The Squid's Ear Magazine


Wooley, Nate: Seven Storey Mountain V (Pleasure of the Text Records)

The 5th of 7 large and inspiring works that began with a Festival of New Trumpet commission in 2007, here in an ensemble of 19 players including C. Spencer Yeh, Ben Vida, Ben Hall, Matt Moran, Chris Dingman, Dan Peck, Josh Sinton, Colin Stetson, the TILT brass octet, &c.
 

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Personnel:



Nate Wooley-amplified trumpet

C. Spencer Yeh-amplified violin

Samara Lubelski-amplified violins

Ben Vida-electronics

Ben Hall-percussion

Ryan Sawyer-percussion

Chris Dingman-vibraphone

Matt Moran-vibraphone

Colin Stetson-amplified reeds, apliified brass

Josh Sinton-amplified brass

Dan Peck-amplified reeds, amplified brass

TILT Brass octet

Christopher McIntyre-brass

Gareth Flowers-brass

Mike Gurfeld-brass

Tim Leopold-brass

Will Lang-brass

Matt Melore-brass

Jen Baker-brass

James Roger-brass


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UPC: 616892391944

Label: Pleasure of the Text Records
Catalog ID: POTTR1305
Squidco Product Code: 22166

Format: CD
Condition: New
Released: 2016
Country: USA
Packaging: Cardboard Gatefold 3 Panels
Recorded at Abrons Art Center as part of Tectonics week, New York, on May 9th, 2015, by Bob Bellerue.

Descriptions, Reviews, &c.

"Seven Storey Mountain V, released on Wooley's Pleasure of the Text label, is the fifth of seven evening length works that began with a Festival of New Trumpet commission in 2007. Recorded live at Abrons Art Center in New York City as part of the 2015 Tectonics NY festival, SSMV continues Wooley's idea of creating an ecstatic and communal music. that is non- religious and non-genre based. The massive collective group includes international stars from the jazz, new music, electronic, and noise worlds- working together to realize Wooley's singular musical vision."-Pleasure Of The Text



"This Seven Storey Mountain is the fifth installment of Nate Wooley's meditation series. The title is taken from the Trappist monk, Thomas Merton's most famous publication. Like Merton, the most Zen Buddhist of Christians, Wooley might be the most Japanoise of all jazz improvisers.

His previous installments were released by Important Records (2009 & 2011) and his own Pleasure Of The Text Records (2013). As the chapters increase, so do the players. The first edition had Wooley joined by Paul Lytton and David Grubbs. The second Chris Corsano and C. Spencer Yeh, the third, a septet, and the fourth swelled to twelve performers. Here the count is nineteen with Yeh, Samara Lubelski, Ben Vida, Ben Hall, Ryan Sawyer, Matt Moran, Chris Dingman, Dan Peck, Josh Sinton, Colin Stetson, and the TILT brass octet.

With 19, you have power and, in Merton's terms, the majesty. Like the previous installments, the nearly fifty minute piece builds momentum through the amassing of sound. There's noise here, but a regal noise. Wooley presents the trumpets and trombones of the TILT Brass Octet like Elmer Bernstein's score for the film, The Ten Commandments. That is, if Alfred Hitchcock had directed it. The piece pulls together Yeh and Lubelski's amplified violins with the ringing of Moran and Dingman's vibraphones to effect an ethereal sound.

The journey Wooley takes us on can be disorienting, but that's the point. Noise mixed with amplified brass and mechanical sounds creates an instability. But that uncertainty and the riskiness of the journey into this darkness, might be just a test. A test of faith, or a secularist's mindfulness."-Mark Corroto, All About Jazz



This album has been reviewed on our magazine:

The Squid
The Squid's Ear!

Get additional information at All About Jazz

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

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"C. Spencer Yeh was born in Taipei, Taiwan 1975, moved to the US in 1980; studied radio/television/film at Northwestern University, and is now based out of Cincinnati, Ohio. Yeh is active both as a solo and collaborative artist, as well as with his primary project, Burning Star Core. As an improviser, Yeh is focused on developing a personal vocabulary using violin, voice, and electronics. As a sound artist/composer, Yeh works with all aspects available surrounding a work, aurally and physically, as elements key to the cumulative experience. He is concerned not only with the sensual aspects of 'sound organization,' but the gestural qualities as well. Yeh has collaborated with a deep and ever-growing list of artists and groups, including Tony Conrad, New Humans with Vito Acconci, Evan Parker, Thurston Moore, Amy Granat with Jutta Koether, Justin Lieberman, Don Dietrich and Ben Hall (as The New Monuments), Prurient, and Jandek. He has performed at festivals and venues such as Sonar, FIMAV at Victoriaville, Frieze Arts Fair, No Fun Fest, High Zero, the 24 Hour Drone People at Fylkingen, The Kitchen, ZKM Karlsruhe, and has also exhibited visual art, sound, and video works internationally."

