Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Guitarist Mary Halvorson and violist Jessica Pavone will perform tonight at Sycamore in Brooklyn.

The longstanding duo is scheduled to play the second set of the night at 9:00 p.m., in between solo drum sets by Brian Chase and Ches Smith.

Additional details are available here.

Photo by Amani Willett

This August, guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson and her working trio with bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith will play three concerts in three countries.

The mini-tour begins Thursday, August 5th with a two-set performance at New York’s Cornelia Street Café, which will serve as a hometown warm-up for dates later in the month at Switzerland’s Jazz Festival Willisau (August 25th) and Austria’s Saalfelden Jazz Festival (August 26th).

These concerts will focus on selections from Ms. Halvorson’s October 2010 release, Saturn Sings (Firehouse 12 Records), as well as new material.

In addition to these dates with her own band, Ms. Halvorson will also perform with the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet, the Mary Halvorson/Jessica Pavone Duo, Ingrid Laubrock’s Anti-House, MAP, Miya Masaoka/Mary Halvorson/Okkyung Lee and Ches Smith & These Arches throughout the month.

Photo by Alberto Lofoco

“Tri Centric Modeling: Past, Present and Future,” the anxiously awaited two-night celebration of saxophonist/composer/educator Anthony Braxton‘s 65th birthday benefitting his Tri-Centric Foundation, begins tonight at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York.

This all-star event features a heavyweight cast of collaborators and high-profile admirers, including Dave Douglas, Nicole Mitchell, Richard Tietelbaum, Matthew Welch, John Zorn and Braxton’s former quartet-mates Marilyn Crispell, Mark Helias and Gerry Hemingway.

His own 12+1tet will headline the show, in its first New York appearance since its historic four-night run at Iridium Jazz Club in March 2006.

Tomorrow night, the festivities move to Brooklyn’s ISSUE Project Room, where the program will highlight a younger generation of musicians that has studied and performed with Braxton in recent years and adapted his concepts into their own distinctive sounds. The line-up includes Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Chris Jonas & James Fei and Tyshawn Sorey.

Their performances will be interspersed with live excerpts from Braxton’s opera, Trillium E, which was recently recorded in the studio by a cast of more than 60 musicians and singers.

Here’s the complete (recently amended) schedule of events, co-produced by Darmstadt Institute:

Friday, June 18th at (Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street in New York, NY
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Tickets are $35 in advance; $45 day of the show
VIP tickets (priority seating, autographed CD and access to private Braxton workshop) are $180
http://lepoissonrouge.com/events/view/1240

6:00 :: Invocation by Matt Welch
6:15 ::  Steve Coleman & Jonathan Finlayson
6:45 ::  Richard Teitelbaum
7:15 ::  John Zorn/Dave Douglas/Brad Jones/Gerry Hemingway
7:50 ::  Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Strings
8:25 ::  Marilyn Crispell/Mark Dresser/Gerry Hemingway
9:00 ::  Anthony Braxton 12+1tet

Saturday, June 19th at ISSUE Project Room
232 3rd Street in Brooklyn, NY
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Tickets are $25 in advance; $30 day of the show
http://issueprojectroom.org/2010/04/20/braxton-at-65/

6:15 :: Excerpt from Trillium E
6:45 :: Andrew Raffo Dewar Interactions Quartet East
7:15 :: Taylor Ho Bynum & SpiderMonkey 5
7:45 :: Excerpt from Trillium E
8:30 :: James Fei & Chris Jonas
9:00 :: Tyshawn Sorey Quartet
9:30 ::  Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone
10:00 :: Excerpt from Trillium E

Photo by Hilary McHone

The Thirteenth Assembly, featuring Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet), Jessica Pavone (viola), Mary Halvorson (guitar) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums), will play the first of three upcoming gigs tonight at New Haven’s Never Ending Books as part of the Uncertainty Music Series.

