EDGEFEST 26: BREATHING FREE
SATURday, october 22nd, 2022
COVID-19 Policy for Edgefest 2022
- Masks are required indoors, except when actively consuming a beverage.
- Please do not attend a performance if you are feeling ill or have any symptoms of COVID-19.
12 PM | Edgefest parade
Scarlett Middle School band students (Caroline Fitzgerald, Band Director) plus Edgefest artists and community members participate in this raucous and exciting moment in the Kerrytown downtown/Farmer’s Market area.
2 PM | Alexander Hawkins, solo piano
at kerrytown concert house
This performance is generously sponsored by Michael Resil, Keith Martin, and Marc Andren & Christine Reardon.
Pianist, organist, and composer Alexander Hawkins was raised in Oxford, England, where in his youth he studied classical music, focusing on organ, but soon became interested in jazz. After completing university, he returned to his home town and became involved with Oxford Improvisors, working with musicians such as bassist Dominik Lash, with whom he would organize the Convergence Quartet with Taylor Ho Bynum and Harris Eisenstadt. He was soon working with a wide range of British and international musicians. With is trio Decoy, with venerable duo of bassist John Edwards and drummer Steve Noble, which features his Hammond organ playing, he released two albums with multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee. His style was built, without any attempt at imitation, on improvisational concepts from the whole history of the music, from Earle Hines and Art Tatum to Cecil Taylor and Marylin Crispell, and he collaborates with all manner of improvisors, spanning the generations from veterans such as Evan Parker, Trevor Watts, and Louis Maholo-Maholo to the more recent members of the scene including Shabaka Hutchins. He is also a composer of note and is deeply involved in examining the relationships between written and improvised music, including that of past masters, as evidenced by his collaborations with Marco Collonna, exploring the work of Eric Dolphy (Dolphy Underlined), and with Roberto Ottaviano, surveying the legacy of Charles Mingus (Charlie’s Blue Skylight), released just this year.
3 PM | WeFreeStrings
at kerrytown concert house
This performance is generously sponsored by Ken Kozora. WeFreeStrings performance is being supported by Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.
Violinist and composer Charles Burnham’s imaginative sound transcends genres and takes influence from the deepest cuts of the bluegrass, delta punk, free jazz, blues, classical and chamber jazz repertoire. He came to prominence with James Blood Ulmer and with the String Trio of New York, where he replaced Billy Bang, but also for his work in the Susie Ibarra Trio alongside Cooper-Moore, as represented by the critically acclaimed album Radiance. Burnham has become a first call for many experimental music units and has worked with Cassandra Wilson, Steven Bernstein, Susie Ibarra, Henry Threadgill, Ted Daniel, Medeski, Martin & Wood, Cassandra Wilson, and the Kropotkins, as well as many others. Burnham’s original music is other-worldly, personal, and a hand-held expedition through open roads and dark alleys.
Violinist Gwen Laster began her love for improvising and composing because of her parents’ love of jazz, blues, soul, and classical music played endlessly on the record player and her progressive jazz music educators from Detroit’s public schools. After obtaining two music degrees from the University of Michigan, she moved to New York, where she has pursued a broadly eclectic career as a virtuoso violinist with exquisite taste and as an adventurous composer, arranger, and orchestrator. She has played with musicians in all genres, include such disparate artists as Andrea Bocelli, Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight, Natalie Cole, Anthony Braxton, and the Sun Ra Arkestra, while also working on also extend to Broadway. As the founder of the Creative Strings Improvisers Ensemble (CSIE), she has created programs which promote self-expression through improvisation. Her sensitivity to global music informs her workshops and master classes across the U.S. Her newest recording Blue Lotus is performed by New MUSE4tet, an improvisational string quartet whose original works promote social activism.
