Josephine Foster with Sonny Simmons and Ryan Sawyer
Colorado-born singer and songwriter Josephine Foster, celebrated for her timeless and arresting voice and songs, several widely acclaimed albums, and the magnetic nature of her live performances. A self-proclaimed opera school dropout, her unusually imaginative work unites a wide musical spectrum and forms a truly singular body of songwriting. While compared to such singers as Shirley Collins or Tiny Tim, it is difficult to pigeonhole her voice, though a signature characteristic may found in the theremin-like melismas and a peculiar manner of ornamentation, sliding in microtonal freedom. Embedded in her rock and folk vieled work are relatively obsolete and unfashionable musical styles fascinatingly reimagined.
At age 15 she began working as a paid funeral and wedding singer; her earliest such performance was singing folk ballads and operatic hymns in a Rocky Mountain log cabin chapel. Thus began a musical trajectory tending to explore the gap between ‘lowbrow’ and ‘highbrow’ music.
After several years of meandering singing and artistic studies—harp, acting and opera stage direction—, she moved to Chicago and there quickly shrugged off the idea of a traditional operatic career. Instead, she returned to her adolescent love of writing songs; revisiting early jazz, blues and folk forms, north indian classical music and others. She adapting her lieder and aria repertoire into simplified and intuitive arrangements, freely breaking classical music taboos she found unduly limiting.
Whilst working as a freelance singing and music teacher, she was invited to perform her songs in wildly and comically disparate settings, often supported by friends in a handful of duos and trios including: ‘The Supposed’ (with guitarist Brian Goodman and drummer Rusty Peterson); ‘Born Heller’ (with free-jazz bass player Jason Ajemian); ‘The Children’s Hour’ (with songwriter Andy Bar and occasional drummer David Pajo). She has performed around the globe—Australia, Europe, Canada, Israel, Ireland—and has recorded several albums of her original songs with these musicians in addition to other unaccompanied solo work.
Ryan Sawyer (drummer/composer) plays with Stars Like Fleas, Tall Firs, Lone Wolf and Cub, amongst many others. An improviser that has played with everyone from Thurston Moore to Scarlett Johansson. Recorded on such seminal albums as At the Drive-In’s debut Acrobatic Tenement and Tv on the Radio’s Return To Cookie Mountain. Most recently, he co-wrote and performed the New York chapter of the Boredoms 88 Boa-drum. He lives in Brooklyn.
Sonny Simmons
Huey "Sonny" Simmons (b. August 4, 1933, Sicily Island, Louisiana) is an American jazz musician.
He grew up in Oakland, California, where he began playing the english horn. At age 16 he took up the alto saxophone, which became his primary instrument. He is one of the few jazz musicians to use the english horn as a solo instrument.
In the early 1960s he worked with Charles Mingus and Prince Lasha before recording his own LPs for ESP-Disk.
Jason Ajemian and the Highlife
Formed at the Harold Arts Residency in Ohio, Jason Ajemian pulls all of his previous conceptual musics together under a solid roof with The HIGH LIFE.
Ajemian creates scores in the architectural drafting program AutoCAD, which guide the musiciansthrough spaces and hallways of musical structures. His blueprints dictate the flow and motion of a musical set, opening the performers up to visual and descriptive influences, while leading them through a diverse musical landscape consisting of Ajemian’s orchestrated poems, American folk forms, Native American chants, Canadian sea shanties, Orbison, jazz expressive motion and balladry -- all filtered through the creative/improvised process in a unique communication of the moment.