Dave Stone / Greg Mills & Eric Mandat

Dave Stone

For almost 30 years, the local jazz-saxophone legend Dave Stone has been nearly ubiquitous throughout the city wherever music is heard, collaborating with several symphonies’ worth of prominent local musicians and earning numerous accolades along the way. Currently based in Oregon, Dave Stone was documented in August 2021 by Foveal Media in St. Louis.

Though Stone is perhaps best-known for enlivening (now defunct) Mangia Italiano every Friday night for more than twenty years, he has played gigs at almost every venue in town during his tenure — including some of the biggest stages in St. Louis.

While studying saxophone at Webster University, Dave Stone was introduced by teacher Paul DeMarinis to drummer Joe Charles Thompson and saxophonist Jimmie Sherrod. Stone claims that both musicians have had a foundational impact on his musical development. Also, in his early days he played frequently with pianist and composer David Parker, as well as multiple luminaries on the St. Louis music scene. Darin Gray of Dazzling Killmen, Ben Wheeler, Bob Deboo and Willem von Hombracht are all on the long list of illustrious bassists with whom Dave Stone has performed.

Greg Mills

Greg Mills studied classical piano performance at the St. Louis Institute of Music and privately with Gail Delente and Jules Gentil. Mentored in jazz performance and theory by St. Louis Black Artist Group bassist Carl Arzinia Richardson, he gigged with Richardson performing jazz standards as the duo Epoxy in the mid 1970’s. In the late 1970’s he was associated with James Marshall’s Human Arts Ensemble.

In 1980 Mills teamed up with Jay Zelenka and for the next ten years performed and recorded as the multi-instrumental improvising duo EXILES, amalgamating influences of the musical cultures of India and Africa with free improv and elements of the Euro-classical avant-garde. Exploring exotic tunings and extended raga-like duet performances for kalimba led Mills to adapt the Indian raga form to piano, creating a unique body of work in performances and recordings. During this time Mills pursued interests in mallet keyboards, drum set, and percussion and began developing what is today a virtuoso command of the melodica, a wind keyboard usually treated as a novelty instrument. Recent examples can be heard as a duo with flutist Fred Tompkins on Tompkins’s YouTube channel.

In 2015 Mills co-founded the Perihelion groups (trio, quartet, and ensemble), and curated a series of performances for solo improviser (Soliloquy) and duo improvisations (Just The Two Of Us). As leader of the Perihelion groups, Mills organized numerous public performances in 2015-2016 while recording his solo work Mosaique, A Day At The Circus (Perihelion Quartet), Triopolis (Perihelion Trio), Duets and New Music for Clarinet and Piano with Eric Mandat. In 2017 Mills continued his prolific output, recording KUVUKA as one half of The Glen “Papa” Wright/Greg Mills Duo. All of these recordings appear on the Freedonia Music imprint. Also, during this period, he recorded a new solo work The Dark Passenger and performed on four recordings by composer/flutist Fred Tompkins: Another Place, The Fourth Arch – To Freedom, Stretching Time and the new release Curving Away. (tompkinsjazz.com)

Throughout his thirty plus years of public performance, free improv on solo piano has been his mainstay while he continues to explore directed or structured approaches to improvisation as diverse as ragas and tone rows. Mills says his work is “about the continuing discovery and exploration of new approaches to improvised music and the development of new techniques for improvising on the piano.”

Bandcamp

Eric Mandat

For nearly 40 years, clarinetist/composer Eric Mandat has been at the forefront of clarinet extended performance techniques exploration, particularly multiphonics, microtones, and timbral modulations. Through his work with these extended techniques, Eric has developed a deeply personal artistic expression as a performer and composer, and he is recognized worldwide as one of the foremost authorities on clarinet extended techniques.

Eric enjoys an extremely diverse performance career as a soloist and chamber musician. He tours regularly as a concert artist, premiering and performing his works throughout the world, and at international festivals in Europe, Asia, South America, and the United States. For 15 seasons he was a member of the Chicago Symphony’s MusicNOW ensemble, performing under eminent composer/conductors Pierre Boulez, Esa-Pekka Salonen, and George Benjamin, among others. As an improviser, Eric was a member of Tone Road Ramblers, an eclectic sextet dedicated to free improvisation exploration, for more than 25 years. He continues to perform regularly in solo and small group improvisation contexts. Eric’s ongoing solo improvisation projects with live electronics have received wide acclaim at performances throughout the United States and in Europe. The MIT Computer Music Journal lauded Eric’s “ebullient curiosity…infused with decades of thoughtful improvisational practice, resulting in another unforgettable performance” in its review of Eric’s improvisation presentation at the 2020 MOXsonic Experimental Arts Festival.

Eric has received numerous honors and awards for his work as a composer/performer, including a 2021 Artist Fellowship Award for Composition from the Illinois Arts Council. Eric has been awarded more than 25 artist residencies at the Ragdale Foundation and at Brush Creek Center for the Arts. His recent work Parallel Histories: an Excursion for two clarinetists and wind ensemble was premiered in June, 2016 by The President’s Own Marine Band at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., with two of his former students, Jay Niepoetter and Jihoon Chang, soloists.

Eric has taught at Southern Illinois University Carbondale since 1981, where he is currently Visiting Professor of Clarinet and Distinguished Scholar. Eric was the recipient of the 1999 Southern Illinois University Outstanding Scholar Award, the university’s highest honor for research/creative work. A dedicated and in-demand teacher, Eric has presented recitals, master classes, and lectures on extended performance techniques at more than 130 conservatories and universities around the world, and he regularly appears as guest artist at clarinet-specific events throughout the United States.

Eric received his degrees from the University of North Texas, the Yale School of Music, and the Eastman School of Music.

Eric Mandat is a Buffet Crampon USA Performing Artist and Clinician.