7:00 pm: STEVE BATES’ BLACK SEAS + ESCHATON (Hamilton)

Steve Bates guitar, electronics Connor Bennett reeds, bass, electronics Aaron Hutchinson percussion, trumpet, electronics

A first-time Montreal-Hamilton collaboration… imaginative, innately curious Montreal composer, sound artist, guitarist, improviser Steve Bates‘s project Black Seas, investigates auditory hallucinations with the aid of a soulful, textural noise duo, Hamilton’s finest in sound exploration, Eschaton — a fearless duo made up of improvising multi-instrumentalists, Aaron Hutchinson & Connor Bennett.

8:00 pm: QUARTET KAZE (Tokyo/Lille)

Natsuki Tamura trumpet Christian Pruvost trumpet Satoko Fujii piano Peter Orins drums

Melodic, abstract, mysterious, beautiful, and confrontational, Kaze plays free jazz at its most creative and powerful. The members of this international quartet share an insatiable appetite for sonic experimentation, boundless energy and enthusiasm, and the disciplined intelligence of accomplished spontaneous composers.

The group has released three acclaimed recordings – 2011’s Rafale, 2013’s Tornado, and 2015’s Uminari which the London Jazz News calls “…bold, uncompromising music.” Uminari is a Japanese word that refers to a sound rising from the sea, a low-frequency roar that portends a coming storm or tsunami. The two-horn quartet is equally adept at the calm and the storm, with expressive subtleties giving way to overwhelming torrents of sound

with kind support from:

9:30 pm: DKV TRIO (Chicago)

Ken Vandermark reeds Kent Kessler bass Hamid Drake drums

The DKV Trio is one of the most exciting ensembles working in contemporary improvised music. Featuring Hamid Drake (drums), Kent Kessler (bass), and Ken Vandermark, the band has been active since the mid 1990s and has released eleven recordings, including their most recent album, which came out in the autumn of 2016: Collider (that features the trio paired with the Scandinavian group, The Thing).

Their 2014 five CD box set, Sound in Motion in Sound, was reviewed by the Free Jazz Collective as follows, “They are tighter, more explosive, and ingenious than ever. Imagine every DKV Trio’s signature element coming together in a remarkably dazzling, fiery display of musical prowess. There’s an almost palpable quality to the way that the musicians meld their ideas and approaches together. There’s groove propelled by Drake’s funky, loose drumming, there’s melody in the bass lines, there’s dissonance and conflict in Vandermark’s fluid, mercurial playing.

This is a great recording by an unmistakable, intense group of musicians with a sound and feeling of their own. That much is clear now. I would even dare to call this album their best to date. Inspired, full of energy, harmonically, rhythmically, and even melodically rich, capable of wonderfully recreating the joy of listening to DKV Trio live.” 5 stars

2017 promises to be an exceptional year for the band: they will be releasing a new album on the label Not Two, have concerts scheduled in Canada during June, and will tour in Europe with Joe McPhee as a guest for the first time in their career.

($35 door/$28 students, seniors and advance purchase)

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7:00 pm: KEN VANDERMARK/NATE WOOLEY DUO (Chicago/NY)

Ken Vandermark reeds Nate Wooley trumpet

Chicago saxophonist/composer Ken Vandermark and New York trumpet player Nate Wooley had been operating in each other’s orbits for several years- having worked together with Paul Lytton, Joe Morris, Agusti Fernandez, and Terrie Ex- before putting together their duo project in October 2013, when they toured the United States for the first time. With this unique ensemble, they deal directly with each other’s iconoclastic compositional and improvisational vocabularies, and have created a book of original material that takes inspirational cues from the under-appreciated work of John Carter and Bobby Bradford (two of their compositions are part of the group’s repertoire). Vandermark and Wooley have worked together to create an organic combination of the jazz tradition, free improvisation, and modern composition, and have then placed it into the raw and intimate context of this duo.

8:00 pm: GRÜNEN (Berlin/Cologne)

Achim Kaufmann piano, composition Robert Landfermann double bass Christian Lillinger drums, percussion

An exciting free German trio of brilliant, fierce piano, bass and drums, Grünen (“the greening”) was formed in April 2009 when Landfermann invited Kaufmann and Lillinger to participate in his ongoing concert series of improvised music at the Loft in Cologne. Their first – completely improvised – encounter was recorded and subsequently released by Clean Feed Records. For their second disc, the trio mixed spontaneous improv with some predetermined structures – taking new turns with written material, some of it rhythmically quite intricate and/or evoking images of surrealistic jazz and song: a strategy the three have adopted for their highly unpredictable concert performances as well. On the occasion of Achim Kaufmann’s receiving the Albert Mangelsdorff award, grünen performed at the Berlin Jazz Fest in November 2015 where they were joined by poet gdr guenther.

with kind travel support from Goathe Institute:

also supported by the Senate Department for Culture and Europe

9:30 pm: ELOPING WITH THE SUN (CT/NY/Chicago)

Joe Morris banjo, banjouke William Parker sintir, reeds, wind Hamid Drake frame drum

Album review by Mark Corroto, March 2, 2003:

The surprise in the pairing of these three creative music superstars is not that they have finally recorded together. The astonishing thing about Eloping With The Sun is the music they decided to make.

