
An Die Musik
2 shows: 8pm and 9:30pm ($20 – call for tickets)
409 North Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21201-4405
(410) 385-2638
www.andiemusiklive.com

cover art for Royal Toast

On their fifth CD, Royal Toast, The Claudia Quintet raise a glass in salute to their regal muse with a set of new music fit for a king – albeit one with more refined tastes and open mind than your average monarch.

If a round table seems a wholly appropriate setting for this egalitarian ensemble (with an extra place setting this time out), theirs is as much Algonquin as Camelot, renowned for their sophisticated wit as well as their sharply-honed musical jousting.

As composer/leader John Hollenbeck points out, the title might also sound a bit “silly” – but there’s something in its odd incongruity that exemplifies the band’s one-of-a-kind sound.

“I like toast,” Hollenbeck explains with characteristically laconic humor, “and I noticed that if you put ‘royal’ in front of something, it seems elevated.”

The Claudia Quintet has similarly been finding the majestic in the mundane (or vice versa) for more than a dozen years. Nowhere is that more evident than on Royal Toast, where Hollenbeck began by collecting song titles found in often unlikely sources, divorcing them from their original context, and devising music inspired by these evocative phrases.

Hollenbeck’s compositions somehow conjure raucous beauty from dizzying complexity, enticing the emotions with lilting melodies or irresistible grooves while engaging the cerebral side in a surreptitious workout. The music marries jazz, new music, post-rock – but no laundry list of influences is quite sufficient to describe their iconoclastic sound. Suffice it to say, you can feel secure bringing your hipster nephew and your math professor along to a gig, and everyone will go home happy.

Of course, no one could pull off such a a trompe l’oreille without a well-honed ensemble, and the Claudia Quintet has, through intensive collaboration since their 1997 debut, developed a language all their own. The music can best – perhaps only – be defined by the individuals who create it – Hollenbeck on drums, Drew Gress (Tim Berne, Ravi Coltrane, Fred Hersch) on bass, Matt Moran (Slavic Soul Party, Mat Maneri, Ellery Eskelin) on vibraphone, Ted Reichman (Anthony Braxton, Marc Ribot, Paul Simon) on accordion, and Chris Speed (Bloodcount, Yeah No, Human Feel) on clarinet and tenor sax.

As attuned as the Quintet have become to each other, they’re each remarkably attuned to themselves, as Hollenbeck discovered while recording the CD. Bridging several of the pieces on the album are short improvised interludes in which each member plays a short improvised duet with himself – unbeknownst to them until the tracks were in the can. While they sound as if each side of the mirror is reacting to the other, they were actually played separately and married after the fact.

“I didn’t know if it was going to work, so I didn’t tell anybody I was doing it,” Hollenbeck admits. “And I couldn’t believe it because each one just worked fabulously. It was totally unbelievable how they breathed in the same places – Drew even has a rest in the same spot. I think the result is better, actually, than if I had asked them to react to their solos. That might have been a little artificial.”

The quintet is here supplemented by pianist Gary Versace, a longtime collaborator of Hollenbeck’s (including the composer’s Large Ensemble and in the Refuge Trio along with vocalist Theo Bleckmann).

“Gary and I have very similar aesthetics,” Hollenbeck says, “so what he plays is exactly what I would I be doing if I could play piano really well. Gary has a very composerly approach, so he’s very sensitive to the music and tries to make his part sound composed even when it’s not.”

The addition of Versace means that half of the band is now essentially playing percussive instruments, giving Hollenbeck more opportunity than ever to follow his polyrhythmic muse – which emerges most fully on the gleefully intricate title track. But the album begins not with force but with lush intoxication. “Crane Merit” sets an unexpectedly atmospheric mood, enveloping the listener with an idyllic warmth.

Introduced by a Hollenbeck solo that gradually builds into funky propulsion, “Keramag” is the album’s toe-tappingest tune, densely wrought and utterly infectious. It and “Zurn” have the titles with the least concrete associations; the latter is a through-composed piece that generates considerable tension through an insistent drum/piano figure that is thoroughly dispelled by its ethereal finale.

“Sphinx”, on the other hand, brings very distinct associations to mind, which Hollenbeck followed through Egypt to African rhythmic influences. The word “Standard” crops up twice, and in each case the composer took this as a cue to use jazz as a leaping-off point, penning an abstracted ballad with “Ideal Standard” and a fractured anthem on “American Standard.”

