STRETCH ORCHESTRA
KEVIN BREIT guitar
MATT BRUBECK cello
JESSE STEWART drums

In 2012, the Stretch Orchestra won the coveted Canadian music award, the Juno, for “Instrumental Album of the Year.” This, however, is only part of the acclaim that the trio has garnered. In performance, they routinely traverse a wide gamut of musical styles—from jazz to rock to folk—often within a single tune. Guitarist Kevin Breit has performed with artists such as Norah Jones, Hugh Laurie, and Cassandra Wilson, as well as releasing a mountain of recordings under his own name. Matt Brubeck is an improvising cellist, raised on jazz and classically trained at Yale, who has taken his cello skills into sessions with Tom Waits, Sheryl Crow, and Yo-Yo Ma, as well as Canadian sessions with Marilyn Lerner, Nick Fraser, and David Braid. Jesse Stewart, this year’s Something Else! Improviser in Residence, has performed and/or recorded with a wide array of musicians including George Lewis, Roswell Rudd, Bill Dixon, William Parker, and Evan Parker.

GORD GRDINA QUARTET
GORD GRDINA oud, guitar
OSCAR NORIEGA clarinets, alto saxophone
RUSS LOSSING piano
SATOSHI TAKEISHI drums

The Vancouver Sun writes, “Gordon Grdina continues to passionately explore the depths of jazz improvisation, cross-cultural fusions and the fun that comes with cutting loose.” In this quartet, the Vancouver guitarist and oud player highlights three New York jazz virtuosi: saxophonist/clarinetist Oscar Noriega, who has worked with Lee Konitz, Anthony Braxton, Gerry Hemingway, Dewey Redman and Paul Motian. Pianist Russ Lossing has been praised for “… the wealth of his harmonic knowledge, the fluidity of his phrasing and his attention to the weight of every single note” (Jazzman Magazine, France). Drummer Satoshi Takeishi, after studying at Berklee, has become known as a producer and arranger as well as a percussionist. The result is a unique ensemble sound that John Garratt in pop matters called “bold and downright great.” In Grdina’s words, “I hear so many connections to so many genres in this music … I’ve gotten compliments from folk, jazz and classical music fans, as well as fans of Soundgarden.”

EUCALYPTUS
BRODIE WEST alto saxophone
NICOLE RAMPERSAUD trumpet
RYAN DRIVER clavinet
ALEX LUKASHEVSKY guitar
MIKE SMITH bass
NICK FRASER drumsEVAN CARTWRIGHT drums
BLAKE HOWARD percussion

Eucalyptus is a seven-piece group that “manages to combine the accessible and avant-garde in an appealing way,” writes Kerry Doole in Exclaim! Led by Toronto-based composer/saxophonist Brodie West, the band features an all-star lineup of musicians from Toronto’s improvising music community. Their eclectic style incorporates aspects of pop, jazz and the avant-garde. West’s compositions feature syncopated rhythms inspired by calypso, dancehall, and bossa nova, played with collective free improvisation reminiscent of Sun Ra, Globe Unity Orchestra, or the Art Ensemble of Chicago. Since forming in 2009, Eucalyptus has performed at many of Toronto’s most celebrated venues, including the Wavelength 12th Anniversary Festival, Open Roof Festival, Feast in the East, Long Winter, Toronto International Film Festival, Images Festival, The Music Gallery, Somewhere There Festival and Hirut Restaurant. They have also performed at Sappyfest 8 in Sackville NB. Their 10” vinyl EP/CD Eeeeuuuucaaaaaaallyyypppppttus is on Toronto’s Blocks Recording Club label.

FASTER
KAYLA MILMINE soprano saxophone, vocals
BRIAN ABBOTT guitar with accoutrements

Don’t be afraid – it’s only FASTER! Faster is the Toronto duo of Kayla Milmine (soprano sax/vocals) and Brian Abbott (Guild Bluebird guitar with slide, pill bottle, alligator clips, toothpicks, cork, chains, chopsticks and picks plus a “fun assortment of pedals”). They play a mixture of free improvised music, jazz standards, and punk songs. In addition to music they also venture into performance art; in some of their live sets, they’ve performed with popcorn poppers, and done onstage carpentry in front of alternately frightened, confused, and ecstatic audiences. Together they craft a highly comedic cabaret “circusy” sound, like 2013’s self-produced digital release “These Cats Are Burnin” which includes whimsically abused jazz standards from (Duke Ellington’s) “Mood Indigo” or (Gershwin chestnut) “I Got Rhythm” to in-your-face punk mantra “Do You Want You Want.” All this, as Coral Andrews writes in The Record, is “just part of Faster’s jazz ‘n’ punk pundit style.”

