The Squid's Ear Magazine

Wooley, Nate

Knknighgh (Minimal Poetry for Aram Saroyan)

Wooley, Nate: Knknighgh (Minimal Poetry for Aram Saroyan) (Clean Feed)

Pronounced as "knife", this new project from NY trumpeter Nate Wooley brings together Chris Pitsiokos on alto sax, Brandon Lopez on bass, and Dre Hocevar on drums in a fresh take on the concepts of free jazz, using short material composed by Wooley and based on the poetry of Aram Saroyan, used in looping and repeating structures that never sound as such.
 

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product information:

Personnel:



Nate Wooley-trumpet

Chris Pitsiokos-alto saxophone

Brandon Lopez-bass

Dre Hocevar-drums


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UPC: 5609063004342

Label: Clean Feed
Catalog ID: CF434
Squidco Product Code: 24458

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2017
Country: Portugal
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold
Recorded at Oktaven Studios, Mt. Vernon, New York, on October 29th, 2016, by Ryan Streber

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"We can say without exaggeration that the new project by Nate Wooley introduces in the so-called "free jazz" format a system that few times - if ever - we encountered with such a relevance for the musical results since the harmolodic process proposed by Ornette Coleman. And the always surprising trumpeter is very much aware of the ground breaking possibilities of this band with the upcoming New York musicians Chris Pitsiokos, Brandon Lopez and Dré Hocevar, and of the music recorded in Knknighgh (to be pronounced as "knife"), when presenting it as "a radical new take on the classic free jazz quartet tradition". So it is: you immediately recognize the approach as free jazz, and yet, free jazz never sounded like this before.

The band uses short composed materials written by Wooley and those fragmented materials are looped and pushed to the limit, triggered by any of the players in whatever order chosen in the moment. At first, the procedure seems to adapt some of the repetitive strategies of minimal music, and yet again, it doesn't sound like minimalism, and neither it is a crossover between free jazz and minimal music. Wooley's new system gets its references outside of music, and namely in the poetry of Aram Saroyan, "the master of the one word poem", as punk singer and writer Richard Hell calls him. Of course, both Hell and Wooley are particularly interested in the musical qualities of Saroyan's poetry, its rhythmic fluency, its alliterations, its repetition of syllabs and inherent sounds. From it, Nate Wooley created a new kind of free jazz in which less is more and the resume of a particular melodic phrase isn't necessarily the reintroduction of a chorus line. Prepare yourself to be marveled..."-Clean Feed


Artist Biographies

"Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances.

Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.

Wooley's solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet. Along with Peter Evans and Greg Kelley, Wooley is considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, as well as demolishing the way trumpet is perceived in a historical context still overshadowed by Louis Armstrong. A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings "exquisitely hostile".

In the past three years, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Time Out New York has called him "an iconoclastic trumpeter", and Downbeat's Jazz Musician of the Year, Dave Douglas has said, "Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole". His work has been featured at the SWR JazzNow stage at Donaueschingen, the WRO Media Arts Biennial in Poland, Kongsberg, North Sea, Music Unlimited, and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals, and the New York New Darmstadt Festivals. In 2011 he was an artist in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY and Cafe Oto in London, England. In 2013 he performed at the Walker Art Center as a featured solo artist.

Nate is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums."

-Nate Wooley Website (http://natewooley.com/about)
3/13/2024

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

"Chris Pitsiokos (b. 1990) is a saxophonist, composer, and improviser. His music combines the intensity and immediacy of extreme rock forms and noise with the lyricism and forward propulsion of jazz and the abstract detail of contemporary classical composers Iannis Xenakis and Helmut Lachenmann. Chris has had the opportunity to perform/collaborate with Lydia Lunch, Tyshawn Sorey, Peter Evans, Kevin Shea, Brian Chase, Henry Kaiser, Mick Barr, Marc Edwards, Brandon Seabrook, Paul Lytton, Tim Dahl, Philip White, Guerilla Toss, C. Spencer Yeh, Ikue Mori, Nate Wooley and Weasel Walter. Chris has performed throughout Europe, Japan, Australia, and the US. His records can be found on Clean Feed, New Atlantis, One Hand Records, Carrier Records, Ug Explode, and his own imprint, Eleatic Records. In addition to performing and composing music, Chris was a long time DJ at WKCR-FM and has been producing concerts in Brooklyn and Manhattan for four years."

-Chris Pitsiokos Website (http://www.chrispitsiokos.com/bio.html)
3/13/2024

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

"[..] Composer/bassist, Brandon A. Lopez, deemed "The Ubiquitous Free Improv Bass Ace" by the Village Voice and said to play with a "Bruising Physicality" by the Chicago reader.

He was born and raised in the splendors of Northwestern New Jersey, in the shadow of the (New York) city. It was there that he cultivated a taste for the left of center musics and subsequently, dug graves.

He's had the pleasures of working with many of the world's luminary weirdos. Here's a list: Nate Wooley, William Parker, Chris Corsano, Justice Yeldham, Weasel Walter, Peter Evans, Tyshawn Sorey, Gerald Cleaver, Ingrid Laubrock, Tom Rainey, Tony Malaby, Paul Lytton, Mette Rasmussen, Jooklo Duo, Michael Foster, Leila Bordreuil, Jaimie Branch, Joe Morris, Brandon Seabrook, Cactus Truck, John Dykeman, Daniel Carter, and many others.

He's currently leads a trio dubbed "The Mess", another one called the Brandon Lopez Trio, works as a soloist and is formerly/currently/latterly writing more and more music. He may play some it sometime soon (see "gigs").

He attended New England Conservatory."

-Brandon Lopez Website (http://www.brandonlopez.nyc/)
3/13/2024

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

"Dré A. Hočevar (Ljubljana, 1987) is a Slovenian composer and researcher based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Currently, Hočevar is conducting his PhD studies at the Centre for Research in New Music, CeReNeM, University of Huddersfield, UK. The central subject of his research and composition praxis is .meta [dynamic cognitive-apparatus formation, application, and analysis systems]. Dré A. Hočevar is the artistic director and founder of .alfabet, Institute for Research in Art, Critical Thought and Philosophy, and is frequently leading workshops, seminars, and lectures in composition, performance and research. Hočevar's teachers include Steve Lehman, Peter Ablinger, Joe Morris, Michael Carvin, Alexander J. Harker and Aaron Cassidy."

-Dre Hocevar Website (https://opus-i.io)
3/13/2024

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


Track Listing:



1. Knknighgh 3 16:19

2. Knknighgh 4 12:36

3. Knknighgh 6 11:07

4. Knknighgh 7 6:37

5. Knknighgh 8 10:16

Related Categories of Interest:

Clean Feed

Improvised Music
Jazz
NY Downtown & Metropolitan Jazz/Improv
Free Improvisation
Quartet Recordings
Nate Wooley
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