The Noisy Meditation Band is a work in progress comprising core and rotating membership; a group directed by composer/bandleader Peter Zummo; as well as a collective musical enterprise. The compositions provide material so that ensemble members are not put in the position of having to make arbitrary decisions but rather feel free to engage in their own personal activities of choice. Notations are reworked, and sketches, which can be graphically evocative, are copied into templates for experimenting with variations. The grouping, which includes acoustic and electric instruments and live electronic processing, favors a texture filled with noise, the better to arrive at a state where each can hear something new and express in a manner possibly critical of the way our world is being run.
Ernie Brooks (bass guitar) has played with Modern Lovers, Love of Life Orchestra, David Johansen, Jean-Francois Pauvros (French godfather of grunge), Arthur Russell, Elliott Murphy, Gary Lucas, Rhys Chatham, Glenn Branca, Jerry Harrison, Chris Spedding, and others as bassist in rooms and recording studios in various places around the world in a path that has lead from rock to pop and more.
Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/percussionist/thereminist/composer whose work investigates and embraces the collision of sound and theatrics. As well as being a drum set player, his work with unusual sound sources includes found objects, homemade instruments,various digital and homemade analog electronics. He has worked with a wide variety of artists including Samm Bennett, Jac Berrocal, EasSide Percussion, Fast Forward(Gobo), God is my Co-Pilot, Alexander Hacke, Susan Hefner, Skip LaPlante’s Music for Homemade Instruments, Sean G. Meehan, Gordon Monahan, Joe Morris, Evan Parker, William Parker, LaDonna Smith, Toronto Dance Theatre and Peter Zummo.
David First has had a musical career filled with opposites and extremes. At the age of twenty he played guitar with renowned avant-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor in a legendary Carnegie Hall concert. Two years after that he was creating electronic music in studios at Princeton University and leading a Mummer’s String Band in local parades. He has played in raucous drunken bar bands and in pin-drop quiet concert halls with classical ensembles. As a composer First has created everything from finely crafted pop songs to long, severely minimalist drone-works. His performances often find him sitting trance-like without seeming to move a muscle, unless he is playing with his recently re-formed psychedelic punk band, Notekillers, at which time he is a whirling blur of hyperactive energy. First has been called “a fascinating artist with a singular technique” in The New York Times, and “a bizarre cross between Hendrix and La Monte Young” in The Village Voice.
Yvette Perez is the singer/songwriter/bandleader for New York’s avant-pop/jazz quintet Birdbrain. Yvette also plays keyboards and sings in H.E.R. with Peter Zummo and percussionist Danny Tunick. Their debut cd “Songs About the Mysteries of Housework and Nature” is due for release Nov 2007 on Persian Cardinal Recordings.
Peter Zummo has been composing for ensemble since 1967, and for trombone since 1971, in pursuit of the evolving boundary of music-making and brass culture. From 1975 to the present, he has performed and recorded for composers, ensembles, bands, film, theatre groups, and dance companies worldwide. As a professor of music at Ohio Wesleyan University, he teaches in the New York Arts Program, a program of the Great Lakes Colleges Association. Since 1978, he has been artistic director of The Loris Bend Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit presenter of music, dance, and media. Professional studies were with Carmine Caruso, Stuart Dempster, James Fulkerson, Dick Griffin, Makanda Ken McIntyre, Roswell Rudd, and Sam Rivers.