Regular Admission: $25 door or $20 advance
Students, Seniors, Under-waged Admission: $28 door or advance
Passes: $125 regular (up to $225 value) / $100 students, seniors, under-waged for all 7 ticketed events

SUSAN ALCORN
pedal steel guitar

Baltimore-based Susan Alcorn has taken the pedal steel guitar far beyond its traditional role in country and western swing music. Known among steel guitarists for her virtuosity and authenticity in a traditional context, Alcorn first paid her dues in Texas country & western bands. Soon she began to expand the vocabulary of her instrument through her study of modern classical music, Pauline Oliveros’ “deep listening,” Astor Piazzolla’s nuevo tango, free jazz, and world musics (Indian rags, South American songs, and gamelan orchestra). Her pieces exploit the amazing complexity of her instrument while never straying from a very direct, intense, and personal musical expression. Her last Hamilton appearance included original works, improvisations with local players, and a solo pedal steel guitar version of Olivier Messaien’s And I Await the Resurrection of the Dead. The UK Guardian describes her music as “beautiful, glassy and liquid, however far she strays from pulse and conventional harmony.”

MONICKER
ARTHUR BULL guitar
SCOTT THOMSON trombone
ROGER TURNER drums

London-based percussionist Roger Turner has been working as an improviser percussionist since the early 1970’s, touring and playing concerts worldwide from Sydney to the Arctic, Tokyo to Belfast, New York to Beirut. He has performed in countless established and ad hoc configurations with European & international musicians and performers from Annette Peacock to Phil Minton, Cecil Taylor to Masahiko Satoh, Charles Gayle to Lol Coxhill, Derek Bailey to Otomo Yoshihide,  Alan Silva to Keith Rowe, Josef Nadj to Min Tanaka, Toshinori Kondo to Axel Dorner. Monicker is Turner’s Canadian ensemble with Montreal trombonist Scott Thomson (last year’s Something Else! Artist in residence) and guitarist Arthur Bull, from Digby Neck, NS. The trio’s music, they announce, “has been and will be improvised.”

CHADBOURNE / GUTHRIE
EUGENE CHADBOURNE guitar, banjo, vocals
WILL GUTHRIE drums, percussion

Only in Hamilton! Spontaneity is the root musical value of the very different musics of guitarist Eugene Chadbourne and percussionist Will Guthrie. Over the years they’ve collaborated with many of the same artists, and each has toured extensively in Europe and Asia; yet, with Guthrie based in Nantes, France, and Chadbourne in North Carolina, these two master musicians have never had the opportunity to play together until this encounter in the Something Else! Festival. The audience can expect sensitive interplay as the percussionist and guitarist get acquainted; an easy rapport to be established between these two expert listeners and players; and then at some point, all hell will break loose!

THE REVIVAL ENSEMBLE
Plays Ellington’s Far East Suite
TED CROSBY tenor saxophone, clarinets
LISEN RYLANDER LÖVE tenor saxophone
KAREN NG alto saxophone, clarinet
ALAN MACKIE violin
SCOTT THOMSON trombone
LINA ALLEMANO trumpet
REBECCA HENNESSY trumpet
MICHAEL DAVIDSON vibraphone
HARLEY CARD guitar
COLE SCHMIDT guitar
JAMES MEGER bass
DAN GAUCHER drums

Led by Toronto-based saxophonist Ted Crosby, the 12-piece Revival Ensemble interprets and re-imagines the works of great composers, bringing them into the 21st century with a focus on free improvisation and contemporary composition. On their current Canadian tour, the Ensemble will be tackling the music of Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn’s landmark 1967 album, The Far East Suite. Inspired by the Ellington Orchestra’s trip to Asia and the Middle East, the Suite offers portraits of strange new people and places. Staying true to the themes of these two great African American composers, the Revival Ensemble will explore the idea of travel and exploration into unknown territory against the contemporary context of our modern world. The Ensemble features some of Canada’s finest improvisers—plus a special international guest, Swedish saxophonist Lisen Rylander Löve.

