It takes a minute for a band to hurdle growth spurts and become the eloquent ensemble it hopes to be. But striving for a truly individual sound, one that depends on the contributions of each member is a noble goal. After three years as a quintet with two saxophones up front, Blue Cranes have achieved such a victory. They prove it with Observatories.

On its third album, everything gels for the acclaimed instrumental outfit from Portland, Oregon. Working that thin line between prog-jazz improvisation and indie rock catchiness, the band arrives at a unique spot. Like forebears such as The Ordinaires and The President, and contemporaries like Todd Sickafoose’s Tiny Resistors and John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet, Blue Cranes have found ways to make exploration seem like the most enjoyable process around.

The songs and performances on Observatories are all about rewards of collective articulation. Reed Wallsmith, the group’s straw boss, saxophonist and main composer, says the new album finds them putting their best foot forward.

“Homing Patterns, the record before this, was a quintet with two horns; Sly Pig joined us on tenor saxophone a year before we made it.  But, I had conceived of a lot of the music originally for quartet.  Since then, with more time under our belts, I think our compositions more fully incorporate all five of us.  For Observatories we wrote more contrapuntal lines, not just melodies and support riffs.  I hope that the entire group unity comes through. It feels great to hear it happen.”

Blue Cranes is comprised of drummer Ji Tanzer, bassist Keith Brush, keyboardist Rebecca Sanborn, tenor saxophonist Joe “Sly Pig” Cunningham, and Wallsmith himself. The alto saxophonist says that the camaraderie of gigging on the road has bolstered the band’s unity.

photo credit: Jason Quigley

“We’ve done seven tours now, and gone out for a week and a half at a time. That kind of continuity is such a great way to get tight as a band – performing every night and being able to talk about the music every day. We have fun on the road. Sharing music on iPods, hanging out, laughing about everything. It’s such a blast to get to know each other better. It’s not just my vision driving the action anymore; it’s all of ours – which has always been my goal.”

Blue Cranes’ music is refreshingly diverse. They may be a left-of-center instrumental outfit, but their book has lots of room for old-fashioned beauty. Wallsmith’s “Grandpa’s Hands” is a bittersweet anthem with a luminous theme that boasts echoes of Steve Reich. Cunningham’s “Broken Windmills” is an evocative lament that could easily snuggle up to an Ornette Coleman ballad. Waxing rustic isn’t forbidden with Blue Cranes, and that decision widens the record’s emotional palette. On “Yellow Ochre,” the group sounds like The Band sauntering its way through The Beatles’ “Let It Be.”

“Tim Young, the guitarist from Wayne Horvitz’s band, made a comment I liked,” says Wallsmith. “He said ‘You guys aren’t afraid to just play melodies.’ I think that’s true. ‘Yellow Ochre’ feels old fashioned to me. ‘Maddie Mae,’ too. I’m proud of that tone. But the album wouldn’t work if it was full of tunes like ‘Yellow Ochre.’ We wanted to make it flow, to have the pretty stuff move right into the in-your-face stuff.”

Indeed, Observatories does strike a balance between genteel and rambunctious. Crescendos crop up in all sorts of places, and the physical thrust of the rhythm section gives several moments a wonderfully vicious clout. “Richie Bros.” has an intricate pounding intro, a dreamy head, and an explosive middle. “We don’t get super mathy, but ‘Richie Bros.’ is aggressive,” Wallsmith concurs. “I like the power of it, but I also like the fact that it’s followed by the softness of ‘Maddie Mae.’

Sly Pig also played and recorded with indie rock superheroes, The Decemberists. It seems he and Wallsmith have found the perfect formula for cogent abstraction.

“From the first day we started playing, I felt unexpectedly in-synch with him,” says Wallsmith. “We started at an all-improvised gig, and when we played together, I had this feeling that we were long lost brothers.’ I’ve never really met another sax player who approaches music like me. Wherever we’re coming from, it’s a similar same place. We work as a team.”

