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Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up

NMC and KDHX present
Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up
8 PM – Saturday, April 29th, 2017
The Stage at KDHX
3524 Washington Ave. 63103 (map)

tickets are now available here

fujiwara
Tomas Fujiwara and The Hook Up
Jonathan Finlayson – trumpet
Brian Settles – tenor saxophone and flute
Mary Halvorson – guitar
Adam Hopkins – bass
Tomas Fujiwara – drums and compositions
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Tomas Fujiwara is a Brooklyn-based drummer and composer. Described as “a ubiquitous presence in the New York scene…an artist whose urbane writing is equal to his impressively nuanced drumming” (Troy Collins, Point of Departure), Tomas is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation, with his bands Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up and The Tomas Fujiwara Double Trio; his collaborative duo with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum; the collective trio Thumbscrew with Mary Halvorson and Michael Formanek; and a diversity of creative sideman work with forward thinking peers like Matana Roberts, Amir Elsaffar, Tomeka Reid and Ben Goldberg. In The New York Times, Nate Chinen writes, “Drummer Tomas Fuijwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint…A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.”
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In describing Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up, Jim Macnie of The Village Voice says, “The drummer has named his band appropriately. Ensembles can go anywhere if the intra-group chemistry is cooking…Fujiwara sounds like he’s got his mates on speed dial.” The band’s first record (Actionspeak, 482 Music) was named one of the best debuts of 2010 by the New York City Jazz Record and received a four-star review in Downbeat. The group’s second album (The Air is Different, 482 Music) “continues upon a course, teeming with unanticipated shifts in strategy, but not executed in shock-therapy mode. With a superfine support system of revered improvisers, Fujiwara reaps the benefits of a distinctly fresh musical climate. With off-kilter patterns, cunning geometric architectures and sudden paradigm shifts, the band merges a search and conquer tactical component with an acutely balanced mix of structure and free-form dialogues.” (Glenn Astarita, Jazz Review). It was included on several Best-of-2012 lists including All About Jazz Italia and Something Else. “The Air Is Different is wildly creative music that never veers into inaccessibility. If you’re wondering where jazz might be headed in the new millennium, it’s a good place to start.” (Robert Bush, All About Jazz). The band’s third album (After All Is Said, 482 Music), “layered and cohesive, rhythmically diverse, with a lean but muscular sound that defines Fujiwara’s distinctive approach to melody and harmony,” (Terrell Holmes, New York City Jazz Record) was released in April, 2015; “One of the most accessible, challenging and inventive recordings of recent vintage.” (Troy Collins, All About Jazz)
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Erik Friedlander’s Black Phebe Trio

New Music Circle and KDHX present

Erik Friedlander’s Black Phoebe Trio
8 PM Thursday, March 16. 2017
The Stage at KDHX
3524 Washington Ave. 63103 (map)

Advanced tickets are available here 

erik

Erik Friedlander – cello / compositions
Shoko Nagai – piano / accordian / electronics
Satoshi Takeshi – drums

“It’s not your skill level, it’s how much you communicate,” cellist Erik Friedlander suggests. “It’s how much you express that the audience really wants to hear. They come to hear you be real.” Friedlander, however, is clearly not a musician lacking for chops. The years of training and gigging he did to establish himself in New York City’s avantgarde jazz scenes, through his distinct approach to cello, has taken him all over the genre map by collaborative efforts with artists like Laurie Anderson, Mike Patton, The Mountain Goats, and extensive duties in John Zorn’s Masada groups. Recently he has focused on his own soloist and composer work, releasing a series of albums on ECM. In these works Friedlander displays an underlying sonic curiosity and ability to aurally convey deep emotional experience that shapes the ongoing evolution of his work. In his most most recent group project, Black Phoebe Trio, Friedlander brings together the talents of emerging talents Shoko Nagai (piano, accordion, electronics) and Satoshi Takeishi, (percussion).