The album closes with the elegiac “For Frederick Franck”, an homage to the Dutch-born painter, sculptor and author who died in 2006 at the age of 97. Hollenbeck’s personal connection to the artist comes via a sculpture park in upstate New York that Franck designed and where Hollenbeck proposed to his wife. But Franck’s expansive philosophy is also representative of Hollenbeck’s boundary-blurring approach to genre.

“The meaning of life is to see,” Franck espoused in his work, and the Claudia Quintet approach music with eyes wide open.

For more information please contact Matt Merewitz at Fully Altered Media (matt@fullyaltered.com or 347-527-2527).

In-Demand New York Drummer for Dave Binney, Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Indo-Pak Coalition, Vijay Iyer & Many Others

One of Five Drummers to Watch (and Hear)
According to NY Times Critic Ben Ratliff
Release Date: March 16, 2010

Album Features: Jacob Sacks & Thomas Morgan (+ Jack Lemmon cameo)

‘Timshel’, meaning ‘Thou Mayest,’ is a Hebrew word which challenges the traditional biblical phrase, ‘Thou Shalt.’ I came across this word as I read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and the idea behind the word was very inspiring to me. ‘Thou Mayest’ characterizes man as the maker of his own fate. We are all free to choose our own destiny. This gives us the innate power to create and to be creative.” – Dan Weiss, from the liner notes

The best drummers, like Art Blakey, Max Roach and Billy Higgins, don’t lead by propulsive pyrotechnics; rather, they lead by inspiring their fellow musicians to the heights of their musical plateaus. The endlessly inventive New York-born drummer, tabla player, and composer Dan Weiss, a seasoned veteran of the Manhattan jazz scene, as evidenced by his sterling sideman work with everybody from Lee Konitz, David Binney and Vijay Iyer, to Miguel Zenon, Uri Caine and Ben Monder, is such a drummer. Weiss, with the release of his Sunnyside debut, Timshel, signals the end of his anonymity.

Backed by his long-time trio mates, pianist Jacob Sacks and drummer Thomas Morgan, Weiss weaves elements of different compositional styles and knowledge of Indian rhythms into the language of jazz on his twelve-track CD, to create something new and eternal, foreign and familiar. “Each piece in this record draws upon a specific inspiration which has captured my curiosity and imagination the last couple of years,” Weiss writes in the liner notes. “The intention behind this record was to take the essence of each of these inspirations and to create a musical narrative. It is intended to be listened to as one piece, uninterrupted. While each piece is its own song, they each serve a larger purpose which is the suite.”

Weiss and his terrific triad offer a sensitive and sophisticated take on how a twenty-first century trio should sound. Weiss’ expert drumming soothes, swings, and flies, with Sacks’ elegiac pianism and Morgan’s steady and supportive bass lines. “Stephanie” dances with a Latin tinge, contrasted by the dark and lovely lullaby excursions of “Dream,” the title track “Timshel,” the Chopinesque “Frederic,” and the tabla-tantric “Teental Song.” “Florentino and Fermina,” two characters from Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s immortal novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, evolves from a sensuous tone poem to an urgent, 4/4 cadence. Weiss pays tribute to another extra-musical medium: film, with his ingenious “Always Be Closing,” which comes from a line from the film Glenngarry Glen Ross, starring Jack Lemmon, where Weiss’s devilish drum work mimics Lemmon’s dialog. “Dream” is a work that melds all of the CD’s myriad moods and grooves, while “Chakradar #4” and “Interlude” highlight Weiss’s expert adaptations of sub-continental Indian scales and tabla rhythms to jazz.

If it takes a village to raise a child, then it took a world city like New York to create a global musician like Dan Weiss. Born in New Jersey, Weiss started playing the drums at the age of six. Weiss attended Manhattan School of Music and studied drumset with John Riley, composition with David Noon and frame drums with Jamey Haddad. Weiss has studied the tabla for twelve years under the guidance of his guru, Pandit Samir Chatterjee, and has performed classical Indian music with Ramesh Mishra, Mandira Lahiri, Subra Guha, Anoushka Shankar, Anirban Dasgupta, Joyas Biswas, and Steve Gorn. He has also performed in recitals with his teacher in Kolkata, India. His two previous recordings as a leader: Tintal Drumset Solo (Chhandayan, 2005) and Now Yes When (Toap, 2006).

So, from drumkits to tablas, as Timshel aurally illustrates in all of it’s syncopated splendor, that Dan Weiss has got the rhythms covered. “I feel grateful to have been exposed to such beautiful things, and I feel even more grateful for the opportunity to now share these things with you.”