The Blue Cranes have received kudos from a few key contemporaries. They’ve shared bills with keyboard icon Wayne Horvitz (his “Love Love Love” is part of Observatories) and he’s now a fan.  Wallsmith was a Happy Apple zealot when he was in college in Minneapolis and when drummer Dave King, now of The Bad Plus, posted a “don’t miss John Hollenbeck’s tour” missive on the The Bad Plus’ blog, Wallsmith made a point to catch the drummer-composer. “After the gig I gave someone at the venue a CD to give to John.  He later contacted me out of the blue to say that, although he didn’t expect to, he really liked it.  What an honor!”  Blue Cranes have since shared the stage with bands as diverse as Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet, the dub/hardcore Mi Ami, trumpeter Cuong Vu and violinist Michael White.

Ultimately Observatories is about breadth. Blue Cranes is a band that sees things from various perspectives. A toy piano is the first sound you hear on the disc; a baby’s voice is the final. Variety is central to the action. Tanzer is the go-to guy when it comes to album titles; he’s named the previous Blue Cranes albums. But it was the band’s friend and Tanzer’s band mate, Spinanes leader Rebecca Gates, who came up with the current moniker, and one thing’s for certain: Observatories is dead on, because the Blue Cranes are here to show us all sorts of things.

RELEASE DATE: SEPTEMBER 14, 2010

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

Since our last post, Pete Robbins record siLENT Z Live came out on the alto saxophonist’s own imprint, Hate Laugh Music. Pete had two consecutive CD release shows at The Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Brooklyn and at Cornelia Street Cafe in Manhattan which received nice preview coverage from The New York Times who called siLENT Z “a willfully progressive outfit” and Time Out New York who wrote “In saxist Pete Robbins’s siLENT Z project, highly developed harmony, complex meter and searing improv merge with a world of experimental loops, ambient soundscapes, hard beats and general abandon. The ’70s term jazz-rock doesn’t cut it, so the best description of this outfit is probably the artist’s own: Brooklyn prog-modern (post)jazz.”

A few nice things have come out so far for Pete.

- Pete was interviewed and played live in studio at WBGO by Josh Jackson for their new music program, The Checkout.

- There was a nice review by All About Jazz-New York’s Elliot Simon.

- There was a nice review by Derek Taylor on his new blog Master of a Small House.

- Phil Freeman reviewed the record for his excellent new webzine, Burning Ambulance in his 31 Days of Jazz Reviews series.

- also Pete will be featured in an upcoming issue of Down Beat Magazine – as a “Players” feature by John Ephland.

Stay tuned for more updates on Pete.  You can follow his goings-on with his new blog as well as through the regular channels: Twitter, Facebook and MySpace.

New York Times CD review by Nate Chinen.

Los Angeles Times CD review by Chris Barton.

Boston Globe CD review by Siddhartha Mitter.

NPR Exclusive First Listen by Patrick Jarenwattananon.

Spinner.com interview by Tad Hendrickson.

Also Claudia is performing in New York City on June 14th at 45 Bleecker presented by Search & Restore. This concert will immediately follow the 14th Annual Jazz Journalist Association Jazz Awards (in which Claudia Quintet ringleader John Hollenbeck is nominated for Composer of the Year and Arranger of the Year and sometimes Claudia member Gary Versace for Organist of the Year).  We welcome inebriated and non-inebriated journalists, industry folk and regular ole fans to come and partake in the joy that is Claudia starting at 10 PM at 45 Bleecker.

We couldn’t be happier. So congrats to John, Chris, Ted, Matt, Drew, Gary, the folks at Cuneiform and all involved.

NPR Music streamed The Nels Cline Singers new Cryptogramophone 2-CD release Initiate in its entirety for their First Listen series (audio no longer available as release date has passed). And we have a Tiny Desk Concert with the Singers planned for July.

NPR Music will also stream the new Claudia Quintet CD on Cuneiform, Royal Toast, in it’s entirety from May 10-18 (link coming soon).

Nate Chinen enthusiastically reviewed Jacky Terrasson’s first trio album in a dozen years, Push (Concord Jazz), in last Monday’s New York Times’ Critics Choice: New CDs.

Ben Ratliff reviews the latest Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things record Stories and Negotiations (482 Music) in the Sunday New York Times Arts & Leisure Playlist.