Violist Melanie Dyer performs and composes in creative, improvised and through-composed music spheres. She trained with William Lincer (Principal Violist, New York Philharmonic), Lee Yeingst (Principal Violist, Colorado Symphony Orchestra), John Jake Kella (NY Metropolitan Opera) and Naomi Fellows (Colorado Symphony Orchestra); and studied viola performance at the LaMont School of Music/University of Denver. In 2011 she founded WeFreeStrings, an improvising string/rhythm collective rooted in improvised music in 2011. From 2004 – 2013, under her Bb Universe banner and in collaboration with the multi-generational, multi-ethnic Scientific Soul Sessions collective, Melanie’s Harlem home became the scene of underground public performances by this group and other large and small music ensembles. Monthly and semi-monthly events brought cultural luminaries, emerging artists, social and environmental activists, working and under-employed people together. Her wide range of collaborations include
the Sun Ra Arkestra, Dead Lecturers, Baba Andrew Lamb, Gwen Laster’s New Muse 4tet, William Parker, and Jason Kao Hwang’s Myths of Origin. WeFreeStrings has released Fulfillment, and this year’s Love in The Form of Sacred Outrage and received project support from New Music USA, Chamber Music America, and the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation. A versatile artist, Melanie’s literary work appears in Gap-toothed Girlfriends: The Third Act anthology; her creative work also involves visual art including sculpture, works on canvas, textiles, and assemblage.
Alex Waterman is a composer, performer, producer, and scholar, exploring how social bodies can live and interact with one another in more musical ways. He has created a diverse body of works including sound installations, television operas, film and video works, exhibitions, amateur choral works, radio and film scores, and solo performances as a cellist, electronic musician, and storyteller. His installation works, films and music productions have been exhibited at the ICA London, The Kitchen, the Serpentine London, Kunstverein Amsterdam, the Rotterdam Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, the St. Louis Museum, and the Whitney Museum and elsewhere. Waterman has taught at Bard College (MFA program), NYU, Bloomfield College, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University and currently teaches at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Alex Waterman is a composer, performer, producer, and scholar, exploring how social bodies can live and interact with one another in more musical ways. He has created a diverse body of works including sound installations, television operas, film and video works, exhibitions, amateur choral works, radio and film scores, and solo performances as a cellist, electronic musician, and storyteller. His installation works, films and music productions have been exhibited at the ICA London, The Kitchen, the Serpentine London, Kunstverein Amsterdam, the Rotterdam Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival, the St. Louis Museum, and the Whitney Museum and elsewhere. Waterman has taught at Bard College (MFA program), NYU, Bloomfield College, and the Banff Centre for the Arts. He was a Visiting Assistant Professor of Music at Wesleyan University and currently teaches at Ramapo College of New Jersey.
Ken Filiano is a bassist, composer, improviser, and teacher who performs around the world, fusing the rich traditions of the double bass with his own seemingly limitless imagination. A “creative virtuoso” (JazzValley), Ken has performed and recorded with a veritable Who’s Who in multiple genres, from Anthony Braxton to Pablo Ziegler. In addition to being an integral member of groups led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Jason Kao Hwang, Fay Victor, Vinny Golia, Diane Moser, Roswell Rudd, Connie Crothers, Karl Berger, and others, he leads two quartets: Quantum Entanglements and Baudolino’s Dilemma and is also co-leader of The Steve Adams/Ken Filiano Duo and numerous other ensembles. His extensive discography includes the solo CD, Subvenire and Quantum Entanglements’ Dreams from a Clown Car. Ken teaches master classes in bass and improvisation, has a private bass studio, and is a Guiding Artist and Advisor at Creative Music Studio in Woodstock, NY.