Sunday night at midnight, the group is scheduled to perform at Sullivan Hall as part of the weekend’s most highly touted jazz event in New York, Undead Jazzfest. Check out previews at About.com and JazzTimes.com, as well as in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal.

After a day off on Monday, the group will cap off its three-gigs-in-four-nights run at Korzo in Brooklyn as part of the venue’s weekly konceptions series.

Photo by Michael Weintrob

The Tri-Centric Foundation, and co-producers Darmstadt Institute, are proud to announce the performance schedule for “Tri Centric Modeling: Past, Present and Future”, a two-night benefit concert event celebrating the legacy of esteemed saxophonist/composer/educator Anthony Braxton in honor of his 65th birthday.

Proceeds from these performances will benefit the Tri-Centric Foundation, a newly revived not-for-profit organization dedicated to realizing Braxton’s most ambitious projects, documenting and distributing his writings and recordings online and inspiring younger generations of creative artists to pursue their own visions with the kind of idealism and integrity he has demonstrated throughout his long and distinguished career.

Friday, June 18th at (Le) Poisson Rouge
158 Bleecker Street in New York, NY
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Tickets are $35 in advance; $45 day of the show
VIP tickets (priority seating, autographed CD and access to private Braxton workshop) are $180
http://lepoissonrouge.com/events/view/1240

6:00 :: Invocation by Matt Welch
6:15 ::  Steve Coleman & Jonathan Finlayson
6:45 ::  Richard Teitelbaum
7:15 ::  Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Strings
7:50 ::  John Zorn/Dave Douglas/Brad Jones/Gerry Hemingway
8:25 ::  Marilyn Crispell/Mark Dresser/Gerry Hemingway
9:00 ::  Anthony Braxton 12+1tet

Saturday, June 19th at ISSUE Project Room
232 3rd Street in Brooklyn, NY
Doors open at 5:30 p.m.
Tickets are $25 in advance; $30 day of the show
http://issueprojectroom.org/2010/04/20/braxton-at-65/

6:15 :: Excerpt from Trillium E
6:45 :: Andrew Raffo Dewar Interactions Quartet East
7:15 :: Taylor Ho Bynum & SpiderMonkey 5
7:45 :: Excerpt from Trillium E
8:30 :: James Fei & Chris Jonas
9:00 :: Tyshawn Sorey Quartet
9:30 ::  Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone
10:00 :: Excerpt from Trillium E

Photo by Michael Weintrob

The Tri-Centric Foundation, and co-producers Darmstadt Institute, are proud to announce “Tri-Centric Modeling: Past, Present and Future,” a two night, multiple venue concert event celebrating the legacy of venerable saxophonist/composer/educator Anthony Braxton in honor of his 65th birthday.

On Friday, June 18th at (Le) Poisson Rouge in New York and Saturday, June 19th at the ISSUE Project Room in Brooklyn, dozens of prominent musicians, including Braxton himself, will take the stage to participate in exclusive collaborations and one-of-a-kind performances to benefit the Tri-Centric Foundation, a newly revived not-for-profit organization dedicated to realizing Braxton’s most ambitious projects and inspiring younger generations of creative artists.

Beginning at 5:30 p.m., Friday night at (Le) Poisson Rouge will feature performances by Steve Coleman & Jonathan Finlayson, Marilyn Crispell/Mark Dresser/Gerry Hemingway, Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Strings, Richard Teitelbaum, Matthew Welch, John Zorn/Dave Douglas/Brad Jones/Gerry Hemingway and other special guests. The headline act will be the Anthony Braxton 12+1tet, which has not performed in New York since its historic four-night run at Iridium Jazz Club in March 2006 (documented on the renowned 9 CD + 1 DVD box set, 9 Compositions (Iridium) 2006, on Firehouse 12 Records).  Advance tickets are available online for $35. Any remaining tickets will be available the day of the show for $45.