And we’ve been on a roll with All Music Guide – reviewing Adam Rudolph & Yusef Lateef’s, Towards the Unknown, The Nels Cline Singers‘ Initiate, The Claudia Quintet’s forthcoming release, Royal Toast, Jacky Terrasson’s Push, Allison Miller’s BOOM TIC BOOM, Steve Colson Trio’s The Untarnished Dream, Thomas Savy’s French Suite and Sam Sadigursky’s Words Project III: Miniatures. Kudos to Thom Jurek and Michael G. Nastos for all those reviews.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a few other noteworthy things, but I wanted to keep this short and sweet. See the client pages for more placements.

Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things Latest Recording, Stories and Negotiations,
featuring Art Hoyle, Julian Priester & Ira Sullivan

Stories & Negotiations is Third Installment
In A Trilogy of Recordings Devoted to the Remarkable Period of 1954-1960 Chicago Jazz,
And Its Relation to Chicago Jazz Today

Release Date: April 20, 2010
Catalog #482-1070

Versatile musicians Charles Rumback and Charles Gorzcynski may hail from Chicago, poet Carl Sandburg’s “stormy, husky, brawling, city of the Big Shoulders,” but they abide creatively in a far more fluid habitat: the ocean of sound. Rumback (drums, marimba, guitars) and Gorzcynski (saxophones, harmonium, synthesizers) are friends in their late 20s who are busy inventing yet another new wave of sonic adventure in a city long-steeped in both musical innovation and bedrock traditions of blues and jazz, rhythm-and-blues and the avant-garde.

The duo’s latest recording, A Square White Lie (482 Music), is a kaleidoscopic flux of sounds that pools all kinds of ideas and influences into an organic wash, one that is often transcendental and meditative, occasionally blissed out, and, once in a while, a bit fevered — like a gorgeous sunset whose hues shift and overlap in suspended time as the sun melts from the sky. It’s a record that slips easily into a playlist that might include one of Teo Macero’s cut-and-splice electric sessions with Miles Davis, Brian Eno’s Music for Airports, Pharoah Sanders’s cosmic explorations, Aphex Twin or Colorlist’s post-rock neighbors Tortoise, Isotope 217, Town and Country, or the Sea and Cake. The five instrumentals are completely improvised, recorded live over two straight days, directly onto tape for the warm, analog sound of 482’s 180-gram vinyl release.

As Rumback explains, the concept was to do something entirely different from their debut, which bloomed out of collaborative associations with such local players as Matt Lux (Isotope 217, Iron and Wine), Josh Eustis (Telefon Tel Aviv), Ellen O’Hayer (Bright Eyes), Jason Ajemian (Chicago Underground Trio) and Jason Stein (Locksmith Isidore) — as well as remixers like Prefuse 73 bassist Josh Abrams, all-star cellist Fred Lonberg-Holm and Gamial Trio.

“Our first album started off as a drums and saxophone duo thing, and we quickly had all these other ideas and free studio time and engineers, friends coming and playing, and it became layers of music,” he says. “It was really cool. But after that whole process we felt like we didn’t have a record of what we sound like live. We wanted this one to be straight up both of us, doing it live with no layers.”

After recording, the musicians went back and edited the tapes, pulling out their favorite sequences and organizing the material into cohesive pieces, ranging from 4 to 19 minutes, each evoking distinct elements of modal jazz, ambient music and minimalism that bubble up naturally in the performance. “When we’re free-improvising, there’s all these different waves that I come through,” Rumback says. “When Charles and I are playing night after night, first it’s really easy and then it’s really hard, because you feel like you’ve said a lot already and you don’t want to repeat yourself.”

Giving credit to producer Josh Eustis, Rumback takes a moment to emphazie the duo’s priorities. “We are just as much concerned with texture and space of the recording as we are with any of the musical elements such as rhythm, melody or harmony,” he says. “I think Josh deserves special mention because of his beautifully skilled approach to that side of the process.”

The tracks range from the gentle, slowly lapping sustained notes of “Monochrome” to the subcontinental feel of “Constant Change,” with its harmonium-and-hand-percussion dualities and airs of Buddhist mountaintop calm. “Time Words” offers a questing, somewhat unsettled mood, in which the drift is challenged by rumbling drums and given benediction by a graceful, delicate saxophone solo. “A Square White Lie,” the album’s centerpiece, moves gradually from the beatific to the cataclysmic, before evaporating into an echo of be-bop drums.

