RUBIN KODHELI
Following up his adventurous solo offerings Escape and Sangue, cellist Rubin Kodheli (a fixture of Laurie Anderson’s “Letter to Jack,” from her ongoing Language of the Future series) is pleased to share a richly inventive collaboration known as Departure. Playing a unique electric cello designed by string instrument innovator Ned Steinberger, Kodheli joins bassist Trevor Dunn and drummer Brian Chase in a powerful, sonically liberatory set.
Although the concept is free form, the compositions focus on creating unique treatments on each particular piece, whether inspired by sound texture, rhythmic elements or words. In this way the three musicians generate a sound capable of opening up the heavens or creating an earthquake. It’s a project with a jazz ethos, but one that lives in a world of paradoxes — “uncomfortably free,” as Kodheli puts it, or “comfortably metal.” The common thread that holds the band together is a deep simpatico shared among world-class improvisors.
Chase, drummer for the famed indie rock band Yeah Yeah Yeahs, studied jazz at Oberlin and has long been a force as a composer and collaborator, including in Kodheli’s inventive North Sky Cello Ensemble. Dunn, longtime denizen of New York’s improvised music scene on electric and upright basses (with John Zorn, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, Mary Halvorson, Dan Weiss’s Starebaby and a host of others), brings to Departure his own distinct personality as Kodheli explores a range of timbres and approaches more commonly associated with electric guitar.
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