Also beginning at 5:30 p.m., Saturday night at ISSUE Project Room will highlight a younger generation of musicians that has studied and performed with Braxton in recent years and adapted his concepts into their own distinctive sounds. The line-up includes Taylor Ho Bynum, Mary Halvorson & Jessica Pavone, Andrew Raffo Dewar, Chris Jonas & James Fei, and Tyshawn Sorey, as well as others yet to be announced. The night will begin and end with Braxton conducting live excerpts from his four-act opera, Trillium E, featuring members of the 60 person cast from its first-ever studio recording in March. Advance tickets are available online for $25 ($20 for students). Any remaining tickets will be available the day of the show for $30.

About Anthony Braxton

I know I’m an African-American, and I know I play the saxophone, but I’m not a jazz musician. I’m not a classical musician, either. My music is like my life: It’s in between these areas.

Anthony Braxton (b. June 4, 1945) has boldly redefined the boundaries of American music for more than 40 years. Drawing on such lifelong influences as jazz saxophonists Warne Marsh and Albert Ayler, innovative American composers John Cage and Charles Ives and pioneering European Avant-Garde figures Karlheinz Stockhausen and Iannis Xenakis, he created a unique musical system, with its own classifications and graphics-based language, that embraces a variety of traditions and genres while defying categorization of its own.

His multi-faceted career includes hundreds of recordings, performances all over the world with fellow legends and younger musicians alike, an influential legacy as an educator and author of scholarly writings, and an ardent international fan base that passionately supports and documents it all. From his early work as a pioneering solo performer in the late 1960′s through his eclectic experiments on Arista Records in the 1970′s, his landmark quartet of the 1980′s, and more recent endeavors, such as his cycle of Trillium operas, a piece for 100 tubas and the day-long, installation-based Sonic Genome Project, his vast body of work is unparalleled.

Critics have called him “an obvious genius” (Scott Yanow, AllMusic.com), “an unprecedented figure in the music” (Richard Cook’s Jazz Encyclopedia), “quite possibly the most prolific musician of our age” (David R. Adler, JazzTimes) and “a brilliant musician who is constantly pushing himself and the musicians with whom he surrounds himself” (Michael Rosenstein, Signal to Noise). Time Out New York‘s Hank Shteamer adds, “Even if you ignore his purely conceptual triumphs, Braxton has amassed one of the meatiest and most varied bodies of work in experimental music.” Learn more at http://anthonybraxton.wordpress.com

About The Tri-Centric Foundation

The Tri-Centric Foundation is a not-for-profit organization that supports the ongoing work and legacy of eminent musician/composer Anthony Braxton, while also cultivating and inspiring the next generation of creative artists to pursue their own visions with the kind of idealism and integrity he has demonstrated throughout his long and distinguished career.

Specifically, it encourages broad dissemination of Braxton’s music through creation of, and support for, performances, productions, recordings and other new media technologies. It also documents, archives, preserves and disseminates Braxton’s scores, writings, performances and recordings and advocates for a broader audience, appreciation, funding and support base for Braxton’s work.

Through its new Web site, coming mid-2010, the Tri-Centric Foundation will provide one-stop access to Braxton’s writings, a variety of interactive sound and video components and exclusive digital-only recordings of past live performances and archival studio releases. In the meantime, donations can be made online through PayPal at http://bit.ly/cfLLun

About Darmstadt Institute

Curated by Nick Hallett and Zach Layton, Darmstadt Institute is a month-long festival of experimental music at ISSUE Project Room connecting the live performance of works by emerging and established composers to discourse and pedagogy about relevant topics, creating dynamic and educational events for practitioners and audiences alike. Lectures, film screenings, workshops, and panels are presented alongside premieres of new compositions, in addition to bold interpretations of cherished works from the avant-garde canon played by New York city’s leading musicians and ensembles. Learn more at http://www.darmstadtnewmusic.org

Photo by Peter Gannushkin

The Ottawa Citizen‘s Peter Hum explores the ongoing musical partnership of guitarist/composer Mary Halvorson and violist/composer Jessica Pavone in a new feature article published yesterday.

