Will Layman’s review of The Whole Tree Gone (Firehouse 12 Records), pianist/composer Myra Melford’s new release with her acoustic sextet, Be Bread, was posted yesterday at PopMatters.com

He’s the second contributor to the popular site to write about the record (following Michael Kabran in his Best of 2010 so far list) since it came out in January. The review is too extensive to easily summarize, but here’s a sample to give you the idea:

“The Whole Tree Gone is daring but joyous music—something as substantive as any hardcore avant-garde record, yet pleasing in nearly every way. Myra Melford, slowly but certainly in the last five years, has staked a claim to being one of the best of a new breed. She makes jazz feel fresh again, but she never makes the listener feel cheap in the process. This is her best disc, and it is one heck of a way to kick off jazz’s new year.”

Photo by Ben Goldstein

The Brooklyn-based quartet Little Women will be touring both North America and Europe this spring in support of its full-length debut, Throat, coming April 13th on AUM Fidelity.

The group, featuring Travis Laplante (tenor saxophone), Darius Jones (alto saxophone), Andrew Smiley (guitar) and Jason Nazary (drums), works as a collective to create extended suites renowned for their dynamic, hard-hitting amalgam of jazz, punk, metal and noise.

Throat, its second recording following the 2008 EP, Teeth (Sockets/Gilgongo), documents the band’s latest suite, a seven-part work meant to be heard in a single listening. The music will be available in three formats: digital download, CD and limited edition LP.

To learn more, check out this video retrospective.

North American tour dates:

04/01 :: King Street Manor (Northampton, MA)
04/02 :: Venue TBA (Montreal, QC)
04/03 :: Teranga (Toronto, ON)
04/04 :: East Village Arts Co-Op (East London, ON)
04/05 :: Soundlab (Buffalo, NY)
04/06 :: Venue TBA (Kalamazoo, MI)
04/07 :: The Hideout (Chicago, IL)
04/08 :: The Velvet Lounge (Chicago, IL)
04/09 :: Bela Dubby (Lakewood, OH)
04/10 :: Venue TBA (Pittsburgh, PA)
04/11 :: The Windup Space (Baltimore, MD)

European tour dates:

05/05 :: Jazzclub Neue Tonne (Dresden, Germany)
05/06 :: Jazzclub Hipnoza (Katowice, Poland)
05/07 :: Stadtwerkstatt (Linz, Austria)
05/08 :: JazzDock (Prague, Czech Republic)
05/09 :: Black Box at cuba-cultur (Münster, Germany)
05/10 :: WORM (Rotterdam, The Netherlands)
05/11 :: Voorhuit (Gent, Belgium)
05/12 :: Bunker Ulmenwall (Bielefeld, Germany)
05/13 :: Lades (Copenhagen, Denmark)

Photo by Lindsay Beyerstein

On Saturday, April 10th, Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society will return to Brooklyn’s Galapagos Arts Space for the first time since the May 2009 CD release concert for its acclaimed debut recording, Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam). In the year that followed, this 18-piece steampunk big band has seen its star steadily rise thanks to performances around New York and beyond, profiles by National Public Radio (NPR) and a variety of prominent print publications, and honors ranging from nominations for major awards to strong finishes in high-profile critics’ polls.

“Our CD release event last year at Galapagos was a real thrill,” Argue recalls, “and that show inaugurated a new stage in the band’s existence. Since then, we’ve played record release shows in Philadelphia and Boston, embarked on our first European tour and even made our televised debut on WHYY’s On Canvas. This was my first record, and I really had no idea what to expect, or how the album would be received. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it would appear on all those Best of 2009 lists, or that I’d be nominated for a JUNO Award! It’s exciting to return to the venue where all this insanity kicked off.”

