Photo by Jean-Francois Laberine

On Friday, April 9th, New Haven’s Firehouse 12 will present an exclusive two-set performance by eminent pianist/composer Myra Melford and her newest ensemble, Happy Whistlings. The two year-old group performs Ms. Melford’s 12-part suite of the same name inspired by Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano’s 1982 book, Genesis, the first in his Memory of Fire trilogy. These compositions juxtapose Galeano’s text with notated music as well as improvised settings for various groupings within the quartet. Happy Whistlings, which will make its first studio recording at Firehouse 12 earlier in the day, features Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet), Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Stomu Takeishi (bass).

Earlier this year, Ms. Melford released The Whole Tree Gone (Firehouse 12 Records), her first recording as a bandleader since 2006. Critics have called it “a triumph” (John Sharpe, AllAboutJazz.com), “chock-full of great writing and great playing” (Jon Garelick, Boston Phoenix) and “a knockout by any standard, including the bar set by her previous work” (Nate Chinen, New York Times). Point of Departure‘s Troy Collins adds, “Like her mentor, Henry Threadgill, Melford has a talent for effortlessly interweaving seemingly incongruous elements into cohesive multi-layered compositions, yielding a singular aesthetic that blurs the line between the written and improvised. Featuring finely tuned arrangements and buoyed by her sympathetic peers, The Whole Tree Gone is a high water mark in Melford’s extraordinary oeuvre.”

Over the course of two decades and more than 30 recordings, Ms. Melford has carved out a distinctive niche among creative music’s most respected pianist-composers. Her signature sound skillfully combines early influences such as classical music and the traditional blues piano styles of her native Chicago with her later immersion in the music of Eastern Europe and India and extensive musical studies with such legendary figures as Ran Blake, Jaki Byard and Don Pullen. In addition to Happy Whistlings and Be Bread, the ensemble featured on The Whole Tree Gone, she currently co-leads the group Trio M, as well as duos with musicians Marty Ehrlich and Satoko Fujii and dancer/choreographers Oguri and Dawn Akemi Saito. Since 2004, she has also served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where she develops and teaches courses about contemporary improvised music. Learn more at http://myramelford.com

2010 Spring Jazz Series Schedule:

03/26 :: Caliente! Circle Around the Sun
04/02 :: Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures Quintet
04/09 :: Myra Melford’s Happy Whistlings
04/16 :: Playdate
04/23 :: Armen Donelian Group
04/30 :: Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up
05/07 :: Dan Weiss Trio
05/14 :: Marcus Strickland Trio
05/21 :: Jean-Michel Pilc Trio
05/28 :: Fay Victor Ensemble
06/04 :: Peter Madsen Trio
06/11 :: Myron Walden Momentum

Tickets and more information available at:
http://firehouse12.com/performance_space_calendar.asp