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Jazz: The Second Century
In the summer of 2006, Earshot Jazz began a comprehensive project entitled “Jazz: The Second Century,” an initiative intended to address jazz’s progressive transition into the future. This concert series seeks to bring the discussion into creative motion where it matters most - on the stage, with an attentive audience.
Jazz: The Second Century gives voice to the vision of Seattle’s fine jazz artists. We hope you’ve enjoyed this exciting series of concerts. The music is fascinating, fun, hopeful, challenging, accessible, and beautiful. What is the future of jazz?
- John Gilbreath, Executive Director
2010 schedule
Thursday, July 22, 7:30
Chapel Performance Space in Wallingford
Owcharuk 5
and
Paul Kikuchi’s Portable Sanctuary (with Kikuchi, Bill Horist, and Stuart Dempster)
Admission: $5-$15 sliding scale at the door
(more info)
Thursday, July 29, 7:30
Chapel Performance Space in Wallingford
Trio Illogic
and
Helix
Admission: $5-$15 sliding scale at the door
(more info)
Earshot’s Jazz 2nd Century series continues into its fourth season, and this year presents four outstanding groups over two Thursday evening.
Several Seattle musicians and long-time observers of the local scene selected the groups in a blind-panel process.
The goal of the series is to present performances of music that question and expand the conventional boundaries and parameters of the jazz form.
Thursday, July 22
Owcharuk 5
From left to right: Cody Rahn, Nate Omdal, Jim Knodle, Beth Fleenor, Michael Owcharuk
Michael Owcharuk leads his spirited quintet in tunes that, as much as yak milk or those funny furry hats, is redolent with the Cossack camps of the steppes and the sodden plains of the Ukraine, but all steeped in the Western aesthetics of Latin jazz, blues, punk rock, and more.
With a fearsome swagger and swing, the Owcharuk 5 formed in 2007 and just released the album Kobzar.
Owcharuk performs on accordion and piano, as well as vocals. He also directs the Seattle Jazz Composer’s Ensemble; performs with Le Trio, The Distract Band, and other ensembles, and accompanies ballet classes. He has released three albums of original work.
Joining him on clarinet and highly idiosyncratic vocals is Beth Fleenor, leader of the group Figeater, and member of Double Yoko, Bling, and Chick Influenza. On trumpet, Jim Knodle, a veteran of many Seattle bands, plays with the kind of command that has made him a valued collaborator for the likes of Perry Robinson, Vinnie Goila, and Michael Vlatkovich, among many others. Bassist Nate Omdal co-directs the Seattle Jazz Composer’s Ensemble, is a founding member of Soul Kata, and performs with MC Spekulation, the Jay Thomas Big Band, and Ronin. Drummer Cody Rahn is a founding member of War Pigeon, works as a sideman, and has been session musician at Studio X, Bear Creek, and Ironwood.
Paul Kikuchi’s Portable Sanctuary
Paul Kikuchi photo by Daniel Sheehan
Paul Kikuchi, a drummer and player of invented instruments, presents his canny, sonorous quartet, Portable Sanctuary, whose intuitively constructed, delicately paced pieces bring a quiet or altered space to wherever they perform.
Current Kikuchi projects include the Empty Cage Quartet, Open Graves, Tide Tables, Orkestar Zirkonium, Paul Kikuchi’s Portable Sanctuary, and the Toy Boats. Paul founded Prefecture Records, a label devoted to presenting experimental percussion based music.
After studies with Milford Graves, Wadada Leo Smith, Vinny Golia, and others, he came to Seattle where he became a member of the Empty Cage Quartet, Open Graves, Tide Tables, the Toy Boats, and Orkestar Zirkonium, in addition to his Portable Sanctuary quartet. He has performed throughout North America and Europe, and has recorded his music for such labels as Clean Feed, Prefecture, Nine Winds, Rude Awakening Presente, and PFmentum.
Portable Sanctuary features his compositions and his sculptural percussion instruments. The ensemble utilizes a rotating cast of musicians which has included trombonists Stuart Dempster and Roswell Rudd and SF bay area musicians Jesse Olsen and Alexander Vittum, among others. Compositions for the ensemble are formed around the unusual timbres and tonalities of Kikuchi's percussion instruments. The upcoming performance for Earshot's 2nd century jazz series will feature new works for trio, featuring Kikuchi, Stuart Dempster, and guitar phenomenon Bill Horist.
Stuart Dempster is veteran trombonist (and conch player) and it speaks volumes for the retired UW professor of music, long a leading light in new-music performance and presentation, that he remains at the forefront of innovation in the region.
