Jessica Ackerley / Patrick Shiroishi (collaborative duo)

Jessica Ackerley

During the past decade, Jessica Ackerley has established themselves on the Canadian and American music scenes as a unique and versatile guitarist, composer, and bandleader. Born in Alberta, Canada, Jessica now resides in Honolulu after almost a decade of being located in New York City.

They have worked alongside notable musicians such as Tyshawn Sorey, Daniel Carter, Marc Edwards, Luke Stewart, Patrick Shiroishi, and Jason Nazary, to name a few. Prominent performance venues include John Zorn’s The Stone, The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Blue Note, and tours both as a bandleader and side musician throughout Canada and the United States.

Their musical palette is diverse, split between highly refined compositional structure, free improvisation, and Black American Music, as well as noise soundscapes derived from experimental rock, as explored in the collaborative band, ESSi.

In 2017 and 2019, Ackerley released their debut and sophomore albums as a bandleader – Coalesce and A New Kind of Water – to much acclaim, making critics’ year-end lists on Jazz Right Now, Avant Music News, Free Jazz Blog, and Jazz Times Magazine. In 2019, they founded The Brink Guitar Festival, a four-day event featuring some of the most innovative players on the instrument such as Miles Okazaki, Elliott Sharp, Wendy Eisenberg, and Dan Lippel, among others. They have been commissioned by Adult Swim to compose and record a track for their 15-song Jazz compilation titled New Jazz Century alongside other tracks by notable artists Matana Roberts, Anna Webber, and Jaimie Branch. As a recording artist, they have performed and released eleven albums as a side musician and bandleader to date. As an educator and mentor, they have lectured at Grant MacEwan University and University of Toronto, as well as guided many aspiring musicians in private study throughout the years. Jessica continuously expands their musical horizons with various projects, never setting boundaries or compromising their limits as a guitarist and artist.

Bandcamp

Patrick Shiroishi

For over a decade, Patrick Shiroishi has been a fixture in Los Angeles’s thriving experimental underground. After cutting his teeth performing what he describes as “weird progressive rock” at DIY spaces around Southern California, he eventually started making jazz as a way to distance himself from the confines of art rock songwriting. “For that kind of stuff, it’s super dense. A lot of notes, different time signatures, very structured music,” Shiroishi says. “I think what drew me to free improvisation was that it’s the complete opposite. There’s absolutely no rules.”

Since the release of his 2013 solo debut black sun sutra, Shiroishi has produced a hefty handful of LPs. Sometimes, his work is sprawling and bizarre. At other times, it’s more subdued. But at the root of all of his endeavors lies strong musical partnerships, resulting in records that capture the freewheeling energy of all the musicians, collectively embracing spontaneity.

Bandcamp