Cleveland-born Michael Wimberly studied the rhythms of West Africa and 20th-century contemporary music at Baldwin Wallace University and then, during his graduate years at Manhattan School of Music, Wimberly broadened his musical palette studying electronic and improvised music. These explorations connected him with master musicians from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America, and Europe. He has performed with artists as varied as George Clinton, Dionne Warwick, Charles Gayle, Berlin’s Rundfunk Symphony, Vienna’s Tonkuntsler Symphony, or Steve Coleman. His compositions have been performed by dance companies all over the world. His film scores include As an Act of Protest by Dennis Leroy Moore, and Atlantic City Lights by Brent Owens for HBO and he has produced sound design for several major theatre companies. In 2002 he joined the faculty of Bennington College as the hand-picked successor of improvised music percussion pioneer Milford Graves.
7 PM | GRAND FINALE EVENING AT BETHLEHEM UCC
ANTHONY BRAXTON & JAMES FEI – DUO (LORRAINE) 2022
This performance is generously sponsored by Keith Martin, Frank Rubolino, Marc Andren & Christine Reardon, Nimish & Niraj Ganatra, Bonnie Patterson, Ferguson, Widmayer & Clark PC, and Encore Records.
Lorraine is the name of a new music prototype. This is a music system that governs the “sonic winds” of breath. There is a stillness in the air and the ghosts of the past commands the space. Memories and shadows of “beingness” adorn the ornamentation of old ruins and blessed relics. Sound castles in the sky – long forgotten experiences have returned with love and humility. Lorraine has come home to birth a renewal and areness of the other. Lorraine the traveler.
Multi-instrumentalist and composer Anthony Braxton first developed his skills in the revolutionary musical environment of Chicago during the 1960s. His first published recordings late in that decade evidenced a new creative voice a virtuoso instrumentalist who could play all members of the saxophone, clarinet, and flute families with rigorous instrumental technique, and a vision grounded in both modernist classical and jazz traditions. His conceptual framework expanded time-honored terms of improvisation and composition and displayed the bravado to incorporate surprises like singing or whistling. At a time when many were reveling in completely free improvisation, unfettered by predetermined melodic or harmonic patterns, and others were still using traditional “theme and variation” avenues for improvised jazz solos, Braxton embraced both in his own way. His music deployed sound textures, time, and melodic transpositions using an idiosyncratic notational system and a catalog of cell devices such as trills or long notes that tells musicians to play in a specific manner, or to indicate a general manner of playing without dictating which notes to play. Other works use traditional notation or combine the two methods. Over the decades, Braxton has expanded his musical vision in a disciplined manner, exploring classical composition, African, Asian, and Native American music, poetry, and mythology, as well as the jazz tradition, defying standard artistic constraints in a manner all his own. He has composed hundreds of pieces, including operas, works for large orchestras and for solo piano, and has worked with his own groups, primarily quartets and sextets, all while continuing to perform solo on alto saxophone. At the same time, he has developed complex philosophical ideas about vibrational history from what he describes as a “tri-centric perspective” (i.e., individual, community, and symbolic integration with the spiritual) requiring a restructuring of narrative systems. Braxton the revolutionary acknowledges that forms that started in the Romantic Period still have relevance to the present and to the future, and so has performed and recorded modern jazz standards, sometimes on the piano, including a massive CD collection of Charlie Parker tunes with British pianist Alexander Hawkins, who will be playing a solo set at the festival earlier in the day.
Originally from Taipei in Taiwan, saxophonist, clarinetist, and composer James Fei came to the US to study electrical engineering; he ended up studying computer architecture, music composition, and instrumental performance, first at Princeton, and then at Wesleyan with Alvin Lucier and Anthony Braxton. Since 2006 he has been on the faculty of Intermedia Arts at Mills College teaching composition and electronic arts. In addition to exploring recorded and live electronics, he is an accomplished multi-instrumentalist, playing and composing for sopranino, soprano, alto, baritone, and bass saxophones as well as bass and contrabass clarinets. Fei has recorded several albums under his own name (including Solo Works [Leo] for his various horns) and appeared on cd’s by Jonathan Zorn, Kevin Norton, Anthony Braxton, and Roscoe Mitchell. He currently serves as the president of the Tri-Centric Foundation, dedicated to presenting and preserving the works of Anthony Braxton. His works have been performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars, the Orchestra of the SEM Ensemble, and the Noord-Holands Philharmonisch Orkest.