-Ubu Web (http://www.ubu.com/sound/yeh.html)
3/13/2024

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"Samara Lubelski is an American singer, violinist, guitarist and bassist. She has been a member of numerous bands, including Of a Mesh, Metabolismus, Salmon Skin, the Sonora Pine, Hall of Fame, the Tower Recordings, MV & EE and the Bummer Road, and Chelsea Light Moving. Since 2003, she has released eight solo studio albums.

Lubelski is a prolific guest musician, performing (predominantly on violin and occasionally on bass) on dozens of recordings by artists such as the Fiery Furnaces, White Magic, Thurston Moore, God Is My Co-Pilot, Jackie-O Motherfucker and Sightings.

As a recording engineer, she has also worked with Double Leopards on Halve Maen (2003, Eclipse Records) and Out of One, Through One and to One (2005, Eclipse); Ted Leo and the Pharmacists on Hearts of Oak (2003, Lookout! Records); Magik Markers on Untitled (2003, self-released), Blues for Randy Sutherland (2004, Arbitrary Signs) and I Trust My Guitar, Etc. (2004, Ecstatic Peace!); the Fiery Furnaces on Blueberry Boat (2004, Rough Trade Records); Sightings on Arrived in Gold (2004, Load Records); Black Dice on Creature Comforts and Miles of Smiles (both 2004, DFA Records); Oneida on Secret Wars (2004, Jagjaguwar) and The Wedding (2005, Jagjaguwar); Mouthus on Saw a Halo (2007, Load Records); and Religious Knives on It's After Dark (2008, Troubleman Unlimited Records)."

-Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samara_Lubelski)
3/13/2024

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Detroit-based percussionist Ben Hall is a member of groups Burning Graveyard Lights, Cass Chamber, Death Knell, Graveyards, Hell And Bunny, Jack Wright Nonet, KillDevilHills, Machine Yardz, Mêlée, Psalm Alarm, The New Monuments, Traum, and Trauma, and leads his own Ben Hall's Racehorse Names.

-Discogs 3/13/2024

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"Ryan Sawyer is a drummer and percussionist from the USA. He has played with several artists and bands like, Tv On The Radio, At The Drive-In, Scarlet Johanson, Massive Attack, Boredoms (77 & 88 Boadrum), The Mekons, Thurston Moore, among others.He currently is playing with, Stars Like Fleas, Tall Firs, and Eye Contact."

-Discogs (https://www.discogs.com/artist/300910-Ryan-Sawyer)
3/13/2024

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"Chris Dingman is a vibraphonist and composer known for his distinctive approach to the instrument: sonically rich and conceptually expansive, bringing listeners on a journey to a beautiful, transcendent place. He has been profiled by NPR, the New York Times, DRUM magazine and many other publications, and has received fellowships and grants from the Chamber Music America, the Doris Duke Foundation, New Music USA, and the Herbie Hancock Institute (formerly the Thelonious Monk Institute).

Dingman has done significant work with legendary artists Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter as well as next generation visionaries such as Jen Shyu, Ambrose Akinmusire, Steve Lehman, and many others, performing around the world including India, Vietnam, and extensively in Europe and North America. Hailed by the New York Times as a "dazzling" soloist and a composer with a "fondness for airtight logic and burnished lyricism," the fluidity of his musical approach has earned him praise as "an extremely gifted composer, bandleader, and recording artist." (Jon Weber, NPR).

Education

While growing up in San Jose, California, Dingman began piano and percussion studies at an early age. He went on to attend Wesleyan University, where he received his B.A. with honors in music. While at Wesleyan, he studied intensively with vibraphonist Jay Hoggard, drummer Pheeroan AkLaff, composer/multi-instrumentalist Anthony Braxton, and mridangist David Nelson. During this time, he was heavily involved in the study of many of the world's musical cultures, including South Indian, West African, Korean, Afro-Cuban, and Brazilian music. In the summer of 2000, his studies brought him to Kerala, India to delve further into mridangam and South Indian classical music.