Choosing African instruments, percussionist Hamid Drake and bassist William Parker create trance-inducing rhythms for guitarist Joe Morris to play the banjo (yes, a banjo) and banjouke behind, over, and around. Morris, who is known to whip guitars into spaghetti-like chords of sound, eschews the noodles for a distinctive high-end sound of the banjo and the ukelele-like banjouke.

William Parker choses a sintir, the four-stringed Morrocan bass lute, to propel energy lines throughout. Its sound, a whirling drone buzz associated with Gnawa music, may be a bit foreign to jazz ears. Together with the frame drumming of Hamid Drake, the pair creates a meditative statement not unlike an Indian raga.

Their almost Luddite music preference causes listeners to be off balance at first. But given a chance, this music gels. Their repeated patterns reveal minute changes and intricacies. The dreamlike state created allows for the distinct taut sounds of Morris’ choice of instrumentation.

1:00 pm: NICOLE RAMPERSAUD SOLO (Toronto)

Nicole Rampersaud trumpet

Trumpet player and composer, Nicole Rampersaud is frequently sought after for her original and versatile voice in the jazz and improvised music scenes, and is an in demand performer in cities across Canada and the United States. Past and current collaborators read like a who’s who of today’s leading artists: Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, Rakalam Bob Moses, Django Bates, Marilyn Lerner, Joe Morris and Jean Martin, to name a few. She has also performed in some of the most prestigious venues in North America including: New York’s Lincoln Center, Berklee Performance Center in Boston, and Massey Hall in Toronto.

1:35 pm: AD HOC #1

Surprise improv group

2:00 pm: GARY BARWIN & STUART ROSS (Hamilton/Toronto)

Gary Barwin & Stuart Ross poetry, text, sounds

These are the Clams I’m Breathing (Reunion Tour)

Acclaimed poet/performers Gary Barwin & Stuart Ross have worked together since the 80s. Their blend of sound, text, performance, story, humour, character and emotion pushes to the exploratory yet always entertaining edge of poetry and sound.

2:35 pm: AD HOC #2

Surprise improv group

3:00 pm: ELOPING WITH THE SUN + AB BAARS (CT/NY/Chicago/Amsterdam)

Joe Morris banjouke William Parker ghimbri, reeds Hamid Drake percussion Ab Baars reeds

William Parker, Joe Morris, and Hamid Drake are three of the most surprising and adventurous musicians in the world of improvised music. In Eloping with the Sun, they all together step into a completely different musical realm again. Performing respectively on the sintir (a Moroccan bass lute usually associated with Gnawa music), banjo & banjouke (a ukelele hybrid), and frame drum, these remarkable musicians create a sound that is both ancient and totally new. Parker’s pounding, repetitive, though always morphing (and distinctly wicked) bass lines provide the bottom. Morris’ swirling, rapid, rhythmic lines cover the top and Drake’s dark, lush hand drumming moves the body between. Eloping with the Sun is hypnotic, contemplative, completely rhythmic music that would truly mess heads if it ever made rotation on the army of mobile subwoofing systems in the nation’s inner and outer cities. Let the revolution begin at home!

Joining the existing trio is Dutch improvising phenomenon Ab Baars on reeds (maybe, hopefully shakuhachi, too!). This first time meeting of these four greats is sure to be a trans-inducing experience!

3:50 pm: AD HOC #3

Surprise improv group

4:15 pm: DKV TRIO + JOE MORRIS (Chicago/CT)

Ken Vandermark reeds Kent Kessler bass Hamid Drake drums Joe Morris guitar

Joe Morris’ liner notes to DKV + JM album “Deep Telling”:

I love the music on this CD, but I wasn’t sure I could describe it even to myself enough to be able to say something about it. So I listened to the music many times for days. I thought about how free it was and yet how fully formed it sounded, as thought we had played as a quartet for a long time, when in fact we played twice in two days before we recorded. I noticed how easily the music flowed and how well it stayed together. The variety of feeling really got me. There’s something familiar and something different about all of it. I started thinking about how Hamid Drake, Kent Kessler, Ken Vandermark, and I figured out how to do this so freely without losing a sense of shape. How we could use what we know and spontaneously understand each other.