Bishop/Hannaford Dectet performs works by Anthony Braxton
This performance is generously sponsored by the University of Michigan Department of Jazz & Contemporary Improvisation.
An ensemble led by distinguished performing faculty from the UM Department of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Andrew Bishop and Marc Hannaford.
Andrew Bishop is a versatile multi-instrumentalist, composer, improviser, scholar, and educator comfortable in many musical idioms. He maintains an international career and serves as an Associate Professor and Chair of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. Bishop’s three recordings as a leader have received widespread acclaim from national and international journals. As a composer and arranger, he has received numerous commissions, residencies, and awards from the ASCAP, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Andrew W. Melon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and a nomination from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He earned five degrees in music including a DMA in music composition from the University of Michigan. A dedicated and committed teacher, Bishop was twice the recipient of the Arthur Anderson Professor of the Year Award, the Joyce G. Ferguson Faculty Development Grant for Excellence in Teaching, and the 2021 Harold Haugh Award for excellence in studio teaching.
Marc Hannaford is a music theorist whose interests lie at the intersection of jazz and improvisation, identity (especially race, gender, and disability), performance, and embodiment. He obtained his doctorate from Columbia University, writing a dissertation on the work of Muhal Richard Abrams. Described by Jason Moran as a pianist who has “taken full control of the music histories that interest him: from Messiaen to Earl Hines…with a new sound that only comes from within him.” Hannaford has established himself in the New York jazz and improvised music scene since his arrival from Australia in 2013. He has performed and recorded with improvised music luminaries such as Tim Berne, Tom Rainey, Mark Helias, Tony Malaby, Jen Shyu, and Ellery Eskelin. His most recent release, Can You See with Two Sets of Eyes? (with bassist Simon Jermyn and percussionist Satoshi Takeishi) was pronounced to be “advanced, contemporary, improvised, virtuosic music might sound like, a decade or more into the future” (The Weekend Australian).
Hailing from Windsor, Canada, Josie Ala is a versatile trumpeter finishing a degree in Jazz Studies at the University of Michigan who has become a staple on the Detroit and Ann Arbor jazz scene. She is an alumnus of the Detroit Civic Youth Ensembles, to which she accredits her greatest musical influence. She has played alongside the Civic Youth Jazz Orchestra and Detroit Symphony Youth Orchestra where she was able to come out of her shell and discover her true passion for the trumpet. She performs frequently in pit orchestras, as a member of Ellen Rowe’s Momentum project, and appeared recently at the Detroit Jazz Festival. She is also an accomplished classical pianist.
Adam Unsworth is Professor of Horn at the University of Michigan’s School of Music, Theatre and Dance. He is a former member of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the Detroit Symphony Orchestra He has performed as a guest with the St. Louis, San Francisco, Pittsburgh, and Chicago symphonies and with new music ensembles Alarm Will Sound, the Meridian Arts Ensemble, Ensemble Signal, Ensemble Linea, and the Slee Sinfonietta. Adam is dedicated to commissioning and performing works of living composers, with a goal of expanding repertoire and redefining the boundaries of the horn. Equally at home in classics and jazz, he works with the New York based Gil Evans Centennial Project is also part of Japanese big band leader Miho Hazama’s M-Unit Band and has appeared on her most recent recordings, Dancer in Nowhere and Time River. His newest release, Balance, is a jazz recording for horn, jazz quintet, and chamber orchestra, which features arrangements of his own compositions.
