GLASSEYELASHES
While a healthy number of song-based projects have successfully merged the wayward and soulful, Hamiltonian pop surrealists Glasseyelashes make an utterly distinct contribution to the lineage. Grounded by the longtime musical partnership of Sarah Good (guitar and voice) and Annie Shaw (keyboards and voice) the duo more recently expanded to welcome the ubiquitous Becky Katz. Each member is voraciously prolific, contributing to a number of the city's recent most adventurous and peculiar musical acts and community initiatives including Earth, Wind, and Choir, Freaky Boos, Strangewaves, Sourpussy, and Pucumber Sasssquach Family Band, while gathering Hamilton Arts Awards, and appearing at local institutions such as Supercrawl and the HPO's What Next? Festival. Glasseyelashes' music gleefully and irreverently mashes together the ramshackle rock of early Red Krayola or the Raincoats' The Odyshape, with the agile ethereality of artists such as Jane Siberry and Mary Margaret O'Hara.
glasseyelashes.bandcamp.com/music
EARTH WIND & CHOIR (Hamilton)
This ever-evolving local vocal institution introduced their fun, adventurous sound some ten ten years ago. Conductress Sarah Good plays the choir of 15-20 dedicated creative vocalists like an instrument, presenting idiosyncratic takes on the most beautiful, ugly and/or interesting music the group can find—from early polyphony to avant-pop.
facebook.com/earthwindandchoir
MATTHEW SHIPP
Pluralistic pianist and composer Matthew Shipp fell in love with jazz at 12 years old. Moving to New York in 1984, he quickly became one of the city's key figures, joining the David S. Ware Quartet and Roscoe Mitchell's Note Factory before shifting his focus over to his own work which has taken a number of forms over the years. In the 90's he released a string of potent chamber-jazz discs with Hatology, before serving as curator/ director of Thirsty Ear's Blue Series, which saw him presenting and performing within a number of radical partnerships. His output has encompassed everything from fierce torrential playing to the meditative and has crossed into a wide array of musical aesthetics including hip-hop, abstract electronica, and modern composition. He's collaborated with such luminaries as Rashied Ali, Mat Maneri, Evan Parker, John Butcher, Anti-Pop Consortium, and J. Spaceman (of Spiritualized)and others. Garnering rhapsodic praise in countless publications, his champions have variously touted his work as "further evidence of his idiosyncratic genius" (Jazziz) and "monumental [...] galvanic as ever" (Chicago Tribune)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shipp
TOGETHERNESS!
Trumpeter Ellwood Epps' Togetherness! is nothing short of a Montréal supergroup, offering bold uplifting renditions of repertoire by Abdullah Ibrahim, Dudu Pukwana, Don Cherry, and, among others, Epps himself. Formed in 2016, the band includes lauded saxophonist and musique actuelle innovator Jean Derome, Guelph Jazz Festival artistic director Scott Thomson (trombone), bassist Stéphane Diamantakiou and drummer Ivan Bamford (Land of Kush/ Eyevin). They've made appearances at the Montreal Jazz Festival and at a previous iteration of Something Else!, this joyous, swinging group has won audiences over with driving South African-inspired grooves that veer in surprising directions.