One could say that freedom in improvised music may be the ability to refer to a body of knowledge held in your brain like a language. It may also mean the opportunity to invent whatever you want, for whatever reason you can think of. Freedom in improvised music may also mean being able to remain true to your own creative purpose and to speak with your own voice while creating music with others, or taking the risk of using this passion, intensity, or humor when you play. Freedom in improvised music depends of what you know, how open you are to learning, and how willing you are to use it all.

At a certain point, when you’ve workded at learning to improvise for awhile you realize that playing music spontaneously is like talking. Your brain will quickly strip things down to basic information such as how to move, how to sound, how to use energy, how to key into the feel. The elaboration of the combined basics and their variables become your vocabulary. Playing in a group becomes a conversation. The free exchanges of ideas and range of the musical conversation, like a verbal conversation, depends on the knowledge and open-mindedness of the players. The most fluent players have spoken with others in the widest variety of contexts. These players tend to have the most respect for the ideas of others. They can also function with impliesd limits as to where the musical conversation will go, what it will concern itself with, what subject will be discussed. It could simply be said that the accumulation of that kind of musical understanding and the ability to be versatile, at this point, is the equivalent of having a repertoire. If you consider that the scene of new music improvisation, or Jazz as I prefer to call it, is a global one and you want to participate globally, your repertoire has to be extensive. If it is, you’ll have the confidence to play freely.

In that respect, and probably many others, DKV Trio has a very extensive repertoire. Their collective knowledge and their originality allows them to work with the rawest materials; the least amount of information necessary to know exactly where to go with the most possibilities. They move forward with a beautiful confidence and openess, inviting collaboration, exploring every sound with curiousity and respect. The slightest musical impulse can become a full-fledged experience. They can turn a hint of sound into melody, a gesture of motion into rich flowing swing. They aren’t afraid to play with a deep sensitivity. More than anything they can find that thing that has been overlooked before, the particle of musical experience not revealed until now. They’ll nurture the particle into a musical whole, a solid form of uniqueness. Playing with them is exciting because you never know what will happen. You have to be prepared for anything. I can’t imagine a more open environment to play in.

Fortunately, we and our colleagues are creating music that hasn’t been given a name yet. So we aren’t stuck having to live up to someone else’s description of what we do. We are free to play what we want to play. The music on this recording began with the most basic materials: sound, silence, motion, interval, duration, and emotion. We started to play without any words, written material, or agreed structure and within a couple of minutes we knew it would work. Our agenda seemed to be that we would musically talk to each other. We told each other what we know. We played to make something different, to create another experience for whomever listens. It remains open to personal interpretation, to be described by people who listen.

Joe Morris

September 1999

($35 door/$28 students, seniors and advance purchase)

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Photo by Tom Beecham

KEN VANDERMARK SOLO (Chicago)
Ken Vandermark saxophones, clarinets

Our Artist in Residence opens the festivities with inventive, considered solo saxophone & clarinet explorations.

Born in Warwick, Rhode Island on September 22nd, 1964, Ken Vandermark began studying the tenor saxophone at the age of 16. Since graduating with a degree in Film and Communications from McGill University during the spring of 1986, his primary creative emphasis has been the exploration of contemporary music that deals directly with advanced methods of improvisation. In 1989, he moved to Chicago from Boston, and has worked continuously from the early 1990’s onward, both as a performer and organizer in North America and Europe, recording in a large array of contexts, with many internationally renowned musicians (such as Fred Anderson, Ab Baars, Peter Brötzmann, Tim Daisy, Hamid Drake, Terrie Ex, Mats Gustafsson, Elisabeth Harnik, Steve Heather, Christof Kurzmann, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Paul Lytton, Lasse Marhaug, Joe McPhee, Andy Moor, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Paal Nilssen-Love, Eddie Prevost, Eric Revis, Jasper Stadhouders, Chad Taylor, John Tilbury, Nasheet Waits, and Nate Wooley).

