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Adams / Mezzacappa / Levis: Never But Dream The Days (Queen Bee Records)

A focused and highly collaborative session from multi-reedist Steve Adams, bassist Lisa Mezzacappa, and drummer Jason Levis, whose long-standing connections through the Bay Area's creative music scene — including Mezzacappa and Levis's duo B and their co-led Experimental Band — inform these concise and sensitive 2022 improvisations with a compositional approach to form and balance.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Steve Adams-sopranino saxophone, alto saxophone, baritone saxophone, alto flute, bass flute, electronics

Lisa Mezzacappa-acoustic bass

Jason Levis-drum set


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UPC: 199199227540

Label: Queen Bee Records
Catalog ID: QB - 009
Squidco Product Code: 36348

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2025
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at guerilla Recording and Headless Buddha Mastering Lab, in Oakland, California, by Myles Boisen.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"The members of Bay Area improvising ensemble duo B. (bassist Lisa Mezzacappa and drummer Jason Levis) and multi-instrumentalist Steve Adams have a long, intertwined history traversing many years and projects. never but dream the days is a welcome by-product of the trio's interactions as part of the duo B. Experimental Band, a large ensemble which Mezzacappa and Levis lead and which Adams has been part of.

Just before the 2020 Covid lockdown, the band played several shows commemorating Anthony Braxton's 75th birthday-and during the lockdown, Levis and Mezzacappa brought the ensemble online, for weekly remote improvisation sessions involving nearly 20 sheltering-in-place musicians. Adams, Mezzacappa and Levis continued to connect in the abstract space of the internet as a trio even as the world opened back up, and the stellar communication and musical chemistry of their online sessions led to a desire to convene in person for a live recording.

This session, documented in 2022 over a single afternoon at Myles Boisen's storied Oakland recording studio, reveals a shared sense of focused, concise and disciplined improvisation. These players approach in-the-moment creation as experienced and imaginative composers, and the collection of pieces on this release displays an uncanny sensitivity to form, balance, and dramatic arc."-Queen Bee Records


Artist Biographies

"Steve Adams has appeared on more than fifty recordings, and has six recordings as leader or co- leader on the 9 Winds and Clean Feed labels, the latest of them being Surface Tension by the Steve Adams Trio.

Steve has performed the premieres of numerous classical compositions, including Prisoner of Love by Robert Aldridge for soprano saxophone and piano, Thomas Oboe Lee's Saxxologie... A Sextet for saxophone sextet and Louie MCMLV for saxophone quartet, and Passing Time by Jon Nelson for tenor saxo¬phone and computer-generated tape. He performed Edmund Campion's Corail for saxophone and computer generated electronics with the Berkeley Symphony and at the Ojai Music Festival. Steve has performed Darius Milhaud's Scaramouche and Pauline Oliveros' Outline for Double Bass, Flute, and Percussion at Mills College. He was a member of the 25th Anniversary performance of Terry Riley's In C, which was released on New Albion.

Steve has written more than fifty compositions for saxophone quartet, as well as many others for varied instrumentations. His piece Cage (for John Cage) was performed at the 1993 Bang on a Can festival, and his piece The Gene Pool was commissioned by Meet the Composer and performed at their festival "The Works" in Minneapolis in 2002. His composition Owed t'Don was recorded by the violin/marimba duo Marimolin on their CD Phantasmata . In recent years, Steve has begun creating graphic scores, now numbering more than 40. Steve has also written for theater, having composed scores for seven productions at the California Shakespeare Festival. He received a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2000 and a Meet the Composer grant in 1993, and teaches at Mills College. Steve is a graduate of the School of Contemporary Music in Brookline, MA and studied composition with Alan Crossman, Christopher Yavelov and Thomas Oboe Lee, saxophone with David Birkin and Indian music with Peter Row and Steve Gorn. "

-Rova:Arts (http://www.rova.org/about-us/steve-adams.html)
7/9/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area-based bassist, bandleader, composer, curator and producer. An active collaborator in the Bay Area music community for more than a dozen years, she leads her own groups Bait & Switch, the Interlopers, Nightshade, Eartheaters and the Lisa Mezzacappa Trio, and co-leads the ensembles BODABODA, duo B., Cylinder, the Mezzacappa-Phillips Duo, and the Caribbean folk band Les Gwan Jupons. Lisa has released her music on the Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, NotTwo, Evander, Odd Shaped Case and Edgetone record labels, and has recorded as a sideperson for the Tzadik, Kadima and Porto Franco labels. She collaborates frequently on cross-disciplinary projects in sound installation, film/video, sculpture and public music/art.

