In drummer Jim Pugliese’s current project, “Jimmy’s Music Club,” the musical structure stays the same but the musicians change all the time. Informed by everything from free impovisation to deep groove to Ghanaian drumming, his ensemble seeks to find the spiritual secrets of drumming. Taylor Ho Bynum and Abraham Gomez-Delgado bring their salsa-influenced group Positive Catastrophe, which also includes a French horn, erhu, and rock guitar.
Jim Pugliese is a drummer, percussionist and composer. As a freelance percussionist he has performed with The New York Philharmonic Horizon Series (guest artist), New York City Ballet and soloist or performer on numerous new music and jazz festivals. For the last 20 years, Jim has been improvising, recording and touring with many of downtown’s most prominent composer/improvisers including John Zorn, Marc Ribot, Zeena Parkins, Bobby Previte, Elliot Sharp and Anthony Coleman. He has recorded on over 100 CD's of new music, jazz, rock and movie soundtracks. Jim's latest CD ”Phase III Live @ Issue Project Room NYC" won "Best New Release of 2008" in All About Jazz NY. Jim performs on and endorses Alternate Mode’s Malletkat.
This latest project titled “Jimmy’s Music Club” is a mobile unit. The musical structure stays the same and musicians change, each allowed to speak in his or her own voice within the structure. It is a continuation of my ongoing quest to combine my diverse performing experiences into a single sound where the rhythmic harmonics inspire the harmony. The music skirts and shifts along the edges of free improvisation, deep groove and New Music. It reflects my ongoing quest to explore the powerful, enlightening and spiritual secrets of drumming and is inspired by recent association and work with Nii Tettey Tetteh, master musician from Ghana, with Milford Graves, learning drumming and healing through the heartbeat and the study of the spiritual songs of the Mbira Dzavadzimu from Zimbabwe.
Performers for this concert: Christine Bard, drums; Aram Bajakian, guitar; Audrey Chen, cello, vocals; Lewis Barnes, trumpet; Darius Jones, alto Sax; Steve Swell, trombone; Jim Pugliese, drums, vocal, mbira, shacktronics; Ken Filiano, bass.
Positive Catastrophe
Positive Catastrophe is the brainchild of Taylor Ho Bynum and Abraham Gomez-Delgado. Bynum has been described as “animated as a vintage Loony Tune...one of the most exciting figures in jazz's new power generation” (Steve Dollar, Time Out Chicago). Gomez-Delgado has been called “the new century's mad scientist, creating a musical hybrid so seemingly wrong it can be nothing but right” (Global Rhythm Magazine). Together they have come up with Positive Catastrophe: a trans-idiomatic ten-piece little big band that connects the dots between Sun Ra and Eddie Palmieri.
The group enlists a bevy of New York’s most adventurous jazz and salsa musicians, all composers and leaders in their own right, whose performing credits include Anthony Braxton, Max Roach, Henry Threadgill, Paul Motian, Steve Coleman, and Eddie Bobé. With the exceptional musicianship of the players and their fluidity in multiple genres, a unique instrumentation that hints at a traditional jazz and salsa big bands yet includes french horn, erhu, and rock guitar, and a pair of dramatic vocalists that are comfortable singing in three languages, Positive Catastrophe creates a truly boundary-crossing kind of new music.
“This is the audio equivalent of a funhouse mirror. ‘Travels,’ for example, sounds like a low-speed collision between Sun Ra’s ‘Nuclear War,’ Julie London’s ‘Cry Me a River’ and Chano Pozo’s Dizzy Gillespie vehicle ‘Manteca’ – all mashing together while the drivers giggle. Pos-Cat maintains a playful, even giddy vibe as it bends its Latin, swing, and progressive vibes so that they’re each recognizable but delightfully warped. If you’ve been hungering to hear Latin-based jazz in a new light, your prayers have been answered.” (Saby Reyes-Kulkarni, NY Press.)
“The ten-piece Positive Catastrophe pools the resources of two outstanding bandleaders: the ever-searching avant-jazz cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, and Abraham Gomez-Delgado, head of the eclectic alterna-Latino outfit Zemog El Gallo Bueno…full of swagger and groove, it combines Mingus-esque polyphonic momentum with vibrantly off-kilter world-funk.” (Time Out New York.)