AMIRTHA KIDAMBI’S ELDER ONES (New York)

AMIRTHA KIDAMBI voice, harmonium, composition
MATT NELSON soprano saxophone
BRANDON LOPEZ bass
MAX JAFFE drums

Elder Ones is the quartet performing the compositions of vocalist Amirtha Kidambi(Seaven Teares/Elizabeth-Caroline Unit) lies nestled in a venn diagram of musical spheres and communities in New York City. Her and her collaborators saxophonist Matt Nelson (Battle Trance/Tune-Yards), bassist Brandon Lopez (Tongues, The Undermine Trio) and drummer Max Jaffe (JOBS, Unnatural Ways) have crossed paths in the DIY underbelly, in incestuous circles of free improvisers, and uncomfortable chairs in concert halls of angular new music. The instrumentalists chosen for this project draw from a wide variety of vocabularies from hip-hop to free improv, each bringing their own highly individual sound to the group. The quartet uses composed material and loose structures as a template for improvisation. Oscillating between worlds of modal Sufi-like circular grooves and free improvisation to jagged rhythmic precision and meditative drones, Thyagaraja, Coltrane or Stockhausen could be equally suspected as illegitimate fathers of their sound. Their new recording, their first, ‘Holy Science’ is available on Northern Spy.

from Hamilton

DAVE GOULD

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 Munk 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 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. 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. In 2012 Tightrope Books of Toronto published David’s first novel, Commander Zero. 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. More recently, the Cthulhu mythos was brought to the mean streets of modern-day Hamilton with David’s young adult novel, The Midnight Games.

from Toronto

BELLWETHER4

EMILY DENISON trumpet ANTHONY ARGATOFF alto saxophone ANDREW MILLER percussion VICTOR VRANKULJ bass

This Toronto based quartet is dedicated to creating a unique voice through original compositions focusing on improvised/avant-garde music influenced by Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton among many others.