As curator, she programs the annual JazzPOP concert seres at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, now in its 10th year; and a live cinema series, Mission Eye and Ear, at Artists' Television Access. She founded the Monday Makeout creative music series in the Mission District of San Francisco, and programs the Best Coast Jazz Composers series as a member of the artistic committee San Francisco's Center for New Music. In 2012 she started the "Festival-of-Us," a semi-annual festival celebrating Bay Area creative jazz and improvised music. Recent projects include an avant-folk string band, the Interlopers; Eartheaters, a trio with Brooklyn vocalist Fay Victor; and BODABODA, a cross-planetary collaboration with Venice reed player/composer Piero Bittolo Bon. In fall 2015 she premieres Glorious Ravage, a multi-media song cycle for large ensemble with commissioned films, inspired by the writings of Victorian lady adventurers.

Lisa has been artist-in-residence at Djerassi Resident Artists Program (2008, 2013), Headlands Center for the Arts (2006, 2015), the Banff International Jazz Workshop (2000), and the Painted Bride Arts Center (2000). She holds an MA in ethnomusicology from UC Berkeley (2003), and a BA in music from the University of Virginia (1997). She has performed at countless Bay Area venues including Intersection for the Arts, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, SFMOMA, Yoshi's, the Jazzschool, and the de Young Museum, San Francisco; as well as the Earshot Jazz Festival, Seattle; the Montreal Jazz Festival and Victoriaville Festival de Musique Actuelle, Canada; the Monterey Jazz Festival, CA; Moers Festival, Germany; and Novara Jazz Festival, Italy.

Lisa has been awarded grants by the MAP Fund, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, American Composers Forum, the City of Oakland, Meet the Composer and Southern Exposure/the Andy Warhol Foundation. She performs as a sideperson in original jazz, improv and chamber ensembles led by estemmed bandleaders and West Coast musical visionaries, like Phillip Greenlief, Aaron Novik, Beth Custer, Randy McKean, Marco Eneidi, Vijay Anderson, Aaron Bennett, Myles Boisen, Steve Adams, Graham Connah, Jon Raskin, Cory Wright and Ross Hammond, and collaborates often with Darren Johnston, Vinny Golia, Katy Stephan, Aram Shelton, Kjell Nordeson, Murray Campbell, Jason Levis, Dina Maccabee, Noah Phillips, Rob Ewing, Kasey Knudsen, Myles Boisen, Sam Ospovat, John Hanes, and many many others."

-Lisa Mezzacappa Website (http://www.lisamezzacappa.com/bio.html)
7/9/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.

"Ph.D. and M.A. in Composition, UC Berkeley; B.A. in Music, Naropa University. Two-time Meet the Composer award recipient; Eisner Prize for Music winner; Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor (UC Berkeley); Interaktion Festival finalist (Berlin), drummer and composer JASON LEVIS has led and been a collaborator in numerous jazz, improvised music, and chamber ensembles in the San Francisco Bay Area and Berlin, Germany. These include Joseph's Bones; duo B.; Junior Reggae; the Lost Shapes; the Berlin Boom Orchestra; the Nathan Clevenger Group, and many more. Through these avenues he has been a part of over two-dozen record releases, bridging a multitude of musical styles. He is an active performer on the drum set in both art and popular music settings and has extensive national and international performance experience. He is currently a professor at the California Jazz Conservatory, as well as gives private lessons throughout the bay area."

-Berkeley University (https://music.berkeley.edu/people/jason-levis)
7/9/2025

Have a better biography or biography source? Please Contact Us so that we can update this biography.


Track Listing:



1. The Old Crux 09:55

2. Faint And False 01:00

3. Aglow, Red, Afar, At Night, In Winter 05:06

4. Struck By The Contrary 06:24

5. Never But Dream The Days 08:19

6. Bury Me, Avalanche 10:21

7. Swaying Like A Ladder Of Smoke 02:36

8. Howling, Soughing, Moaning, Sighing 08:30

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
Free Improvisation
West Coast/Pacific US Jazz
Collective & Free Improvsation
Trio Recordings
New in Improvised Music
Recent Releases and Best Sellers

Search for other titles on the label:
Queen Bee Records.


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