Regular Admission: $35 door or $28 advance
Students, Seniors, Under-waged Admission: $28 door or advance
Passes: $125 regular (up to $225 value) / $100 students, seniors, under-waged for all 7 ticketed events

TAPS & TRAPS
HEATHER CORNELL tap dance
JESSE STEWART drums, percussion

Jesse Stewart has been internationally acclaimed as “one of the finest drummers and percussionists on the scene today.” In Canada, as a teacher, instrument-maker, improviser and collaborator, he has won acclaim ranging from the Terry Fox Humanitarian Award to the coveted Juno. He has found an ideal musical partner in his collaborations with New York tap dance master Heather Cornell, who regards tap as “a musical instrument … physicalizing the complex rhythms of Africa.” A founder of Manhattan Tap who has shared the stage with Buster Brown, Diane Walker, and Gregory Hines, Heather was mentored by the great jazz bassist Ray Brown. Constantly exploring “how these polyrhythms form the basis of so much of the music in the world,” Heather Cornell and with Jesse Stewart practice an art that is adventurous, inclusive, and improvisational, and constantly exploring the possibilities of making music with the entire body. Together, they give a performance where anything can happen!

GENNARO / HUNDEVAD
MARK HUNDEVAD vibraphone
MIKE GENNARO drums

Percussionist Mike Gennaro has collaborated with international improvisers such as John Butcher, Mats Gustafsson, and Eugene Chadbourne. He is a mainstay of the Toronto improvising scene, as well as teaching and performing with indie soul act Mantler and award-winning blues artists Raoul and the Big Time. Gennaro studied with former Rheostatics drummer Dave Clark and ace session drummer Rick Gratton, and has performed throughout North America and Europe. Mark Hundevad has been a mainstay of Toronto’s alternative music scene since the 1980s, playing vibraphone, piano, drums and electronics with such musicians as Kenny Baldwin, Sabir Mateen and Raphe Malik. To paraphrase Joe Strutt of Mechanical Forest Sound: “While power drummer Gennaro is the backbone, Hundevad (a noted percussionist himself) pivots from marimba/piano work to some cool Moog-powered synth moves. Suggesting funk squelch and Sun Ra soul-stabs, Hundevad shapes this duo in some very cool ways while Gennaro provides pulse and drive to keep things moving along.

HEATHER CORNELL TAP DANCE WORKSHOP (w/ JESSE STEWART)
[Admission to the double-bill includes observing the workshop. 
Workshop participants pay an additional $25/20 for the 2 hour workshop.Register: cem@zulapresents.org (289) 993-1993]

Legendary New York tap dancer James “Buster” Brown (who sang and danced from Broadway to Hollywood, and performed with Duke Ellington and the Ink Spots), called Heather Cornell “one of the best tap teachers in the world.” Buster loved to drop in and hang out at Heather’s Tap Labs. Now Heather Cornell brings this once-in-a-lifetime tap experience to Hamilton. There are so many lessons inherent in the music and dance, and because Heather learned from this generation directly, those lessons are unique to her. Come and deepen your understanding of this oral tradition with someone who is a direct link to the dancers and the work that defines it. There’s no time like good time…and this is a good time to do it! Musical tap techniques, approaches to practicing, sources of inspiration, new approaches, collaboration with musicians – these are all part of the special artistic world of a Heather Cornell workshop.

Regular Admission: $25 door or $20 advance
Students, Seniors, Under-waged Admission: $20 door or advance
Passes: $125 regular (up to $225 value) / $100 students, seniors, under-waged for all 7 ticketed events

MICHAEL SNOW piano
JESSE STEWART drums

A concert of freely improvised music featuring acclaimed visual artist, filmmaker, and pianist Michael Snow in performance with Carleton University professor, composer, and percussionist Jesse Stewart. Together, they will weave a rich tapestry of creative improvised music that pushes the boundaries of contemporary music. At 89, world-class artistic polymath Snow is still making headlines with his films and installation art, which often feature his own music (and performance), while rising phenomenon Stewart has collaborated with such noted artists as Pauline Oliveros and George Lewis.

Free admission/ by donation

MIKE HANSEN • EUGENE CHADBOURNE • JOE MCPHEE
(Hamilton) (Greensboro, NC) (NY)
record player banjo, vocals reeds, trumpet

3 solo sets back to back by 3 originals ...alone and overlapping. A sound sculptor, a strings inventor/ iconoclast, a reeds/ brass master... fresh ideas, grooves, the nectar... in 3 parts!

CLUTTERTONES (Toronto)
LINA ALLEMANO trumpet
TIM POSGATE banjo, guitar
ROB CLUTTON double bass
RYAN DRIVER analogue synth

Drawing from a broad range of experience—which includes jazz, European classical music, electronica, improvisation, folk, singer-songwriter, experimental— Cluttertones play what some have called “otherworldly chamber music.” Nothing cluttered about this rigorously composed, spontaneously arranged contemporary quartet!