Known for both his composing skills and his role as one of the jazz world’s most prominent bloggers, Argue has led Secret Society for the past five years. During that time, the band has built a loyal following among critics and audiences alike through both musical means and a groundbreaking realization of the vast potential of the Internet. The Boston Globe’s Joan Anderman concludes, “Argue is that rare bird in any genre—an original thinker—but his real gift is in transposing big ideas into music that is as inviting as it is innovative.” Learn more at http://www.secretsocietymusic.org

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

Today is the official street date for eminent saxophonist/composer David S. Ware’s latest recording, Saturnian (solo saxophones: volume 1), on AUM Fidelity.

Recorded live in October at New York’s Abrons Arts Center, this limited edition release documents Ware’s triumphant return to the stage following a successful kidney transplant. Each of the three extended pieces is performed on a different instrument: saxello, stritch and tenor saxophone.

Here’s a sample of the media response thus far:

“There’s no wasted motion or overt histrionics here, just the expertly devised and soulful playing of a masterful musician who can create his own rhythm internally. These three pieces flow beautifully, not in the strictest angelic, pretty, or peaceful fashion, but with the clear, assured dignity and confidence Ware has always displayed.”
—Michael G. Nastos, AllMusic.com

“David S. Ware makes use of the entire harmonic range and tonal capabilities of his horns (saxello, stritch and his usual tenor sax), spraying the air with melodic patterns, intense riffs and wailing high notes in a solo tour de force…when Ware ascends into the highest plane for the last minutes of ‘Anthe,’ chomping on his mouthpiece to produce a squeal like Dizzy Gillespie battling an air-raid siren, you won’t realize you’ve been rising with him until the piece ends and you’re dropped unceremoniously back into your seat.”
—Dave Morris, Eye Weekly

“Ware uses the latitude of the setting to its fullest, aligning his imagination with the tonal character of each horn and keeping meandering detours to a minimum. These are happy, prosperous days for Ware and that renewed sense of hope and purpose plays out beautifully in the music.”
—Derek Taylor, Dusted

“It’s as if the saxophonist sees himself as a conduit for energy, with musical decisions working as points of friction that lend the sound incipient form…there are points where it feels as if he is playing in simultaneous directions, diverting fleeting fully formed phrases into contradictory arcs of time…his playing never sounded so focused and so fully energised. And with its subtitle of solo saxophones, volume 1, Saturnian looks to be the first of a series of recordings, giving birth to the next phase of his evolution through the initiatory application of ecstasy and energy.”
—David Keenan, The Wire

Canada’s 2010 JUNO Award nominations were announced yesterday and we’re proud to report that Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society is nominated in the Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year category for its 2009 debut, Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam Records). The record has already appeared on over 70 best-of-the-year lists around the industry and earned Best Debut honors in the prestigious Village Voice Jazz Critics Poll. Winners will be announced at the JUNO Gala Dinner and Awards ceremony on Saturday, April 17th.

Critics called Infernal Machines “a seven-track marvel of imagination” (David R. Adler, Time Out New York), “a fully integrated sound world as current as it is timeless” (Troy Collins, AllAboutJazz.com), “a nearly perfect creative synthesis between tradition and innovation” (John Eyles, BBC) and “a wickedly intelligent dispatch from the fading border between orchestral jazz and post-rock and classical minimalism” (Nate Chinen, New York Times). JazzTimes‘ Michael J. West adds, “With their haunting compositions and imaginative experiments, Argue’s Secret Society might do for jazz what Radiohead did for rock—and poach some of its audience, too.”

Secret Society’s next performance is at New York’s Jazz Standard on March 23rd, and George Wein’s New Festival Productions recently announced the band will be part of the line-ups for both the CareFusion Jazz Festival New York and the CareFusion Newport Jazz Festival this summer.