EARTH WIND & CHOIR (Hamilton)
Sarah Good conductress
Vocalists:
Teresa Caterini, Karijn de Jong, Beth de Jong, Amy McIntosh, Katie Penrose, Molly Merriman, Jessica Carey, Becky Katz, Jenny Vasquez, Annie Shaw, Ian Challenger, Zack Shaw, Jonathon Horvath, Jon Dalton, Andrew Johnson, Mark Raymond

Lively, fun, adventurous, local vocal institution, weirdo singing group made up of dedicated and creative individuals…  Conductress Sarah Good plays the choir of 15-20 vocalists like an instrument. The group began 7 years ago and has focused on singing the most beautiful/ugly and interesting music it can find including pieces from the first era of polyphony, through TV themes to the 20th century minimalists encompassing singing traditions from around the world and also from outer space.

TATSUYA NAKATANI SOLO (PA/Osaka)
Tatsuta Nakatani percussion, cymbals, gongs

Tatsuya Nakatani is a creative artist / percussionist originally from Osaka, Japan who has released over sixty recordings in North America and Europe. Residing in the USA since 1994 he has performed countless solo percussion concerts and has collaborated with hundreds of artists in international music festivals, university concert halls, art museums and galleries. His latest project is the Nakatani Gong Orchestra, which builds community ensembles performing on multiple bowed gongs under his direction, as recently presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.. Nakatani’s constant touring fosters the raw and fresh quality in his music, which can only survive through an open willingness to share energy, culture, music and self on a global human scale. His master classes and workshops at schools and universities, emphasize his unique musical approach and philosophy in creating visceral, non-linear music. He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drums, gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, intuitively primitive, expressive music of unusually strong spirit that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised / experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.

TOGETHERNESS! (Montreal)
Ellwood Epps trumpet
Erik Hove alto saxophone
Scott Thomson trombone
Stéphane Diamantakiou double bass
Louis-Vincent Hamel drums

This exciting new ensemble includes the 2015 and 2016 Something Else! Festival Artists in Residence, Ellwood Epps trumpet, Scott Thomson trombone, as well as Erik Hove alto saxophone, Stéphane Diamantakiou double bass, Louis-Vincent Hamel drums, performing a warm, jubilant homage to expatriate South African jazz of 60s & 70s. The roots of South African kwela and gospel are intertwined with jazz and the avant-garde, with limbs and branches growing out to touch the world through the migration of its players, like Abdullah Ibrahim, Dudu Pukwana, Mongezi Feza, Johnny Dyani, as well as Don Cherry, William Parker and original music by the group.

JOE MORRIS SOLO (CT)
Joe Morris guitar, banjo

Multi-strings master Joe Morris has been an active participant in various scenes in North America, including New Haven, CT, New York & Boston. Morris has stated that his single-note technique was inspired more by traditional African music, and by saxophone players like Eric Dolphy and Jimmy Lyons, than by other guitarists. He cites as influences Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, Leroy Jenkins, Thelonious Monk, Jimi Hendrix, and West African string music. In his solo work, he avoids distortion and guitar effects. He uses a serrated pick to “bow” the strings of his guitar and to create an otherworldly, harmonic-rich sound. He also plays banjo and banjo-uke, and since 2000 has concentrated on playing bass.

For the last 30 years and over the course of well over 50 albums recorded since the early 80’s, Morris has been creating a body of work that stands and walks with giants. It is his first-hand awareness of music’s ability to transform a listener’s mental state outside of the here and now, that has driven him to reach levels of virtuosity and a breadth of expression on guitar which are presently unsurpassed. The silk in the web he weaves is of the absolute finest grade. The web of music itself however, its intricacies and continually revealing patterns, prompts true awe.

PERCH HEN BROCK & RAIN (Amsterdam/Brooklyn)
Ab Baars tenor saxophone, clarinet, shakuhachi
Ig Henneman viola
Ingrid Laubrock tenor saxophone
Tom Rainey drums

Improvising Trans-Atlantic all-star quartet …viola, reeds, percussion! Each member is conscious of their own weight and power to add to the communal conversation, understanding silence and restraint can be as powerful a contribution to the whole as density. Ingrid Laubrock and Tom Rainey represent the best of the New York scene while Ab Baars and Ig Henneman are key members of the idiosyncratic Dutch improvised music community. Either duo showcases the kind of telepathic interplay that comes from years of dedicated playing. Together, the wealth of experience allows limitless possibilities.

“Perch Hen Brock & Rain creates a wide textural palette due to the clever deployment of resources, with the tough little string instrument often playing a strikingly aggressive role as a percussive engine that fires away tirelessly while the horns engage in intricate dialogue. True to its name, the group also produces a spectrum of sounds that vividly evokes nature and the animal kingdom, above all in the shrill, stark bird calls of the tenor saxophones and clarinet and the undergrowth rustlings of the drum kit, which Rainey works with consummate dexterity.”

-Kevin Le Gendre Jazzwise
Wels Music Unlimited 2014