Explaining the thinking that drives the group, Kikuchi says: “What has remained consistent in jazz over the decades is the importance of lineage. Each generation of musician passes on the wisdom and soul of their music to the younger generation, and this cycle continues. … The interpretation of the music is infinitely variable, yet what is passed from generation to generation is an undefinable, potent glue.”
Thursday, July 29
Trio Illogic
Three relative newcomers to the Seattle jazz scene – except that all three have excelled in the Garfield High School jazz band – present their Trio Illogic: trumpeter Riley Mulherkar, pianist Julian Garvue, and trombonist Willem de Koch.
Together, they recombine early jazz in interesting and compelling ways. In the spirit of Anthony Braxton’s 1976 album, Creative Orchestra Music, with its astonishing take on the march music of John Philip Sousa, Trio Illogic make sense of the New Orleans traditional jazz approach by pulling it apart and putting it back together for modern times.
Their “Buddy Bolden Resurrected,” for example, spins off the New Orleans traditional tune, “Buddy Bolden’s Blues” by starting with the original melody, and incorporating the same kinds of polyphonic improvisation commonly heard in trad jazz, but shifting outside the original harmonic and rhythmic structures of the tune.
It is, then, the band members note, essentially a freely improvised interpretation of the original.
Similarly, in de Koch’s “Melancholy Graduation,” a ballad-like waltz, the three musicians move far away from the traditional swing feel of jazz towards a classical chamber-music sound in both the composition and the musicians’ improvisation. “Much of this tune,” says de Koch, “was inspired by Wayne Horvitz’s Gravitas Quartet, with its small-scale instrumentation, somber melodies, subtle dissonances, and mellow feel.”
Helix
Eric Barber*, Paul Kikuchi, Greg Sinibaldi, Greg Campbell*
*Photos by Daniel Sheehan
The second of two projects in this year’s series that include percussionist Paul Kikuchi (see Paul Kikuchi’s Portable Sanctuary, elsewhere in this preview), Helix is an ensemble with an unusual lineup: two saxophones and two percussionists.
Eric Barber and Greg Sinibaldi perform on tenor saxophones, while Kikuchi and Greg Campbell both play drumsets and other percussion instruments.
The ensemble, says Barber, “continues the lineage of two unique groups in jazz: the two-tenor band and the tenor-and-drum duo. We know one’s another’s instruments inside out and can use that as a strategy to form an ensemble sound larger than the sum of its parts.”
The quartet explores through improvisation the various groupings that its composition allows: two tenor saxes and two sets of percussion, six duos, four trios, and one quartet. All four players are proven performers in an array of settings.
Eric Barber was named 2009 NW Jazz Instrumentalist of the year in Earshot’s Golden Ear awards. His band, Ziggurat Quartet, has just released Calculated Gestures on Origin Records. Barber’s varied style masterfully incorporates influences from jazz, Balkan, and Indian music, complemented by his own extended saxophone techniques.
As Earshot executive director John Gilbreath put it in Seattle Sound Magazine, Barber plays with “huge soul, mature tone, and pyrotechnical facility.” Chicago’s Dan Warburton, no slouch on a horn, himself, agreed. In The Wire (UK), he wrote: “Eric Barber’s soprano sax work is particularly thrilling.”
Greg Sinibaldi plays an array of horns, including tenor saxophone and the “electric wind instrument,” or EWI. He says: “I run the EWI through guitar effects and sometimes my laptop. I programmed all the sounds for it so I don’t use the cheesy sounds the EWI comes with. I like where the sounds are heading.”
It’s true, and he should.
After graduating from the New England Conservatory, he had a band in Seattle called Frieze of Life that performed his compositions as well as arrangements he made of pieces by Bela Bartok and Gyorgy Ligeti. He now performs with his trio, Goat, for EWI, guitar, and drums.
Greg Campbell is the drummer of choice in Seattle for many projects that push the margins. Vast in his range of capabilities, he often alters his drum kit with whatever percussive additions come to hand. He underpins many local outfits with assurance and flair.
Owcharuk 5 and Portable Sanctuary perform Thursday, July 22. Trio Ilogic and Helix perform Thursday, July 29. Admission for the performance is $5-15, sliding scale; Chapel Performance Space, Good Shepherd Center, 4649 Sunnyside Ave. N, 4th floor, Seattle (corner of Sunnyside & 50th St. in Wallingford).
-Peter Monaghan |