“I’ve been interested in old Terry Riley recordings for years,” says Gorzcynski, nodding toward the composer of such modern classics as “In C” and “A Rainbow in Curved Air”. “Especially the “all night flight” records with the Phantom Band, where he used saxophones and keys in cascading tape loops. His sense of improvisation (and it absolutely was) was inspiring because he was improvising the full sonic space of the event, as well as responding to previous instances of his own playing rather than the instantaneous responses of group improvisation. It creates a longer process, very transparent because it happens slowly, but really engaging for me because every change needs to be so very deliberate, everything added happens over and over.” Colorlist’s improvised pieces being with small intervals so that anything new changes the harmony, but in a way that “sounds like a new shade of what was already happening. Those shades change again with more layering. Steve Reich did the same thing but in a very controlled and predetermined way. Our take is more spontaneous but based on the same principles.”

The duo’s natural chemistry has its roots in an unlikely place. “We met randomly at a call center we were working at,” Rumback recalls. “It was a telephone interviewing service for lots of different companies. We might be interviewing someone to be a garage door repairman or someone to work at PetSmart. It was a pretty terrible job.” The two Charleses did not immediately form a band. Instead, they swapped records, sharing mutual enthusiasms and soaking up each other’s tastes in minimalism, free-jazz, noise, hip-hop … you name it. “We started playing these drum and sax duets and eventually it evolved into Colorlist.”

As his partner concludes, they have highly compatible synapses that make for plenty of spontaneous verve on the bandstand, in the moment. “He pushes me towards unexpected split second decisions,” Gorzcynski says, “so he becomes just as responsible for the harmony as I am. It’s like the motion and harmony is coming from some intuitive connection in the moment that I can’t really put my finger on, every time we play it’s like this, and it’s why I love playing this music.”

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

Release Shows Scheduled For
May 28 at Tea Lounge in Park Slope, Brooklyn
May 29 at Cornelia Street Cafe in East Village

Live recordings may be a cliché in rock music, but in jazz – as bandleader Pete Robbins notes – they are the very measure of the music. They reveal exactly what a group is made of, fully embracing the “first thought, best thought” Zen of improvisation and human chemistry that inspires electrifying moments on the bandstand.

“The concert is such a big part of the experience,” Robbins says. “You have great musicians who play the same songs totally different every time.” As the alto saxophonist discovered making his first live recording – siLENT Z LIVE (Hate Laugh Music) – featuring his stellar working ensemble siLENT Z, the experience opens up dimensions of sound and spontaneity that rarely exist in the studio. “My last record [Do the Hate Laugh Shimmy (Fresh Sound New Talent)] was very scripted. We spent a whole day in the studio, very tightly scheduled and the arrangements were predetermined I felt like I could keep tweaking it until I got what I wanted. But with the live record I can’t do anything.  Shimmy came out great but it lacked the intensity of our live shows. I thought the next logical thing was to record this band live.

And what a band it is. As New York audiences who have seen Robbins and his cohorts perform at venues such as The Cornelia Street Café and the Tea Lounge in Brooklyn’s Park Slope neighborhood know, the electro-acoustic quintet is one of the city’s best working outfits. “Pete has a surprising amount and type of creativity,” says Joe Morris, one of Robbins’ teachers during his formative college years and himself a brilliant, dogged composer and improviser on guitar, bass and banjo. “He’s a great and unique writer and alto player. He’s brave and his music is fun but also artistic.”

Critics also have been impressed.  “Robbins composes like a jazz musician but envisions a broader jumble informed by various indie genres,” wrote critic David Adler in Time Out New York. “Highly developed harmony, complex meter and searing improv merge with a world of experimental loops, ambient soundscapes, hard beats and general abandon. The ’70s term jazz-rock doesn’t cut it, so the best description of a project like siLENT Z is probably the artist’s own: ‘Brooklyn prog-modern (post)jazz’.”

siLENT Z features Robbins on alto, Jesse Neuman on cornet and effects, Mike Gamble on guitar and effects, Thomas Morgan on bass, Tyshawn Sorey on drums, and special guest pianist Cory Smythe. It’s a cross-section of young talents with remarkable verve, ideally suited to Robbins’ purposes as a composer.  “Even without the effects, Jesse is an incredible musician,” Robbins says. “His sense of melody is so strong he can play anything and make it sound beautiful. And he has such a great sense of what effects to use, when and how, that he never ceases to amaze me. I went to the New England Conservatory with Mike in the late ‘90s. He’s great with all the delays and effects. He lends that rock feel my tunes cry out for sometimes, but he can also play quote-unquote jazz guitar.”