Drummer/composer Tomas Fujiwara and cornetist/composer Taylor Ho Bynum are pleased to announce the April 20th North American street date for their latest duo recording, Stepwise (NotTwo Records). The follow-up to the group’s 2007 debut, True Events (482 Music), this release features 10 new tracks mixing pre-conceived elements, spontaneous improvisation and a deeply intuitive connection developed through years of working together. Fujiwara and Bynum have been regular collaborators for nearly two decades, most recently as members of such ensembles as Positive Catastrophe, the Taylor Ho Bynum Trio/Sextet and The Thirteenth Assembly.

“The joy expressed on this recording, just by two people, is something truly special,” writes trumpeter and musical contemporary Nate Wooley in his liner notes for Stepwise. “I had expected to be impressed. Maybe even blown away. Taylor Ho Bynum and Tomas Fujiwara are two of the best improvisers I have ever been lucky enough to work with. They are some of the leading lights of 21st century American improvisation. What I was hearing now, though, was something altogether more than I had anticipated. My interest in the two of them, the thing that fascinates me about this record and has always excited me about their playing, is how they capture this elusive feeling of joy. As natural as it is for us to express rage and fear, it takes an equal amount of work to project joy and serenity…how incredibly special it is to find a recording that expresses that joy from the first sound to the last.”

Critics called True Events “a scintillating album” (Nate Chinen, New York Times) and “a bravura display of imaginative technique” (Steve Dollar, Time Out Chicago), noting the musicians’ “vivid interaction” (Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings, 9th Edition), “staggeringly unified rhythmic interplay” (Marc Medwin, AllAboutJazz-New York) and “potent lyricism, a subtle beauty that only the finest partners—I’m reminded of Louis Moholo-Moholo and Evan Parker—can conjure” (Karl A.D. Evangelista, AllAboutJazz.com). Jazzwise reviewer Kevin Le Gendre added, “Bynum and Fujiwara are a worthy addition to the canon, presenting music that treads an engaging creative line between tightly structured writing and spiraling improvisation. In turn introverted and extroverted, contemplative and explosive, this work makes a case for both men as very sensitive players who have a finely honed sense of dynamics and attention to detail.”

Fujiwara and Bynum’s first public performance as a duo was in 2006, but the pair has been sharing stages in various other configurations since attending neighboring Boston-area high schools in the early 1990s. Throughout the intervening years, they have developed a distinctive musical language that brings a collective vision to improvisation as well as composition, celebrating the tensions and rewards of two distinct aesthetics coexisting within a single framework. Together they have toured throughout North America and Europe, both as a duo and in the context of larger ensembles, including featured performances at the Jazzatelier Festival (Austria), the Sanctuary for Independent Media (Troy, New York), The Stone (New York City), Umbrella Music (Chicago) and the Vision Festival Marathon (New York City). Learn more at http://tomasfujiwara.com and http://taylorhobynum.com

Adam Rudolph

On Friday, April 2nd, New Haven’s Firehouse 12 will present renowned percussionist/composer Adam Rudolph’s Moving Pictures Quintet. This two-set performance of newly composed material is part of a series of East Coast dates in April and May supporting Rudolph’s two Spring releases, Towards The Unknown and Yeyi, on his own Meta Records. The Moving Pictures Quintet, a new incarnation of his 20 year-old Moving Pictures ensemble, features frequent collaborators Brahme Fribgane (oud, cajón and percussion), Joseph Bowie (trombone, voice and percussion), Graham Haynes (cornet, flugelhorn and dusun’goni) and Kenny Wessel (guitars and banjo).

Critics called Moving Pictures’ most recent release, 2008’s Dream Garden (Justin Time Records), “world jazz of the highest caliber” (Steve Greenlee, Boston Globe), “life-affirming music” (David Dacks, Eye Weekly), “full of amazing surprises” (J. Hunter, AllAboutJazz.com) and “a career achievement for Rudolph, one that should finally make the jazz world sit up and take notice of this man as a front line composer and bandleader” (Thom Jurek, AllMusic.com). JazzTimes reviewer Jeff Tamarkin adds, “Adam Rudolph is a mixer-upper whose greatest gift is his ability to take pieces from here, there and beyond, toss them into scenarios in which they should collide noisily, and instead coax from them harmonious goodness and excellent adventures. Rudolph’s world is one of contrasting shapes and languages, and of unexpected, welcomed variations.”