MCPHEE / CALOIA / STEWART (NY/Montreal/Ottawa)
JOE MCPHEE reeds, brass
NICOLAS CALOIA bass
JESSE STEWART drums

A power trio that rarely plays together, this unit is even bigger than the sum of its parts. Saxophonist Joe McPhee is a treasure, free jazz royalty, one of the torchbearers for the art form for over 50 years! Bassist Nicolas Caloia represents the best of what Montreal has to offer, as a player and an organizer of the grand Ratchet Orchestra, In The Sea and many more. Jesse Stewart represents the best of Ottawa; as a very active teacher, instrument-maker, artist and improviser... not to mention a deep drummer!

Regular Admission: $35 door or $28 advance
Students, Seniors, Under-waged Admission: $28 door or advance
Passes: $125 regular (up to $225 value) / $100 students, seniors, under-waged for all 7 ticketed events

EDGARDO MORENO (Hamilton)

Chilean-born composer and multi-instrumentalist Edgardo Moreno recently premiered his solo multimedia Firefly Project, a performance experience that blends visual poetry, storytelling, and music inspired by Latin America. The powerful ambience of drama and suspense that he brings to his film and video scores can be heard in his solo performance for guitar and electronics, merging the prearranged with improvised.

HOPE CRIES FOR JUSTICE (NY)
PATRICIA NICHOLSON dance, text
WILLIAM PARKER bass, ngoni

Music and dance for a better world! Renowned stalwarts of creative music and dance, bring music, words and movement to open hearts and minds to envision a compassionate world... embracing creativity to find strength and reclaim hope in a difficult time. Inspiring, much needed!

ARTIFACTS TRIO (NY, CA, IL)
TOMEKA REID cello
NICOLE MITCHELL flute
MIKE REED drums

Three of the most important and acclaimed musicians connected to the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM) over the last two decades, celebrate the legacy of the AACM with their collective. Leaders in their own right, they bring to this very special project stunning musicianship, telepathic interplay and sensitivity to spare. A delightful project to hear, see, feel and experience!

SONOLUMINESCENCE TRIO
(P.E. County/NY/Ottawa)

DAVID MOTT baritone saxophone
WILLIAM PARKER bass
JESSE STEWART drums

This free and funky trio matches two leading Canadian improvisers with an iconic American jazz bassist. “Sonoluminescence” refers to a process through which light is produced by sound waves passing through liquid. Converting sound into light is an apt metaphor for the shared aims of the band’s members. One of the more adventurous, transcendent groups in jazz and improvised music today.

Regular Admission: $35 door or $28 advance
Students, Seniors, Under-waged Admission: $28 door or advance
Passes: $125 regular (up to $225 value) / $100 students, seniors, under-waged for all 7 ticketed events

JESSE STEWART Solo
(Artist in Residence)
drums, percussion

Hamilton welcomes back Jesse Stewart! Local jazz fans are still talking about the Ottawa-based drummer’s last appearance here in 2016, when he wowed the audience at the Art Gallery of Hamilton with his collective trio Sonoluminescence, with David Mott baritone saxophone and William Parker bass. This year, Jesse Stewart is the Something Else! Festival Artist in Residence, so Hamilton gets to spend five days with this award-winning composer, percussionist, visual artist, sound artist, instrument builder, researcher, writer, and educator. As well as his commitment to fostering community health through music, art, and education, Jesse has collaborated in performance and recordings with such giants of contemporary music as Pauline Oliveros, Evan Parker, Hamid Drake, Roswell Rudd, Jane Bunnett, and Pandit Anindo Chatterjee. Opening the festival with a solo percussion performance, and closing it with a concert by his Juno Award-winning Stretch Orchestra, in between Jesse performs with visiting and local players alike, including Michael Snow, Joe McPhee, Heather Cornell, and Eugene Chadbourne, as well as making a return appearance with Sonoluminescence.

