William Parker photo by Daniel Sheehan

French American Peace Quartet
Thursday, June 20, 8pm
Chapel Performance Space
Presented by Earshot Jazz, Polestar Productions and Nonsequitur

Join us at the Chapel Performance Space for the powerful and elastic duo of William Parker, “the most consistently brilliant free jazz bassist of all time” (Village Voice), and drummer Hamid Drake (Fred Anderson, Ken Vandermark), with New Orleans saxophonist Kidd Jordan (Ray Charles, World Saxophone Quartet) and French pianist François Tusques.
Tusques recorded one of the first albums of European improvised music – 1965’s Free Jazz – and played with a who’s-who of American icons of the avant-garde, including Anthony Braxton and Don Cherry. He was born in 1938 Paris, soon displaced by war. He took up the piano at age eighteen and learned, mostly by ear, from influences like Bud Powell, Monk, and others, and, later, the American ex-pat free-jazz scene in Paris in the late 60s.
The modern American avant-garde exchanges in Paris, and other European cultural capitals at the time, stand as an important legacy for world culture and this country’s black music innovators. Then, the music grew as resistance in the context of heinous global forces of social injustices and discord. Today, these three renowned improvisers from the States – Parker, Drake and Jordan – join the godfather of French free jazz, pianist Tusques, in performances as relevant now as the time of the music’s genesis.
The cultural threads connecting France, New Orleans and New York are explored by this ensemble, featuring a new suite of music by 2013 Doris Duke Performing Artist Award recipient William Parker.

Didier Petit photo by Caroline Pottier

The East-West Collective | Alfred 23 Harth & Torsten Mueller duo
Saturday, June 22, 8pm
Chapel Performance Space
Presented by Earshot Jazz, Polestar Productions and Nonsequitur

Beginning tonight’s double bill: German saxophonist, multimedia artist and modern German improvisation scene catalyst Alfred 23 Harth and the Vancouver-based, German free-jazz 5-string bass player Torsten Mueller, who’s collaborated with improvisers around the world, including saxophonists Evan Parker, Charles Gayle and John Zorn and Vancouver’s Dylan van der Schyff (drums) and François Houle (clarinet).
The East-West Collective is a collaboration by American Rova Saxophone Quartet co-founder Larry Ochs (saxophone) and American Miya Masaoka (Japanese koto), Frenchmen cellist Didier Petit and Sylvain Kassap (clarinet), and the Chinese 21-string guzheng player and vocalist Xu Fengxia. The group combines the compositional structure and sounds of free jazz with Eastern traditions.
Petit “shoots forth intense spirals of overwhelming emotion” (Allmusic.com), while often vocalizing over his full, polyphonic bowing.
A leader in the French improvisation scene since the seventies, clarinetist Kassap has played with Barre Phillips, Evan Parker, and more.
Ochs has a voracious appetite for cutting-edge 20th-century music, from Cage to Coltrane, and has been at the helm of several creative projects during his career, including his Sax & Drumming Core with drummers Scott Amendola and Donald Robinson. Ochs has also been commissioned by Chamber Music America and Commissioning Music USA Meet the Composer.
Miya Masaoka (koto) is a multi-disciplinary artist who investigates the natural world through idiosyncratic perspectives on sound.
Xu Fengxia (guzheng) began to play Chinese string instruments when she was 5 years old. She studied at the Shanghai Conservatory and, early in her career, toured with the Shanghai Orchestra for Traditional Chinese Music. She moved to Germany in 1991 and began many exciting collaborations with improvisers Hamid Drake, Assif Tsahar, Frank Gratkowski, Wilbert de Joode and Lucas Niggli.

The 2013 tour of the East-West Collective is supported by the French-American Jazz Exchange and administered by the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation and Cultural Services of the French Embassy.