Dan Weiss’ Official Website

Dan Weiss Trio on MySpace

For more information, please contact
Matt Merewitz at Fully Altered Media
matt@fullyaltered.com
347-527-2527 (office)

The Nels Cline Singers are Nels Cline, Scott Amendola & Devin Hoff
Live Guests Include David Witham, Yuka Honda (Cibo Matto),
Greg Saunier (Deerhoof), John Dieterich (Deerhoof) & Satomi Matsuzaki (Deerhoof)

Artwork Features Photographs of The Large Hadron Collider at CERN (Switzerland),
The Largest Machine in the World

Album Produced by David Breskin (Ronald Shannon Jackson, Bill Frisell, John Zorn)
Engineered by Ron Saint Germain (Bad Brains, Ornette Coleman, Soundgarden)

The concept of duality has been a defining characteristic of guitarist Nels Cline since he first emerged in the late 1970s. On one hand, there’s the harmonically sophisticated, compositionally rich Nels Cline who contributed to jazz recordings by everyone from Tim Berne to Vinny Golia to Julius Hemphill. On the other, there’s the more extreme, visceral Nels Cline, who brought unbridled power and reckless abandon to the post-punk, alternative rock of Mike Watt, Thurston Moore, and The Geraldine Fibbers. Thirty years on, Cline continues to explore this dichotomy, whether it’s in his role as lead guitarist for famed rockers Wilco or with The Nels Cline Singers, his flagship group for the last ten years. Initiate, the Singers’ fourth release and Cline’s seventh as a leader for Cryptogramophone, approaches the concept of Yin and Yang with a series of firsts for both the group and its intrepid leader, slyly dubbed by JazzTimes as “The World’s Most Dangerous Guitarist.”

Initiate, in a beautifully designed, six-panel digipak featuring Simon Norfolk’s gorgeous photographs of the world’s largest machine (the Large Hadron Collider at CERN) is Cline’s first double album and, with its second disc culled from a September 2009 performance at Cafe du Nord in San Francisco, the Singers’ first live album.

The differences between the two discs are as stunning as they are revealingly demonstrative of the shared language that Cline, bassist Devin Hoff and drummer Scott Amendola have built over the years. The studio disc, described by producer David Breskin (Ronald Shannon Jackson, Bill Frisell, John Zorn) as “technicolor, non-naturalistic, hyper-sensuous,” explores a variety of musical touchstones that have been an integral part of Cline’s DNA from the very beginning but are, in some ways, making their first overt appearances just now. The live disc, contrarily, is “stark, raw, a black-and-white movie,” — an incendiary ‘what you see is what you get’ document. Here the Singers perform material dating as far back as the episodic avant-bop of “Sunken Song” (from Cline’s 2000 Cryptogramophone debut, The Inkling) to the most recent “Thurston County” (from the guitarist’s 2009 solo album, Coward) which, with Hoff and Amendola in tow this time, turns into a far more jagged and fiery tribute to the guitarist’s occasional co-conspirator, Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore.

Initiate is also the first Singers album not recorded and produced by the longstanding Crypto team of engineer Rich Breen and producer/label head Jeff Gauthier. Engineer Ron Saint Germain (Bad Brains, Ornette Coleman, Soundgarden) brings something different to the table, especially on the studio disc, where Cline indulges himself in a program as close to sheer beauty as any he’s ever done. The Singers go early-‘70s Miles on the groove-centric “Floored,” then revel in the delicately lush ambience of “You Noticed,” where Hoff delivers the most lyrical contrabass solo of his career. “King Queen,” with guest organist David Witham, cops an early-Santana vibe and Cline’s Afrobeat vernacular turns it into a vehicle for his most passionate, soaring guitar solo of the disc. “Divining” features Amendola’s mbira, wordless vocals (yet another first: the Singers sing) and Cline’s softly strummed guitar gradually assuming more grit and grist, while “Grow Closer” turns to Egberto Gismonti and the rainforests of Brazil, all refracted through the Singers’ unique prism.

This is not to suggest that the extremes so endemic to Cline and the Singers are missing from Initiate’s studio disc. Even the relentless build to a thundering climax on “Mercy (Procession),” reflecting Cline’s recent preoccupation with the passing of keyboardist and composer Joe Zawinul, starts with a gentle whisper. And Cline’s command of color — combined with Amendola’s excursions into the electronic and Hoff’s electric bass (another first) — has never been more comprehensive, bookending the disc with “Into It” and “Into It (You Turn),” two tracks of textural richness utterly new in the Singers’ repertoire.