Known as a master percussionist, Rudolph has been developing his own syncretic approach to hand drumming since the early 1970’s. He began his career immersed in the jazz and blues traditions of Chicago and Detroit before studying ethnomusicology at Oberlin College and later directly with masters of percussion instruments from Cuba, Ghana, Guinea, Haiti, Nigeria and Northern India. In addition to longstanding partnerships with multi-instrumentalists Ralph Jones and Yusef Lateef among others, Rudolph has collaborated with such prominent American jazz figures as Don Cherry, Hamid Drake, Herbie Hancock, Sam Rivers, Pharoah Sanders and Wadada Leo Smith, as well as eminent ethnic musicians from India, Indonesia, Lebanon, Morocco and Mali. His other current ensembles include Hu:Vibrational, Vashti and Go: Organic Orchestra. Learn more at http://www.metarecords.com/adam.html

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

Photo by Rossetti©Phocus

On Wednesday, March 31st, Boston-based guitarist/composer Garrison Fewell and his Variable Density Sound Orchestra will perform at Johnny D’s Uptown Restaurant & Jazz Club in Somerville, Massachusetts. The group, which brings together a flexible cast of well-known improvisers from Boston, New York and beyond, will be performing selections from its self-titled 2009 debut, as well as previewing music from its forthcoming release, Sound Particle 47 (Creative Nation Music), due this fall. Joining Fewell for this event will be Roy Campbell (trumpet), Steve Swell (trombone), Kelly Roberge (tenor saxophone), Eric Hofbauer (guitar), John Voigt (bass), Sean Farias (bass) and Miki Matsuki (drums).

Critics called Variable Density Sound Orchestra (CNM 014) “solid, approachable and at the same time richly complex” (Phillip McNally, Cadence) and “as intriguing a project as has been available on the contemporary jazz scene…chock full of inventive musicianship, truly new concepts, and fresh approaches that pay big dividends” (Michael G. Nastos, AllMusic.com). JazzTimes reviewer Michael J. West adds, “Variable Density Sound Orchestra should be on jazz education syllabi worldwide: It demonstrates how even free improvisation depends on musicians listening closely to each other. Guitarist Garrison Fewell’s septet uses some compositional structures, but the real backbone comes from developing and responding to each other’s spontaneous ideas. The products of that chemistry are gorgeous.”

“The guitarist formerly known as one of Boston’s most eloquent inside players has become one of its leading experimenters,” explains the Boston Phoenix’s Jon Garelick, who included Variable Density Sound Orchestra on his best of 2009 list. Fewell, a professor at the Berklee College of Music since 1977, has toured the globe for more than 30 years as one of the jazz world’s premier performer/educators. For much of the past decade, he has left his mainstream jazz roots behind to collaborate with such renowned avant-garde musicians as Khan Jamal, Charlie Kohlhase and John Tchicai, and more fully explore longstanding influences including Albert Ayler, Anthony Braxton and Sun Ra in his own music. The Variable Density Sound Orchestra, founded in 2008, balances both aspects of Fewell’s musical personality by showcasing the melodic accessibility and sturdy framework of his compositions as well as the unbridled freedom of free improvisation. Learn more at http://garrisonfewell.wordpress.com

Way back on Friday, March 1st, 2002, we turned on the lights and got down to the business of promoting independent creative improvised music.

First and foremost, we’d like to thank all the clients who have trusted us to represent them over the years. We’d also like to reiterate our ongoing gratitude to all the press and radio contacts who continue to support those clients’ various projects.

In honor of this occasion, please enjoy this retrospective video (above) we put together covering our first eight years.

We now return to our regularly scheduled work day, already in progress.