elliott sharp ‘E# plays Monk’
Friday, December 10, 2004
Composer, multi-instrumentalist and producer Elliott Sharp is not usually associated with the world of jazz even though it was an important influence for him. His decades-long love of the music of Thelonious Monk is here manifest for the first time in an evening of Monk classics.
In this program, E# applies the unique vocabulary and syntax of his recent acoustic guitar CD “The Velocity of Hue” to such Monk tunes as Misterioso, Epistrophy, and Round Midnight using a handmade Dell Arte “grande bouche” copy of a 30′s Selmer Macaferri guitar in the style of that used by Django Reinhardt.
“If much of his previous work has found beauty in extremes of intensity, he reverses course here, creating a cumulative intensity from extremes of beauty.” Steve Smith, Time Out
“The playing is elegiac, lyrical and passionate, and uses several extended techniques of finger-tapping, harmonics and fretboard noise as well as a subtle sinuous acoustic feedback to extend notes at will. Few other players have managed to liberate the language of steel blues so completely – one is reminded of Leo Kottke’s more surreal passages. ..Most of all, though, the music has an extraordinary saturated living colour, as the title track (and its title) Velocity Of Hue so succinctly suggest.” Nick Southgate, The Wire
cjm sounds presents
Friday, December 17, 2004
SET 1 ………. CJMJS
Chris McIntyre (CJM) – trombone; Michael J. Schumacher – G4 laptop
SET 2 ………. LOTET
CJM – trombone, Nord Lead 2; Charles Waters – bass clarinet, bass saxophone; Michael J. Schumacher – G4; Andrew Barker – cello; Kato Hideki – electric bass, EH bass synth; Jesse Dulman – tuba
Trombonist and composer, Christopher McIntyre (CJM) introduces two newly-formed projects of comprovisative electro-acoustic music.
The sound of CJMJS is a convolving of McIntyre’s background in solo trombone repertoire and free improvisation with Schumacher’s masterly skill in real-time manipulation of sound and composerly aesthetic. The result is a collaborative composition of structured and improvisative elements that blur the conceptual line between performance and installation.
In LOTET, McIntyre has formed a disparate group of artists with the organizing principle of a single, primary element of sound: the low end of the frequency spectrum. Within a loosely structured format, LOTET creates a collective sound world from the bottom up in which forms and textures intermix. Glacial sonic fields are juxtaposed over layers of twittering, motile linear material; petulant improvised discourse interrupts and explodes hypnotic stasis.
Each musicians in LOTET brings a wealth of probing musical experience to the over-all group aesthetic. Included are Gold Sparkle Band core members Charles Waters (bass clarinetist and bass saxophone) and Andrew Barker, who together offer 10 years of collaborative music making from the heart of the Free Jazz tradition and beyond. Barker, best known as the drummer for GSB, joins LOTET on cello (a recent addition to his arsenal). Kato Hideki also brings years of spontaneous composition to the group, working with Ex-Music notables such as John Zorn, Ikue Mori, and Otomo Yoshihide. Tuba player Jesse Dulman’s singular approach to his instrument has led to several recordings and tours with legendary AACM member Kalaparush Maurice McIntyre. And Schumacher’s associations with sine wave maestro La Monte Young and noise virtuosi Borbetomagus will be present in his laptop gestures. In addition to playing trombone in LOTET, McIntyre will be heard for the first time on the Nord Lead 2, a virtual analog synthesizer which he plans to misuse in as many different configurations as possible.
aki onda (solo)
Saturday, December 18, 2004
After an extensive tour in Japan, Australia, and Europe, The Project Room is extremely pleased to welcome back composer Aki Onda, who will preform his highly personal work dealing with his own memories, or rather, a trace of memories captured with a handheld tape recorder.
Aki Onda is a self-taught musician currently living in New York. For more than a decade, he has been obsessed with collecting field-recordings through a handheld cassette recorder. His latest album “Bon Voyage!” was selected in the Wire magazine’s 50 records of the year for 2003. He has collaborated with such musicians as Eye Yamatsuka, Nobukazu Takemura, Tujiko Noriko, Ikue Mori, Haco, Shelley Hirsch, Alan Licht, SFT, Jac Berrocal, and Linda Sharrock.
For more informartion, please visit: www.japanimprov.com/aonda