The slamming live disc is not without its share of firsts, too. In addition to four tracks culled from The Inkling, Coward and the Singers’ heralded 2004 release, The Giant Pin, Cline contributes two new tunes. The head-banging pulse of “Raze” is an ear-shattering context for Cline to go places few guitarists are bold enough to go, while “Forge” revolves around a brooding electric arpeggio that builds with absolute inevitability: Amendola’s turbulent kit work, Hoff’s throbbing low end and Cline’s Hendrixian extremes turn it into the sonic equivalent of the Large Hadron Collider’s proton-smashing harnessing of 1.18 trillion electron volts.

Nor do the Singers deny their jazz roots, with an expanded version of The Giant Pin’s “Blues, Too” paying angular tribute to the great Jim Hall. It may only swing for a nanosecond but, with its largely acoustic bent, it’s the Yang to the Yin of “Raze,” further proof of this group’s encyclopedic range.

Cline’s choice of two covers for the live set are the last in this long series of firsts for the Singers on Initiate. Carla Bley’s “And Now the Queen” — a rarely heard track only recorded, in fact, by pianist Paul Bley — provides a soft, open-ended, pensive interlude after the assaulting triptych which begins the concert. And the lengthy closer (Zawinul’s Weather Report classic, “Boogie Woogie Waltz”) reveals Initiate’s Apollonian / Dionysian dichotomy in all its richness. As funky as the Singers have ever been, and undeniably reverent to Zawinul’s definitive voicings, Cline dispenses with any perceived guitaristic limitations, creating a personal tribute to the late keyboardist that’s reflective of Zawinul’s distinct orchestral sense.

Initiate is an album of inner and external reflection, a consolidation of the old, the new and the what may well be. What you have here is the definitive Nels Cline Singers set, one that decimates convention and plays off of — just as it unites — opposing forces, emotions, instincts: smashing dualities. 1.18 trillion electron volts and counting.

Release Date: April 13

Nels Cline’s Website

Nels Cline on Facebook

Nels Cline on Twitter

For more information, please contact Matt Merewitz at Fully Altered Media
matt@fullyaltered.com
215-629-6155 (cell) or 347-527-2527 (office)

Steve Colson (photo: Sharon Sullivan Rubin)

Tuesday 2/2 – Steve Colson Trio’s The Untarnished Dream is Released + Saturday 2/6 – Release Party at Symphony Space

This Saturday night, Feb. 6, the Steve Colson Trio featuring Andrew Cyrille on drums and Reggie Workman on bass + Iqua Colson on vocals will perform at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia theatre at Symphony Space in the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  This is the Colson’s first release since 2004 and Steve’s 5th album as a leader or co-leader.  They previously led a group in the late 70s and early 1980s called The Colson Unity Troupe. See a beautiful feature on the Colsons in their hometown paper, The Montclair Times, entitled “The Colsons: life partners who make beautiful music together”. Be on the lookout for an article on Steve in the May issue of Down Beat Magazine. Time Out New York writes:

“Pianist Steve Colson is a product of Chicago’s AACM, the organization that birthed such staunchly experimental composers as Anthony Braxton and Henry Threadgill. Colson’s music sounds straightforward by contrast: There’s probing free jazz to be found on his latest disc, The Untarnished Dream, but also plenty of refined, hard-swinging postbop. Joining the pianist here is the sterling cast heard on the album—bassist Reggie Workman, drummer Andrew Cyrille and vocalist Iqua Colson.”

Details:
Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Symphony Space

2537 Broadway (at 95th St)
Upper West Side | Map

212-864-5400

Subway: 1, 2, 3 to 96th St  | Directions

http://www.symphonyspace.org

Prices
Tickets: advance $25, day of show $30, students $20

Jason Lindner's Now vs. Now (photo: John Rogers)

Tuesday 2/2 9PM – ROSE LIVE MUSIC’s 4 Year Anniversary w/ Jason Lindner’s Now vs Now & All-star Jam Session

It’s Rose Live Music’s 4 Year Anniversary and to help us celebrate, Jason Lindner’s Now vs Now will host an all-star jam session featuring a cast of heavyweights who have performed at Rose in years past. No cover.