This concert is presented in partnership with KDHX

Workshops TBA

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Ikue Mori & Nate Wooley (solo and duo sets)

8 PM Saturday February 18th, 2017
At The Luminary
2701 Cherokee St, St. Louis, MO 63118 (map)
ikue
Ikue Mori – electronics / computer
Nate Wooley – trumpet

NYC Trumpeter, Nate Wooley, is an improviser with a tactile approach to his craft, as part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet performance and is considered a leader of a movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn.  A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, amplification and feedback, are utilized in Wooley’s ‘live’ sets. In 2011 he was an artist in residence at Issue Project Room (Brooklyn) and in 2016 was a recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Awards (founded in 1963 by John Cage and Jasper Johns).

Ikue Mori has been a key experimental musician since moving to New York City from Tokyo in 1977. She began her career playing drums for the seminal “no wave” group DNA. Throughout the 1980s Mori improvised and recorded with a wide range of experimental musicians, and by 1985 Mori had completely abandoned the standard drum set in favor of her own unique drum machine/sampler setup. In the years to come she further extended her electronic practice into ‘live’ computer performance, creating electronic music that evoked textural qualities of “real-world” sounds. Ikue Mori remains an ongoing collaborator with Sonic Youth, Jim O’Rourke, Okkyung Lee, and Evan Parker.

Presented in partnership with The Luminary

-additional workshops/events tba-

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Iva Bittová & Hamid Drake (duo)

PLEASE NOTE NEW DATE FOR THIS CONCERT (FRIDAY, JAN 20TH, 2017)

8 PM, January 20th, 2017
Joe’s Cafe
6014 Kingsbury Ave. 63112 (map)

iva
Iva Bittová – violin / vocals
Hamid Drake – drums / percussion

Vocalist/violinist Iva Bittová (Czech Republic) is internationally known for her unique music, which draws on influences from her native Moravia and her lineage in the rich traditions of Slovakia and the Roma people. Her ability to bring those influences together with such modern inspirations as Meredith Monk’s wordless vocal pieces and free improvisation,  creates music that feels both ancient and new, simultaneously surprising and familiar. Bittová is a storyteller who rarely uses actual language to convey the emotions of her stories. While either singing wordlessly or using an implied language of her own, she crafts intimate, engrossing narratives, ultimately creating her own truly personal style of folk music.

Hamid Drake is an American jazz drummer and percussionist, living in Chicago, but spending a great deal of his time touring worldwide. Drake is widely regarded as one of the great percussionists in jazz and improvised music, with a uniquely poetic approach to drumming; he draws from Afro-Cuban, Indian and African percussion instruments and influences. His musical involvements date back to 1974 when he began working with the AACM and felt impelled to explore earlier forms of drumming. He soon began working with several of the greatest innovators in jazz at the time: Don Cherry, Pharoah Sanders, and Peter Brötzmann. In live settings he continually takes collaborators to higher rhythmic levels, while at the same time carving out space for his own explorations. For over 30 years he has remained one of the most consistently venturesome and compelling drummers of his time.

Additional workshops/events TBA

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Artifacts Trio

  • Tomeka Reid – cello
  • Nicole Mitchell – flutes
  • Mike Reed – drums

8 PM, Saturday, December 3rd, 2016
Joe’s Cafe
6014 Kingsbury Ave. 63112

Cellist Tomeka Reid, flutist Nicole Mitchell, and drummer Mike Reed are torchbearers of Chicago’s innovative jazz scene, as well as the most prominent members and educators of the third generation of The Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM), a historically important Chicago arts organization. The trio served on the organization’s executive board from 2009-2011. Their music both touches upon and advances the organization’s motto, “Ancient to the Future”, and celebrates African-American culture while reaching across genres and integrating new ideas into the legacy of jazz, experimentalism, and composition.

Over the past decade, cellist Tomeka Reid has become an integral component of her city’s jazz and improvised-music communities, working regularly with Joshua Abrams and Matana Roberts. Reid currently plays in several high-profile groups, including collaborations with the Chicago Jazz Philharmonic, the AACM’s Great Black Music Ensemble, and has written music for a Millennium Park concert series. Nicole Mitchell is a flutist, composer, bandleader and educator, who has repeatedly been awarded by DownBeat Critics Poll and the Jazz Journalists Association as “Top Flutist of the Year”. Drummer/composer Mike Reed has also extended his work into many creative territories. In addition to drumming in a rotating cast jazz and improvised groups, he’s a founding director of the Pitchfork Music Festival, and a director of the acclaimed performing arts venue, Constellation.

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