Marcus Elliot is a saxophonist, composer, improviser, and educator based in Detroit, Michigan. His compositions and improvisations have been described by the New York Times as “convincing and confident, evolved in touch and tone…,” and the Detroit Free Press has said, “Marcus Elliot represents next generation of jazz,” Elliot leads and co-leads many different Detroit based bands including the Marcus Elliot Quartet, Clockwork, Balance, Beyond Rebellious, and Lanula. He co-founded the nonprofit Polyfold Musical Arts Collective and is the director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Civic Jazz Ensembles. Elliot received his bachelor’s degree in Jazz Studies from Michigan State University his master’s degree in improvisation from the University of Michigan. Marcus self-released three albums with his ensemble, the Marcus Elliot Quartet and co-released an album with his duo project with Michael Malis, Balance.
Kaleigh Wilder is a baritone saxophone improviser and sound sculptor based in Detroit, MI. Originally from Northwest Indiana, she moved to Michigan for graduate school where she then found refuge in Detroit’s music community. It is hard to place her music into a cut and dried genre, so Wilder likes to play from what she knows in her body—what her hands, ears, and inner child remember. Wilder’s trajectory was mostly classical, but she played jazz throughout middle and high school. Wilder ultimately attended the University of Michigan for graduate school and it was during these two short years that Wilder returned to her childhood roots of improvisation and reimagined her voice to perform fully on baritone saxophone. She also had a once in a lifetime opportunity to travel to Ghana to do ethnographic fieldwork at the Dagara Music Center and with the AFRIMUDA Foundation. During her one month in Ghana, Wilder studied gyil, djembe, Ewe drums, and dance. The embodiment of Ghanaian music and dance still impacts her work today.
Oliver Bishop is currently studying clarinet performance at the University of Michigan. He has studied with Angela Duquette, Sandy Jackson, Dan Gilbert, and Chad Burrow and has participated in masterclasses with many exceptional artists including Ricardo Morales of the Philadelphia Orchestra. A broad-minded musician, Oliver is comfortable in concert music, jazz, and improvised music. In a piece of Edgefest history, Oliver was born in 2000, four hours before his father Andrew played a set with Gerald Cleaver.
Ben Willis is a bassist and composer whose affinities lie in collaborative projects, new music, improvisation, and the merging of cross-disciplinary elements. He has performed his original collaborative work at venues and festivals around the U.S., including at the Electroacoustic Barn Dance at the University of Mary Washington, the Whitewater Arts Alliance Series at the University of Wisconsin, Whitewater and the Ratchet Series at the Skylark in Chicago. He often participates in recitals of new music and collaborations with composers and performs regularly with the art rock band saajtak, and the Wisconsin-based experimental jazz sextet, Lovely Socialite. Summer 2022 saw the release of saajtak’s debut record, For the Makers, and Lovely Socialite’s third full-length album, The Drift. As an animator and video artist, Willis has produced numerous music videos, and has presented his work in America and Japan. He operates a creative production studio, The Momotorium, with his partner Kirsten Carey.
Percussionist Ian Antonio’s breadth of experience – concertizing across four continents with a wide variety of chamber ensembles, orchestras, experimental rock bands, avant-garde theatre companies, and as a soloist, conductor, and educator – has led him to develop a unique sound and approach to both performing and teaching. He is currently a professor of percussion at UM. He has recorded over 40 albums for a plethora of labels. He has also performed in many different contexts, including the International Contemporary Ensemble, Argento Chamber Ensemble, Boston Symphony, BBC Symphony Orchestra, London Sinfonettia, Los Angeles Philharmonic, and worked with composers, conductors, and soloists such as Seigi Ozawa, Kurt Masur, Charles Dutoit, Mstislav Rostropovich, Yefim Bronfman, Helmut Lachenmann, Enno Poppe, John Adams, and Kaija Saariaho.
JASON KAO HWANG'S BURNING BRIDGE
This performance is generously sponsored by Luis Torregrosa.