And, in this week’s Montreal Mirror, CD reviewer Gordon Allen describes the pair’s most recent CD, Thin Air (Thirsty Ear), as “Gut-wrenching songs, sung in a way that grabs your ear and twists. Pavone and Halvorson reach in and touch the brain, activating dreams and aggravations with their spare and insidious tunes. The music challenges what is comfortable, with enough restraint to beckon the imagination, sometimes lifting and carrying along, sometimes dragging us toward what we cannot see.”

The duo will perform in Ottawa tonight at Raw Sugar Café before wrapping up its current tour at Montreal’s L’Envers on Saturday.

Photo by Peter Gannushkin

Guitarist Mary Halvorson and violist Jessica Pavone will begin their latest tour tonight in Buffalo before heading North for five dates in Canada.

The longstanding duo, which has released three recordings, including last year’s Thin Air (Thirsty Ear), only just returned from more than a week in Vancouver performing with Anthony Braxton’s 12+1tet and participating in the eight-hour world premiere of his Sonic Genome Project.

Both Ms. Halvorson and Ms. Pavone were also featured performers in the three-day Time Flies Improvised Music Festival this past weekend, and subjects of an in-depth profile of the band The Thirteenth Assembly written by Howard Mandel in the March issue of The Wire.

Here’s where you can catch them on this tour:

02/15 :: Soundlab (Buffalo, NY)
02/16 :: Forest City Gallery (London, ON)
02/17 :: The Attic (Guelph, ON)
02/18 :: The Boat (Toronto, ON)
02/19 :: Raw Sugar Café (Ottawa, ON)
02/20 :: L’Envers (Montreal, QC)

Photo by Hilary McHone

In the March issue of The Wire, Howard Mandel profiles The Thirteenth Assembly, a collective ensemble of frequent collaborators featuring Taylor Ho Bynum, Tomas Fujiwara, Mary Halvorson and Jessica Pavone. The four-page feature explores the backgrounds of each individual member, as well as their interactions in this and many other ensembles.

“As soloists and in duets, trios, quartets, a sextet, a tentet, individually, all together and in diverse intramural matchups,” Mandel writes, “they bring contrasting but complementary histories of artistic heritage, influence and preference, as ingredients to stir into a very 21st century mix. They are completely informed and utterly uninhibited by almost everything that’s gone before. In creating their sound, they are heroes for our time, but they don’t consider what they do unusual. It’s just the matter-of-fact life of musicians now.”

He adds, “The Thirteenth Assembly members are genuinely modest, not claiming to epitomise anyone but themselves. Yet being that way they’re also prototypical: unassuming but self-confident, smart and well-educated, professionally skilled and talented, sometime superficially snarky, but deep down idealistic.”

Learn more about the group in this April 2009 feature in The Wall Street Journal by Martin Johnson.

Andrew Dietzel’s new review of violist/composer Jessica Pavone‘s latest recording, Songs of Synastry and Solitude (Tzadik), is now posted at PopMatters.com.

“Pavone, with the help of the Toomai String Quintet, has crafted something sullenly beautiful, jarring and ominous in its minimalism,” he writes. “Comprised of 11 well-measured pieces, Songs of Synastry and Solitude sends the listener on a journey through a wintry landscape that is as desolate as the title suggests…as deeply personal and idiosyncratic as a series of journal entries. Each song is an invitation, and each title a linguistic starting point, for the listener to construct their own story via the transference of individual experience. Gloomy and forceful, Songs of Synastry and Solitude is as much about the space between the notes as it is the notes themselves, and as much about Pavone’s own story as it is yours.”

The Toomai String Quintet will be performing this music live at The Stone in New York on Thursday, and again at The Issue Project Room in Brooklyn on March 17th as part of a program featuring various composers.