In 2005, Dingman was one of only seven musicians selected by Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Terence Blanchard to participate in the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz Performance at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles. At the Institute, he studied with Terence Blanchard, Ron Carter, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath, Jerry Bergonzi, Wynton Marsalis, Jason Moran, Lewis Nash, Hal Crook, Stefan Harris, John Magnussen, Vince Mendoza, Russell Ferrante, and many others. He received his Master of Music degree from USC and the Monk Institute in 2007.

During his time at the Monk Institute, Dingman had the opportunity to perform extensively with Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter. In November of 2005, they traveled with the Monk Institute ensemble on a U.S. State Department tour of Vietnam. The ensemble gave concerts and master classes in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City. In January of 2007, he traveled again with Hancock, Shorter, and the Monk Institute ensemble, this time to Mumbai, Calcutta, New Delhi, and Agra, India, where they performed for capacity crowds and presented clinics at the Ravi Shankar Institute in Delhi and St. John's School in Mumbai.Teaching

In addition to performing, Chris is an active educator, working with students of all ages and levels for the past 15 years. His extensive teaching experience includes presenting master classes at conservatories and schools both nationally and internationally (including Miami-Dade College, Trinity College, Vancouver Jazz Festival, the National Conservatory of Vietnam, Staffeldsgate College in Oslo, Norway, and more), directing a summer music camp for students ages 11-18, leading jazz ensembles at the high school and middle school levels, and teaching group percussion classes for both children and adults."

-Chris Dingman Website (https://www.chrisdingman.com/bio/)
3/13/2024

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"Matt Moran received a Master's degree in jazz composition from New England Conservatory in 1995. At NEC he studied with the visionary composer and multi-instrumentalist Joseph Maneri, and has continued to learn from Maneri through performances with him. Since moving to New York in 1995 he has performed both as leader and sideman, including billings for the Knitting Factory's What Is Jazz? Festival, the JVC Jazz Festival, the Panasonic Village Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and the Vision Festival, as well as leading tours in the U.S. and Europe.

Also active as a performer, teacher, and curator in the Balkan folk music scene, Moran plays traditional percussion with artists such as Lefteris Bournias, Raif Hyseni, Demetri Tashie, and other master musicians from the Balkans who have immigrated to New York. With Slavic Soul Party!, he sparked "Balkan Cabaret", a downtown music series for Balkan and Balkan-inspired music.

Moran currently leads the groups Sideshow and Slavic Soul Party! He is also active performing and recording with John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet, the Mat Maneri Quintet, Theo Bleckmann, Dan Levin, Nate Wooley, Kavala Brass Band, and Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band.

Vibraphonist and tunesmith Matt Moran "plays the vibraphone like a speed-chess master, always darting off into flurries of ingenious, unexpected activity" (Village Voice). He has performed and recorded with artists as diverse as Mat Maneri, Lionel Hampton, Combustible Edison, Ellery Eskelin, and Saban Bajramovic. Moran's sound is integral to an innovative group of New York musicians who blur the boundaries of composition, improvisation, and folk traditions."

-Matt Moran Website (http://www.mattmoran.com/bio.html)
3/13/2024

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"Some things, they say, are meant to be, and certainly it sometimes looks that way for Colin Stetson, whose recorded output, not to mention studio and live collaborations - with, among others, Lou Reed, LCD Soundsystem, The National, Chemical Brothers, Bon Iver and Bill Laswell - has proven as prolific as it's praiseworthy. There's the story of how, though he began playing alto saxophone aged nine, his formal studies only started at 15, when he quickly learned the tricky art of circular breathing in a single afternoon. There's another about how one day, before his lesson even began, he stunned Donald Sinta, his renowned University of Michigan professor, with a warm-up technique so mind-bending the teacher simply walked out, returning a week later, relieved, to declare, "See, I can do it too!" Then there's the time he ended up working with Tom Waits. "I literally moved to San Francisco," Stetson recalls, with no little amazement, "because I wanted to be closer to where he was in the hopes I might cross paths with him. A year and a half later, he called me out of the blue."