Details:

Rose Live Music

345 Grand St (between Havemeyer St and Marcy Ave)
Williamsburg, Brooklyn | Map

718-599-0069

Subway: L to Lorimer St, G to Metropolitan Ave  | Directions

http://www.liveatrose.com

Tickets: FREE

]]> http://fullyaltered.com/fa/2010/02/02/rose-live-musics-4th-anniversary-cd-release-week-for-steve-colson-trios-the-untarnished-dream/feed/ 0 http://fullyaltered.com/fa/2010/01/27/rose-live-music-announces-drummer-series-lineup-for-febmar-2010/ http://fullyaltered.com/fa/2010/01/27/rose-live-music-announces-drummer-series-lineup-for-febmar-2010/#comments Wed, 27 Jan 2010 19:11:28 +0000 Matt http://fullyaltered.com/fa/2010/01/27/rose-live-music-announces-drummer-series-lineup-for-febmar-2010/ Rose Live Music Announces Drummers and Details for 4th Anniversary & Drummers Series.

8pm – doors
8:30pm – 1st set
10pm – 2nd set
$10-$12 cover

Schedule:

Feb 2 – Rose 4th Year Anniversary: Jason Lindner’s Now vs Now hosts jam session (No cover)

Feb 9 – Adam Deitch: Adam Deitch, Louis Cato and Yuki Hirano Trio

Feb 16 – New Languages Festival presents: Mike Pride: From Bacteria to Boys

Feb 23 – Dafnis Prieto: Proverb Trio w/Kokayi (vocals), Jason Lindner (keys)

Mar 2 – Search & Restore presents: Bobby Previte’s New Bump

Mar 9 – Billy Martin: Solo & Fang Percussion Ensemble

Mar 16 – Tom Tom Magazine: A Magazine About Female Drummers Presents a Night of Women at the Kit

WED Mar 17 – Jim Black: Pachora

Mar 23 – Search & Restore presents: Ben Perowsky’s Moodswing Orchestra

Mar 30 – Mark Guiliana & Zach Danziger

WED Mar 31 – Ryan Sawyer with Thurston Moore & Daniel Carter

The highly anticipated New York debut of Sam Sadigursky’s Words Project III: Miniatures, the NY-based saxophonist and composer’s third installment in the critically acclaimed Words Project series on New Amsterdam Records, will take place Friday January 29th at Galapagos Art Space in DUMBO (16 Main St. at the corner of Water St and Main St. Brooklyn, NY 11201) as part of New Amsterdam’s ARCHIPELAGO Series. These releases mix modern and post-modern poetry with Sadigursky’s unique compositional vision that draws stylistically from both jazz and new music. Source material includes poems by Emily Dickinson, Carl Sandburg, Maxim Gorky, Léon de Greiff and William Carlos Williams sung by a range of New York-based vocalists including Michael Leonhart, Monika Heidemann, Becca Stevens, Heather Masse and Matt Kanelos.

Here’s what Sam has to say in his own words (from the Naxos blog at Sequenza21.com).

Here’s what the critics are already saying about Words Project III:

The highly respected veteran jazz journalist Doug Ramsey writes on his ArtsJournal blog, Rifftides:

“As we pointed out in a Rifftides posting two years ago today, jazz and poetry never really became a movement. Over the past 90 years or so, the hybridform has had a few peak periods and some embarrassing lows. On the strength of Sam Sadigursky’s work, we may be at one of the peaks.”

Fort Worth Weekly music scribe Ken Shimamoto captures the difference between Words Project III and other poetry-jazz hybrids.

“It would be wrong to call Words Project III: Miniatures a “poetry-jazz” record. To many folks, that description evokes a ’50s movie cliché of goateed beret-and-turtleneck wearers in a smoky basement, snapping their fingers to signify approval of some “Howl”-era Ginsberg caricature backed by stale bebop. What New York-based composer Sam Sadigursky’s up to here is something entirely other. The phrase that pays is “art song.” The record is as redolent of classical music as it is of jazz, while the vocalists’ delivery and Sadigursky’s setting produce a resolutely contemporary sound.“

Friday January 29th
8:00 PM – one set

Sam Sadigursky’s Words Project III: Miniatures Premiere/Release Party
New Amsterdam Records’ ARCHIPELAO Series

Galapagos Art Space
16 Main St. (corner of Water and Main)
Brooklyn, NY 11201 (DUMBO)

Personnel:
Monika Heidemann, Becca Stevens, Heather Masse, Michael Leonhart, Matt Kanelos – voice
Sam Sadigursky – saxophones
Pete Rende – piano, accordion
Nate Radley – guitar
Gary Wang – bass
Richie Barshay – drums/percussion

Sam Sadigursky’s website
Sam Sadigursky’s MySpace page
Sam Sadigursky’s Facebook Fan Page
New Amsterdam Records
Galapagos Art Space

For more information, please contact Matt Merewitz at Fully Altered Media / 347-527-2527 or 215-629-6155 / matt@fullyaltered.com

visionary crossover pianist Jason Lindner’s Now Vs. Now, featuring a cast of jazz heavyweights who have performed at Rose in years past.