EARTH WIND & CHOIR

SARAH GOOD conductress
ANNIE SHAW accompanist

Vocalists
AMY MCINTOSH • BETH DE JONG • BILJANA VASILEVSKA • SAHRA SOUDI • JENNIFER GREEN • KARIJN DE JONG • ALEXANDRA ZARALIS • KATIE PENROSE • HEATHER SOUTH • JESS CAREY • BAILEY DUFF • MOLLY MERRIMAN • CARLY MARY MCLEOD • CHRISTINE URQUHART • MAC KENZIE • JON DALTON • IAN CHALANGER • LEE SKINNER • JEFF BAKALAR • MARK RAYMOND • KIERAN COMMANDA

This local vocal institution is a fun, adventurous, weirdo-singing group made up of dedicated and creative individuals. Conductress Sarah Good plays the choir of 15-20 vocalists like an instrument. The ever-evolving group began nine years ago and has focused on performing the most beautiful/ugly and interesting music it can find. Their repertoire includes pieces from the first era of polyphony, shape-note singing, avant-garde pop, through to the 20th century minimalists.

BANGUISA X TARJO:
OLD COOTES NEW MUSIC TRIO
GARY BARWIN voice, saxophone, flutes
DAVID LEE double bass, cello
VICTOR VRANKUJL banjo, bass

Taking a page from Bill Frisell’s creative reworkings of popular tunes, this trio deconstructs traditional songs from the Anglo-Irish and world music canon and teleports them into new and unexpected forms. With a name like this, the band could only be the brainchild of Gary Barwin, Cootes Paradise frequenter, composer, saxophonist, sound artist, and poet whose novel Yiddish for Pirates became a bestseller and netted him the Leacock Medal for Humour. With Barwin is Victor Vrankulj, a banjoist and double bassist who’s studied at Mohawk College and the University of Toronto, and is known to Hamilton audiences through his own quartet, and the Belwether Quartet from the Something Else! series. Completing the trio is David Lee, a veteran improvising double bassist and cellist who has played with Joe McPhee, Leo Smith, Roscoe Mitchell, and the Bill Smith Ensemble, and is best known to Something Else! audiences for the dynamic Lee-Palmer-Bennett Trio.

CHADBOURNE / PARKER / STEWART
EUGENE CHADBOURNE guitar, banjo
WILLIAM PARKER double bass
JESSE STEWART drums

An inspired matching of Eugene Chadbourne (guitar, banjo), William Parker (double bass) and Jesse Stewart (percussion), that could only happen at Something Else! Chadbourne is known for his early collaborations with John Zorn, Fred Frith and Henry Kaiser, his work with Shockabilly, and his vast catalogue of records involving everyone from Camper Van Beethoven to Jimmy Carl Black. Chadbourne is an avant-gardist who digs into the history of American traditional and popular music, and filters it through the artistic impulses of free jazz. Parker is simply one of the most important bass players working today. While his roots go back to his work with Cecil Taylor in the 1980s, Parker is a creative force who works internationally with the most important improvisational musicians of our time, including Matthew Shipp, David S. Ware and Ken Vandermark. Propelling this unit is artist-in-residence Jesse Stewart, the Ottawa-based musician, teacher and visual artist who is quickly becoming one of the central figures in the international contemporary improvised music community.

THE YOUNG MOTHERS
JAWWAAD rhymes, trumpet
JASON JACKSON tenor & baritone saxophone
JONATHAN HORNE guitar
INGEBRIGT HÅKER FLATEN acoustic & electric bass
STEFAN GONZALEZ vibraphone, drums, vocal
JEFFREY OLSON drums

The Young Mothers are the brainchild of the Norwegian-born bassist Ingebrigt Håker Flaten (familiar to Hamilton listeners from his Something Else! concerts with The Thing, Rempis Percussion Quartet and Atomic), now based in Austin, Texas, got together with Houston trumpeter/rapper Jawwaad Taylor to form a group notable not only for its free improvisation, but for Tejano-inspired horn lines, the long unfurling electricity of surf rock, tough word-science and crust metal vocals.

A juggernaut of an improvising collective formed in 2012 in Austin Texas, featuring a half-dozen musical heavy-hitters from New York, Chicago, Texas, and Scandinavia. The group’s debut album A Mothers Work is Never Done (Tektite Records, 2014) has been described as a creative-music pacesetter with its jack-out-of-the-box surprises ranging from grindcore injections to visionary hip-hop to spirited and moody takes on modern jazz and improv.

Jazzwise Magazine (UK) writes of the band: “Their caustic collisions of hip-hop, indie rock, African grooves and grindcore are the stuff of sheer telepathic alchemy … The Young Mothers personify the merits of international exchange.”

Regular Admission: $35 door or $28 advance
Students, Seniors, Under-waged Admission: $28 door or advance
Passes: $125 regular (up to $225 value) / $100 students, seniors, under-waged for all 7 ticketed events