(Ottawa)
LINSEY WELLMAN Solo
LINSEY WELLMAN saxophones
Zula Music & Arts Collective Hamilton presents, as part of its Something Else! Creative Music Series Winter/Spring Calendar, versatile Ottawa reedsman Linsey Wellman, who plays solo, then joins inspired Hamiltonians, bassist David Lee, guitarist Chris Palmer and multi-saxophonist Connor Bennett for a night of original, improvised music.
An active member of the Ottawa music scene, Linsey Wellman is known as a creative and spontaneous improviser on the alto and soprano saxophones, the alto and standard flutes, the clarinet, and the bass clarinet. Ever adaptable, he has plied his trade with Sun Ra tribute Rakestar Arkestra, art-punk ensemble Fet Nat, the Craig Pedersen Quartet, JUNO nominated and Polaris Prize longlisted calypso outfit Kobo Town, and Gamelan Semara Winangun, all while taking part in countless improvised music and jazz ensembles. He has played and/or recorded with such artists as Scott Thomson, Nicolas Caloia, Yves Charuest, Ken Aldcroft, Jesse Stewart, Nonoko Yoshida, Yves Lambert and Ellen McIlwaine.
He is co-founder and co-curator of the Improvising Musicians of Ottawa/Outaouais (IMOO) concert series.
Recorded in live performance at Studio DAÏMÔN in Hull, his new solo outing Manifesto is by turns strident and pensive, and always in the moment. It is a record of a soloist in his element, and in full flight.
(Hamilton)
LEE/PALMER/BENNETT Trio
David Lee double bass Chris Palmer guitar Connor Bennett reeds
With its “chamber jazz” lineup of tenor & soprano saxophone (Connor Bennett), electric guitar (Chris Palmer) and double bass (David Lee), the exciting new trio, LEE/PALMER/BENNETT, has made a special niche for itself in Hamilton’s expanding new music scene. Radical New Zealand guitarist Palmer, saxophonist Bennett (known for his work in Haolin Monk and Eschaton) and bassist David Lee (veteran of such groups as Eric Stach, the Artists Jazz Band, and the Bill smith Ensemble) take a variety of new approaches to planning and devising an especially focused and mature style of group improvisation. Acoustic music with electric intensity!
David Lee - LondonOnt - June 10 - 2011David Lee is a writer and double bassist. Originally from BC, he spent years in the Toronto music and art scene, playing bass and cello in a variety of settings, then moving to BC’s Sunshine Coast in the 1980s, and currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario. The author of books on jazz and other subjects (winner of the 2007 Hamilton Literary Award for non-fiction for Chainsaws: A History), currently a PhD candidate in English at the University of Guelph, David sits on the curriculum committee of Guelph’s International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation. In 1996, while living in Pender Harbour, BC, he was part of the founding committee that launched the successful Pender Harbour Jazz Festival. Wolsak & Wynn recently published a newly revised edition of David’s critically-acclaimed jazz book The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field, and soon, they will bring the Cthulhu mythos to the mean streets of modern-day Hamilton with his young adult novel The Midnight Games. In 2012 Tightrope Books of Toronto published David’s first novel, Commander Zero.
ChrisPalmerLiveA truly original improvising guitarist with a keen sense of adventure, humour, fire, curiosity and mischief, New Zealander / Hamiltonian Chris Palmer can easily rock a house party or stun a literary audience, hypnotizing them with his charm and chops. Palmer has been playing guitar for over thirty years in a variety of contexts. For over a decade before moving to Canada from New Zealand, he was actively involved in the Wellington improvised and avant-rock music scene. He has appeared on a number of albums including Leila Adu’s debut album ‘Dig a Hole’ and was largely to blame for the Elephant Men release, ‘Let You Entertain Me’. He also featured in a, let’s say, ‘cult’ film by Young Guns II director Geoff Murphy… which he doesn’t want to talk about.
ConnorHamilton multi-saxophonist, Connor Bennett is perhaps best known for his part in Eschaton, an avant-thriller of a sound exploration duo (with Aaron Hutchinson), that leaves Hammer City folk baffled, overjoyed and awed on a regular basis. Bennett has deep roots and ties in the city’s creative/experimental music scene, both as a performer in various units including the eclectic Haolin Munk and various improvising outfits, as well as being involved in Hamilton Audio/Visual Node.
“Unadorned except for his saxophone, Wellman uses repeated and carefully divided lines to vibrate split tones which are somehow both polyphonic and tonic. Using circular breathing he produces equivalent note clusters and glissandi that unroll as if his saxophone is a perpetual motion machine yet subtly vary in pitch, shading and emphasis.”
