The 2015 Earshot Jazz Spring Series continues through July 11 with four distinctive concerts that bring a world of music to Seattle audiences.
Giulia Valle Trio
Saturday, June 20, 8pm
Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th floor (Wallingford)
The Barcelona-bred bassist brings a unique musicianship to the contemporary scene with her compositions and playing. The Giulia Valle Trio presents a lineup of great maturity, in which the interplay among the musicians is the common denominator. The project includes Marco Mezquida on piano and David Xirgu on drums, and features new compositions as well as “revisited” topics Valle has introduced on previous recordings. With quick rhythmic interplay and a tight chemistry, the trio brings innovation and creativity to the Seattle audience.
Born in Sanremo, Italy, Valle grew up in Barcelona, Spain, juxtaposing both classical and modern music in her studies and playing. Performing throughout her hometown, as well as international venues in Paris and New York City, as a leader, co-leader, and sidewoman, she has worked alongside musicians including Guillermo Klein, Bill McHenry, and Antonio Canales, among many others.
She has been named “Composer of the Year” numerous times by the Catalan Musician’s Association (AMJM). More recently, she has recorded several shows for local Catalan Television, and has been performing internationally with her Giulia Valle Group, which has also earned the AMJM’s “Band of the Year” on several occasions. A versatile musician and composer, she has explored the sounds of techno, rumba, and trance in her project, Líbera. Valle also teaches bass and combo at the Escola de Música Moderna de Badalona and at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya.
This Giulia Valle appearance is supported by the Institut Ramon Llull, the Spanish Society of Authors Composers & Publishers, Spain Arts & Culture, and Spain/USA Foundation.
Tickets available at brownpapertickets.com. Tickets $18 general; $16 Earshot members & seniors; $9 students & veterans.
Julia Hülsmann Trio
Friday, June 26, 8pm
Chapel Performance Space, 4649 Sunnyside Ave N, 4th floor (Wallingford)
The Berlin-based Julia Hülsmann began playing piano at the age of 11, and formed her first band at 16. Renowned for her pristine technique and a breadth of creative influences ranging from Thelonious Monk to e.e. cummings and Emily Dickinson, Hülsmann is gaining international attention through her records for Munich’s respected ECM label. On this rare North American tour, she is accompanied by bassist Robert Landfermann and drummer Heinrich Köbberling.
Hülsmann recently teamed up with singer Theo Bleckmann on the March ECM release, A Clear Midnight: Kurt Weill and America, celebrating the “unsung Weill” alongside the master’s best-loved works including “Mack The Knife,” “Speak Low,” and “September Song.” Her fifth ECM appearance, it’s a gorgeous record that sees Hülsmann also teaming up with her drummer of choice, Köbberling. The pianist, known for working with words of authors and poets, is skilled at finding the beauty in the written language and unlocking the music within. In 2014, she was the Moers Festival’s Improviser In Residence.
Heinrich Köbberling has a storied career working with various musicians, most recently playing with Aki Takase’s Quintet and Ernie Watts’ Quartet, when not touring with Hülsmann. He also teaches drums in Leipzig.
Bassist and composer Robert Landfermann began playing music at the age of seven, going on to study at the Cologne Music Academy before performing around the globe with a variety of musicians.
Tickets available at brownpapertickets.com. Tickets $18 general; $16 Earshot members & seniors; $9 students & veterans.
Paal Nilssen-Love Large Unit
Sunday, June 28, 8pm
PONCHO Concert Hall, 710 E Roy St (Capitol Hill)
Paal Nilssen-Love grew up in a Norwegian jazz club that his parents ran, and from an early age was drawn to play the drums, as his father had. By 20 he was a renowned percussionist, and from there his reputation has soared. He has for several years been among the most vaunted of instrumentalists in improvised music.
In 2002, when Nilssen-Love was in his late 20s, Pat Metheny played with him in the Norwegian’s home town at the Molde International Jazz Festival and declared him “simply one of the best new musicians” he had heard in recent years. Among Nilssen-Love’s stunning talents are the torrential, breathtaking speed, power, and range of his playing – and, the multitude of settings in which he can excel. Some years back, DownBeat’s Dan Ouellette heard him play in nine different lineups at a Molde festival and called him “a revelation: Nilssen-Love is one of the most innovative, dynamic, and versatile drummers in jazz!”
Nilssen-Love’s Large Unit debuted in 2013 at the festival in Molde, one of the oldest and most important of European meets. The Danish-Finnish-Swedish lineup features him and 11 younger stand-outs in Scandinavian jazz and improvised music – another drummer, two bassists, a guitarist, a tuba player, a trumpeter, two sax players, and a trombonist, all superpowered by electronics and live-sound interventions. Nilssen-Love leads them in acoustic and electronic improvisation and free jazz.
His playing in outfits like Atomic, The Thing, Scorch Trio, and School Days comes to a new fruition in the Large Unit, which is in the midst of the first of two international tours this year – quite an accomplishment for a 12-person crew. Driving demand has been a 2014 release, Erta Ale, praised for both its cyclonic power and its modulation into quieter climes. Describing one performance, Josef Woodard wrote in DownBeat: “As exciting and quixotic as many of the parts were, it was the architecture and mystique of the whole ensemble that prevailed and impressed most deeply.”
The Large Unit is: Jon Rune Strøm – bass; Andreas Wildhagen – drums; Paal Nilssen-Love – drums; Mats Äleklint – trombone; Christian Meaas Svendsen – bass; Klaus Holm – reeds; Julie Kjær – reeds; Thomas Johansson – trumpet; Per Åke Holmlander – tuba; Ketil Gutvik – guitar; Tommi Keränen – electronics; and Christian Obermayer – live sound.
Tickets available at brownpapertickets.com. Tickets $18 general; $16 Earshot members & seniors; $9 students & veterans.
–Peter Monaghan
Spiros Exaras & Elio Villafranca
Saturday, July 11, 8pm
PONCHO Concert Hall, 710 E Roy St (Capitol Hill)
This evening features a new collaboration of music between internationally acclaimed Greek guitarist Spiros Exaras and Cuban pianist Elio Villafranca, performing original pieces and traditional Greek and Cuban songs in their own arrangements, as heard on their first record, Old Water, New River (Harbinger Records, 2014).
Combining the passion of Cuba’s African Diaspora with the mysteries of Greek musical heritage, this collaboration, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes, “not only manages to blend the talents of two musicians from different parts of the world, but affords them the freedom to combine their individual musical traditions in creative ways.”
Exaras is a graduate of Athens Conservatory of Music, with degrees and classical guitar and composition. He has been a featured player with the Greek National Radio Television Orchestra and the Orchestra of Colors, and has worked with numerous Greek composers and performers. He has also performed and recorded with artists including Shirley Bassey, Randy Brecker, Mark Murphy, and even pop sensation Mariah Carey. Exaras’ Blue Note release Phrygianics received critical acclaim.
Villafranca was born in the Pinar del Río province of Cuba and was classically trained in percussion and composition at the Instituto Superior de Arte in Havana. Since moving to the United States in the mid-1990s, Villafranca has performed at the first Chick Corea Jazz Festival, received a 2010 Grammy Award Nomination for Best Latin Jazz Album of the Year, and has been honored with the BMI Jazz Guaranty Award, among other achievements. He has recorded and performed internationally with artists including Wynton Marsalis, Sonny Fortune, and Miguel Zenón. Based in New York City, he is a resident professor at Temple University.
Tickets available at brownpapertickets.com. Tickets $18 general; $16 Earshot members & seniors; $9 students & veterans.