Every Tuesday through March, the Williamsburg jazz haunt will turn the spotlight on varied masters of the backbeat — running the gamut from John Scofield Band timekeeper and vaunted hip-hop impresario Adam Deitch to the combustible Latin rhythms of Dafnis Prieto to eponymous Medeski, Martin & Wood stalwart Billy Martin. The series will also feature such kings of the kit as relative newcomer Mark Guiliana, a frequent collaborator of bassist Avishai Cohen, Ryan Sawyer, who has performed with such groups as Stars Like Fleas, Lone Wolf, and TV on the Radio, and high-octane drum maven Jim Black. Guest presenters will include an evening of female drummers curated by Tom Tom Magazine, an international publication devoted to female percussionists, as well as separate events presented by Aaron Ali Shaikh’s New Languages Festival and Search & Restore.

Despite its youth, Rose has already cultivated a storied history of reaching across genre to bring the freshest sounds of the Zeitgeist in jazz, soul, Afrobeat, house, and everything in between to an intimate forum where music lovers and musicians alike find common ground. The club was founded by Carlo Vutera, a classically-trained opera singer of Sicilian descent, and his sister Gina, a

foreign language professor, who shared a vision of creating a welcoming environment geared towards musicians and true lovers of groundbreaking music in all its hybrid forms.

Having consistently played host to mainstays of the contemporary jazz and avant-garde scenes since the club’s inception, among them guitar guru Charlie Hunter, genre-bending sonic wizard and trombonist Josh Roseman, and ambient Afrobeat-dub spinsters Mobius Collective, Rose’s walls spin a rich tapestry of heavy grooves, trance-inducing funksmanship, and mind-blowing improvisation.

In fact, the club’s walls tell a story quite literally — in order to create the European cafe aesthetic of their youth, the owners imported vintage wallpaper from Belgium, a country known for its artistry in, among other things, its wallpaper. Perhaps chiefly, though, Belgium is also known for its beer, and indeed, the libations at Rose flow freely, ranging from a wide array of Belgian cask ales drawn from an imported tap to an extensive variety of organic wines curated by the in-house sommelier. Downstairs from the performance space, Rose also houses Vutera, a gourmet restaurant that serves up home-style new Mediterranean cuisine.

A chicly decorated grotto bathed in iridescent red light and illuminated by well-placed candles, the European-style speakeasy is a cozy space so intimate that listeners can hear musicians on stage catch their breath in between notes. The tight quarters make for a vertiginous call-and-response synergy between performer and audience, creating a musical conversation that drives the delicate fuse that enlivens each performance’s explosive spontaneity, the touchstone of jazz.

“One of the greatest assets of Rose is that musicians really feel comfortable there, that they can do things that they can’t usually focus on,” says Mary Ho, who is in charge of booking for the club.

Though the eclectic musical offerings are prodigious, Rose tends to fly under the radar, a diamond in the rough amid a slew of other live music venues in Williamsburg. Located slightly off the beaten path on Grand Street, Rose has largely established itself as a haven for Brooklyn artists, a local watering hole and musicians’ hang where members of renowned jam band Soulive, Lost Tribe co-founder and in-demand sideman drummer Ben Perowsky, effervescent post-bop trumpeter Avishai Cohen, and numerous other luminaries of the scene regularly gather to commune over good food and good tunes unfettered and unfiltered by the vicissitudes of the broader music industry. These are the musicians’ musicians, convening to lay back and indulge in the music they want to play and the music they want to hear.

“The thing about Rose is that it provides a platform for musicians

who just want to try something new,” says Ho. “It gives them the rare opportunity when they’re not touring or not on the road to work on their own stuff, or just to play with their friends. There’s not the pressure of putting on that performance that other people expect and it gives the audience a chance to see them in an intimate setting.”

For more information, please contact Matt Merewitz at Fully Altered Media matt@fullyaltered.com / 347-527-2527