The music of Jason Kao Hwang (composer/violin/viola) explores the vibrations and language of his history. His compositions are often narrative landscapes through which sonic beings embark upon extemporaneous, transformational journeys. His most recent releases, Conjure, a duo with Karl Berger, and Blood, performed by Burning Bridge, his octet of Chinese and Western instruments, have received critical acclaim. In 2020, and many years before, the El Intruso International Critics Poll voted him as no. 1 for violin/viola. In addition to his instrumental mastery, Hwang has been recognized for his compositional originality. His chamber opera The Floating Box, A Story in Chinatown was one of the top ten opera recordings of 2005 by Opera News, and he has released a series of albums with extended works for various ensembles, some of them premiered at Edgefest. As a composer, Mr. Hwang has received support from Chamber Music America, NEA, Rockefeller Foundation, and other organizations. His latest projects include Myths of Origins for a large orchestra premiered earlier this year at Visionfest and a new trio, Critical Response, with drummer Michael TA Thompsom ad guitarist Anders Nilsson. He has just released a newt cd, UnChartered Faith, a duet with electronics artist J. A. Deane.
Haruna Fukazawa is a New York-based flutist originally from Tokyo, where she studied classical music at the Musashino Academia Musicae. She started visiting New York City regularly to study with Frank Wess, and shortly after decided to move to New York to play jazz full-time with his encouragement. She has appeared on many albums, TV, and movie recordings as a sideperson, and her career continues to evolve as she works in a variety of groups. Of note is her involvement with Karl Berger’s Improvisers Orchestra. She has performed in some of the most prestigious venues in New York City, among them the Blue Note, Carnegie Hall, The Stone, The 55 Bar, The Bitter End, Joe’s Pub, and The Rubin Museum of Art. The Haruna Fukazawa Quintet performs regularly; its first album was released in 2019. Haruna also co-leads a chamber jazz trio called Jazz Triangle 65-77. The band released two albums in 2017 and 2022.
Sun Li graduated from the Shenyang Music Conservatory where she studied pipa and was a member of the Central Song and Dance Ensemble in Beijing. She has performed with Music from China, a New York-based Chinese music ensemble, at numerous educational and cultural institutions since 2002. The New York Times has characterized her performances as “virtuosic and colorful”. Her recent appearances include 2016 Solo Recital at Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, 2017 Columbus Symphony Orchestra in Ohio, 2019 National Folk Festival in Maryland, and 2022 Staunton Music Festival in Virginia.
Trumpeter Herb Robertson met alto saxophonist Tim Berne in the late 1970s where he first gained attention for his playing with Berne’s groups during the years 1981-90. His lyricism, tonal distortions and use of mutes looked back to jazz’s past, while his freer improvising was decidedly futuristic. Robertson’s music is simultaneously a game of equals and a parody of excesses, with an irreverent use of structured freedom. It is also an obtuse refraction of Ellingtonian hues and blues that’s both dramatic and compelling. Whether it’s complex large group arrangements or free-form duets, Herb Robertson brings his wide knowledge of jazz history along with his original voice and adventurous spirit to each session.
In a career spanning over 40 years, trombonist Dick Griffin has performed with some of the biggest names in jazz and soul, as well as appearing with several symphony orchestras. A short list of the luminaries Griffin has worked with includes Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, Tito Puente, Art Blakey, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, McCoy Tyner, Marvin Gaye, Michael Jackson, Isaac Hayes, Dionne Warwick, and Lionel Hampton. He spent a few years in the house band at the Apollo Theatre, accompanying many Motown artists. He is perhaps best known for his early association with Sun Ra in Chicago and for the years he spent working with Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Griffin has developed a highly personalized playing style called “circularphonics,” playing multiple sounds on the trombone in combination with circular breathing. In addition to his versatile work as an instrumentalist and composer, Griffin has made a mark as a painter, with numerous solo exhibitions all over the globe.
