Totem is a noise rock free improvisation trio that ventures from walls of sound to exploring microscopic sound worlds.
Andrew Drury grew up near Seattle (USA) and works primarily in avant-jazz and free improvisation, with regular forays into other genres and media. He has performed in Europe and North America, made four CDs as a bandleader, and appeared on about 20 others. He is an acclaimed leader of percussion workshops. Drury has collaborated with artists that include Jason Kao Hwang, Myra Melford, Wadada Leo Smith, John Tchicai, Kenny Wolleson’s Himalayas, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and many more. Drury currently leads four groups that play his compositions. The Andrew Drury Trio, Content Provider, Breathe, and his latest project is a percussion quartet that features Jim Black, Mike Pride, and Michael Sarin. His music for dance has been presented at DTW, Joyce Soho, NW New Works Festival, and five cities in Romania. Drury has received 18 grants for his work from the NEA, NYSCA, NYFA, the Seattle Arts Commission, the Artist Trust, the Puffin Foundation, and others.
Bruce Eisenbeil is a composer, improviser, and guitar instrumentalist who has dedicated his life to the advancement of modern guitar techniques through the growth and evolution of modern improvised music. He has seven CD’s released and has performed throughout the USA, Canada, Japan, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Brasil, and at many festivals. Eisenbeil has performed, recorded and collaborated with some of the best musicians in the world, including Cecil Taylor, David Murray, Milford Graves, Evan Parker, Ellery Eskelin, Andrew Cyrille, William Parker, and Katsuyuki Itakura. Critics have compared him not only with guitarists such as Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt, Grant Green, Billy Bauer, Derek Bailey, Sarnie Garrett, Sonny Sharrock, Curtis Mayfield, John McLaughlin, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck but also with saxophonists John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman and pianists McCoy Tyner and Cecil Taylor. His ensemble writing has been associated with that of Miles Davis, Don Cherry, Brian Ferneyhough, Sun Ra, the Art Ensemble of Chicago and the Revolutionary Ensemble.
Tom Blancarte is a bassist, improviser and composer living and working in New York City. He has performed his music across North America, Europe and Japan. His primary focus is on improvisational music and finding new roles for the bass in a variety of musical contexts. He is an active performer in a variety of ensembles in the New York area, his most active groups being the hyperactive duo Sparks with trumpeter Peter Evans, Dave Smith’s Who Put The Bad Mouth On Me, and the Peter Evans Quartet. Blancarte has toured extensively throughout Europe and has received critical acclaim for his work on the self-titled Peter Evan Quartet CD released by Firehouse12 records.
Blacksberg/Hernandez/Evans/Lipson is a collective ensemble that plays improvised music. In this music, we strive to call on as much of our personal and shared experiences in every moment. We do this to challenge ourselves to explore our relationships with each other to find new spaces of communication and to bring joy.
Daniel Blacksberg is a trombonist who is working inside and outside the boundaries of jazz, creative and new music and Jewish music. He has performed with Joe Morris, Toshi Makihara, Bobby Zankel and the Warriors of the Wonderful Sound, Sonic Liberation Front, Taylor Ho Bynum, Gene Coleman and many others. In the world of Jewish music, he has played with Michael Winograd, Frank London, Aaron Alexander, Susan Watts, Michael Alpert, Alicia Svigals, Hankus Netsky, and others in Philadelphia, New York and Krakow, Poland.
Katt Hernandez recently moved to Philadelphia, after living in the Boston area for nine years, playing the violin, running spaces, and producing shows. She has collaborated with a magnificently variegated sea of musicians, dancers, and others including- but certainly not limited to- Joe Maneri, Zack Fuller, David Maxwell, John Voigt, Joe Burgio, Vashti Bunyan, Eric Rosenthal, Jeff Arnal, Andrew Neumann, and Hans Rickheit. She has twice been invited to perform on the Autumn Uprising , High Zero and Improvised and Otherwise festivals. She has been a guest artist at MIT, Harvard, and the New England Conservatory, performed in a vast slew of local venues and- to date- any number of subway passages, urban grottos, and troglyditical performace places, as well as other experimental and life-making places throughout the Bos-Wash metropolii.
Bassist Evan Lipson draws on his varied experience as a performer to create imaginative free improvisation. Evan has performed in a variety of alternative ensembles. His improvisation credentials include participation in the NoNet Festival and performing with Stuart Dempster, Andy Hayleck, Matthias Kaul, Stanley Schumacher, Todd Whitman, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and many others. Evan has received both the American Composers Forum SUBITO grant and Meet the Composer’s Creative Connections grant. He studied string bass with Michael Formanek and Robert Kesselman and attended Peabody Conservatory and Temple University.
Michael Evans is an improvising drummer/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, and 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 (Einsturzende Neubauten), Susan Hefner, Skip LaPlante’s Music for Homemade Instruments, Sean Meehan, Toronto Dance Theatre and Peter Zummo.