Bassist Thomas Morgan is, simply, “one of the best musicians I know,” Robbins says. “He can sight-read anything and makes everyone around him better.” And Sorey, a drummer and composer who leads or participates in several celebrated ensembles, including a trio with Robbins and bassist Mario Pavone, is “a complete savant.”

Robbins offers an example: “Tyshawn can sit at the piano, and I’ll say, ‘Play the B section from the second track of my second record and he’ll just play it. He’s a genius that way. Like Mike, he can take any style and make it authentic.” Sorey’s impending “sabbatical” from regular live performance as he pursues an advanced degree in composition also was a motivation for Robbins’ to capture siLENT Z’s playfully complex mojo in a club setting. Robbins approachs each of the album’s tracks as a particular challenge. The opening number, “edit/revise,” started out simply enough.  “I really wanted to write something in 4/4. I haven’t done that in a long time,” he explains. “I guess I halfway succeeded.” But the piece shifts into a more complex second part that translates the influence of UK electronic pioneers Autechre, via Sorey’s astonishingly nimble percussion.

The touching “his life, for all its waywardness” is a prime slice of siLENT Z and its wide-open best. The piece opens with the bittersweet atmospherics of Gamble’s guitar and effects, seemingly drifting in a sublime manner before the mood shifts, crackling with a fiery dialogue between Robbins’ horn and Sorey’s fast-rattling stick-work. “Jazz these days can get so bogged down in harmony and the subtleties of chord progressions and to me, if I really want to analyze a song, then I can appreciate those things, but I feel like in my head that idea is very much tied up with the ivory tower of jazz consumption: musicians making music for other nusicians,” Robbins says. “So the idea was to make this really simple harmonically, just totally in the key of C. And all white keys pretty much. Keep it kind of droney and moody, but also substantial underneath with this guitar lick in 15/8 and also a 4/4 bass line. I can’t keep it too simple. My brain won’t let me do it. But I wanted to make it accessible and also interesting.”

As a young musician in 7th grade, Robbins tried his hand at other instruments, like the clarinet, but found his destiny one day when his father, a jazz and classical enthusiast, sat him down and played him three records. “Miles, Bird and Dexter Gordon,” he says. “Dad told me, ‘Trumpet, alto or tenor. Those are your options.’ Charlie Parker stuck out for me because he played so fast.” Later revelations came when, as a high school student, Robbins heard the late saxophonist Thomas Chapin at one of his final gigs. “It was a whole other way to play jazz, and it really turned me on.” Likewise, the discovery of the prolific altoist Tim Berne’s quartet Bloodcount proved a real turning point.

“I didn’t know what was going on the first time I heard it,” Robbins says, referencing the triple-live CD Unwound. “I knew something incredible was happening but had no idea what it was.” What it was, he now relates, was “Jim Black’s drumming and the way that he and [bassist Michael] Formanek played together. Their time together was like this giant monster brainy groove. The thing I’d been looking for forever. That and way they would go in and out of more abstract, semi-structured improv and very rock-heavy odd-meter grooves that are not really tonal. It was exactly what was appealing to me.”

Though the music Robbins invents with siLENT Z almost insists on evading easy definition, the bandleader gives it another shot. “Even now, that’s what I’m trying to accomplish, covering free stuff and odd meter like prog-rock influence jazz nerdy grooves … or something.”

Release Date: May 25, 2010

Links
Pete Robbins’ Website
Pete Robbins on MySpace
Pete Robbins on Facebook
Pete Robbins on Twitter

For more information contact:
Matt Merewitz
Fully Altered Media
215-629-6155
matt@fullyaltered.com

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

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
CITY WINERY, 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 – $20 General Admission; $15 for Students
155 Varick St
New York, NY 10013
(212) 608-0555
www.citywinery.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