Australian drummer/percussionist Will Guthrie uses home-made instruments, amplified found and junk, microphones & electronics alongside more conventional drums and cymbals. Originally a drummer he has worked in many different settings of music: live performance, improvisation, studio composition.
The Claudia Quintet is proof positive that the pessimists were wrong: jazz is not dead, despite being embalmed by major labels and confined by the narrow-minded to dead-ends. The stunningly original and lyrical works of this NY based ensemble, led by composer/drummer John Hollenbeck, reveal breathtaking new vistas for jazz beyond genre walls. In compositions that meld mental challenge with charm, captivating audiences with austere beauty or propulsive grooves, jazz breaks through its rigid shell, recombines with a myriad of other musics, and is reborn in a transcendent new form.
Antoine Chessex is a Swiss saxophone player, improviser, composer and experimental musician born in 1980 in Vevey, Switzerland. His works are based on the exploration of the physicality of sounds and spaces. Nowadays Chessex plays mostly as a solo performer appearing either in fully acoustic settings where his circular breathing textures react with the sonic architecture of the space he is performing in or amplifying his horn with amps or PA systems and electronic devices often resulting in intense live actions.
SaxAssault consists of 9 saxophonists, (ranging from sopranino to bass sax), plus rhythm section led by saxophonist and composer Andy Scott. Formed in 1994 the group comprises nine saxophones (from sopranino through to bass) with rhythm section. Andy’s compositions for SaxAssault are carefully crafted to feature every member of the ensemble, whether an improviser or more classically-trained musician. Featured Musicians:
Ivo Perelman is free jazz saxophonist born in São Paulo, Brazil on January 12, 1961. Perelman learned to play guitar, cello, clarinet, trombone, and piano while young, and concentrated on tenor sax from age 19. He attended the Berklee College of Music for one semester and then dropped out, moving to Los Angeles in 1986. Perelman released his first album in 1989, which featured Peter Erskine, John Patitucci, Airto Moreira, Elaine Elias, and Flora Purim as guests.
Judd Greenstein was born and raised in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City, where he began his compositional life by writing hip hop beats as a teenager. His concert works reflect those origins, as well as his traditional piano background, combining an urban, beat-oriented sensibility with a late Romantic classical harmonic language. A passionate advocate for the indie classical community in New York, much of Judd's work is written for the virtuosic ensembles and solo performers who make up that community, and is tailored to their specific talents and abilities.
Nels Cline (born in Los Angeles in 1956) is an American guitarist and composer. Currently he is the lead guitarist of the rock band Wilco. Nels began to play guitar at age 12 when his twin brother, Alex Cline took up the drums. Cline is not classically trained. This gives him a unique avant-garde style that many other jazz guitarists fail to match, due to their probable conventional training. He is noted for his apt use of effects pedals and looping devices, which enhances his style and gives his approach to guitar and music a distinct sound.
Buy Dysnomia: iTunes: itunes.apple.com/us/album/dysnomia/id679378282 Amazon: www.amazon.com/Dysnomia-Dawn-Midi/dp/B00DJYK7JI Amazon mp3: www.amazon.com/Dysnomia/dp/B00E5UHIN8/ref=mb_oe_o --------- " Something totally unprecedented " - Pitchfork " Sounds like something completely different " - NPR " Cannot urge you more strongly: go see Dawn of Midi " - Sasha Frere-Jones, The New Yorker " An unplugged translation of contemporary electronica...state-of-the-art. " - Time Out NY " Seriously never seen anything like these guys " - Jad Abumrad, Radiolab
The experimental jazz zeitgeist of the 1960s and 1970s made possible any number of unconventional instrumental groupings. The basic horn-piano-bass-drums lineup of the modern jazz era lost its mandate, as more musicians searched for fresh and unusual sonorities. Ornette Coleman's bands did away with the piano; Cecil Taylor's trio with Jimmy Lyons and Sunny Murray eliminated the bass. Musicians associated with the Chicago-based AACM occasionally did away with one or more (or all) elements of the rhythm section; for example, in its first incarnation the Art Ensemble of Chicago had no drummer.