Tuba player, composer and educator Joseph Daley studied at the Manhattan School of Music attaining a master’s degree in music education. He has received fellowships in music composition from the National Endowment for the Arts, the MacDowell Colony, the Music Omi and Geraldine R Dodge Foundation. Mr. Daley has performed and recorded with Muhal Richard Abrams, Bill Cole, Far East Side Band, Sam Rivers, Ellery Eskelin, Liberation Music Orchestra, Gil Evans, Carla Bley, Taj Mahal, Jayne Cortez, George Gruntz, Gravity, Ebony Brass Quintet, Paradigm Shift, Dave Douglas, Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, Anthony Braxton, Craig Harris, Spider Monkey Strings and Hazmat Modine. In 2011, he released the album The Seven Deadly Sins that received rave reviews and made several best of 2011 lists. Since then, Daley has produced four other acclaimed projects for his for JoDa Music label (Seven Heavenly Virtues, Portraits, Trayvon Martin Suite and Tuba Trio Chronicles) while continuing his sideman duties with groups such as The Liberation Music Orchestra, Bill Cole’s Untempered Ensemble, Gravity and Hazmat Modine.
Swedish-born and New York-based experimental artist Anders Nilsson works as electric, acoustic, and 11-string alto guitarist, described by Time Out, New York as “a guitarist-composer comfortable with everything from free improvisation to avant-garde metal, celebrates a fine recent solo effort, Night Guitar, that traverses ghostly mood-setting, bluesy twang and overdriven riffage.” He currently leads three bands: Anders Nilsson Group with Satoshi Takeishi drums, percussion and David Ambrosio electric bass, bata, Outer Space Caravan with Stephanie Griffin viola, Michael Attias alto sax, Ken Filiano bass, and Anders Nilsson’s AORTA, a jazz-rock band in Malmö, Sweden. Nilsson’s work as a composer has produced 100+ compositions ranging from brief to epic solo works to large experimental ensemble works, many of which have been released on several acclaimed albums. He has also written music for string quartet, short films, butoh dance performances, and theatre.
Drummer/percussionist and composer Andrew Drury grew up near Seattle 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 five CDs as a bandleader, and appeared on over 20 others and is an acclaimed leader of percussion workshops. After taking lessons from Dave Coleman, he studied with Ed Blackwell, Bill Lowe, Bill Barron, and the writer Annie Dillard at Wesleyan University but is self-taught as a composer. Drury performs as a soloist, collaborates with adventurous musicians from around the world, and leads several groups that play his compositions. In addition to groups that he leads and frequent encounters with improvisers from various parts of the world, he plays regularly with Jason Kao Hwang, Jessica Lurie, Reuben Radding, the Rat Race Choir, the Steve Swell Trio, TOTEM>, Nate Wooley, Jack Wright, and others. Drury often performs using one drum, scraping the head with wood slivers and fingernails, manipulating drumhead tension and harmonic patterns with bells, using the drum as an acoustic filter and amplifier for vibrations produced on other objects, and using the drum as a wind instrument. His diverse interests have led him to create street theatre in Central American countries, to write music for dance, to train percussionists of all ages and backgrounds, and to maintain a regular series of highly regarded “Soup & Sound” house concerts.
Ken Filiano is a bassist, composer, improviser, and teacher who performs around the world, fusing the rich traditions of the double bass with his own seemingly limitless imagination. A “creative virtuoso” (JazzValley), Ken has performed and recorded with a veritable Who’s Who in multiple genres, from Anthony Braxton to Pablo Ziegler. In addition to being an integral member of groups led by Taylor Ho Bynum, Jason Kao Hwang, Fay Victor, Vinny Golia, Diane Moser, Roswell Rudd, Connie Crothers, Karl Berger, and others, he leads two quartets: Quantum Entanglements and Baudolino’s Dilemma and is also co-leader of The Steve Adams/Ken Filiano Duo and numerous other ensembles. His extensive discography includes the solo CD, Subvenire and Quantum Entanglements’ Dreams from a Clown Car. Ken teaches master classes in bass and improvisation, has a private bass studio, and is a Guiding Artist and