Whatever the old adage, none of this is unearned. Since the early years of the 21st Century, Stetson has gained a well-deserved reputation as an exceptional musician, his devotion to his craft consummate, his commitment to innovation indisputable. Known for assertive, powerhouse performances on the saxophone - chiefly bass and alto, but also soprano, tenor and baritone - for many years he was a wrestler, a sport whose "insane physical extremes" he credits with his style, alongside, among other things, a love for acts like Pixies and Fugazi. He's similarly at home, though, whatever the musical context, on clarinet, flute, French Horn and cornet. One might even say he operates in a field all his own.

This is something to which albums like New History Warfare Vols. 1-3 (2007, 2011, 2013) and 2017's All This I Do for Glory powerfully attest, not to mention his striking - and diverse - contributions to film, TV and game scores. These include most recently 2018's Hereditary and Red Dead Redemption 2, 2021's Among The Stars, and 2022's Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Menu, though his favourites, he confesses, are 2020's Barkskins and 2021's Mayday. "I actively shun notions of category and genre in my life and appetites, and most definitely in my own music," Stetson says. "They're definitionally contrary to creativity and freedom, and corral the listener and musician alike into a kind of predesignated automaticity I prefer to avoid."

Stetson's nature then, is definitely, defiantly single-minded, and his dogged focus is always evident in his work, his swooping, circling and soaring motifs displaying as much sensitivity as strength. Even the very body of his instrument - not to mention his own body - provides a source of vital sounds which defy the imagination, not least on All This I Do For Glory, Among The Stars and Mayday, where his saxophone is often mistaken for electronic instrumentation. Such steadfast resolve extends to his daily routines, too. "I generally listen to the same type of music in the mornings," he reveals. "Historically that's been Bach, mostly Glenn Gould, mostly the Goldberg Variations, mostly the 81' recording. Saturdays tend to be for Irish or Scandinavian folk music, and on Sundays I listen to the Soul Stirrers SAR years recordings, or the Goodbye Babylon compilation of pre-war gospel music. I don't know... I just like rituals."

Stetson's singular approach, crucial on stage, was developed as he codified tailor-made rules over a decade of shows until, by 2007, when he first began recording seriously, he elected to adhere to them in the studio. "If performances were to be fully acoustic," he explains, "in that no FX, loops or additional recordings would be used, then so too must the album be all of that. Just me and the instrument and the moment. An audience member at a live performance sees the performer, feels the sound physically, and has that whole spectacle informing their experience. I sought to capture the recording in such a way as to be able to recreate the stereo field, to make a kind of 'surrealistic' imagining of the space, not through effecting or adding unnatural or foreign elements, but simply by taking what was there in the space and time of that recording process and slightly reimagining where in space it sits."

Oddly, Stetson didn't always imagine he'd be a musician. Born in 1975, he grew up in Ann Arbor, where he began painting aged 2, a talent cultivated by his parents throughout his childhood. "Up until 15 or 16," he admits, "I thought I'd pursue a career in the arts, in film, most likely, doing creature and practical effects in Hollywood on the sci-fi and fantasy films I loved. Music changed that trajectory, obviously." This re-evaluation was also facilitated by his parents, who arranged music lessons when he was in his mid-teens. "My mother was determined to make sure my siblings and I were taking on any opportunity for study we could, and she and my father devoted all of their limited resources to us and our upbringing." They certainly didn't spend as much on records: Stetson grew up mainly with "lots of Hendrix, Beatles, Jethro Tull, and one Queen album, The Game. I was very much raised on classic rock in those early years."

Nonetheless, he's part of the first MTV generation, and his subsequent, ferocious devouring of pop videos - he admits the solo in Men At Work's 'Who Can It Be' first inspired him to pick up a saxophone - led to a lifelong metal infatuation, itself a gateway to ever more innovative styles. "There was always Led Zeppelin and the ubiquitous Jimi Hendrix," he continues, "and I got into Mr Bungle through that metal and rock association, which in turn got me listening to John Zorn, which then prompted me to explore players like Fred Frith, Bill Laswell, Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot, and legends like Ornette, Roscoe Mitchell, Dewey Redman, and Albert Ayler. That was all by about 15. Saxophone was always the instrument I had a real affinity for. The shape, the sound, the physicality, the versatility and dynamic possibilities: all of it has kept me searching and learning and striving on it for decades."

Given this hunger, it's unsurprising he won a scholarship to the University of Michigan School of Music, where he developed his idiosyncratic style, experimenting with multi/polyphonics, vocalisations, valve-work and his instrument's percussive sounds. "I was playing a ton of free improv, always blown away by the sheer breadth of sonic possibilities, and so was quite ravenous for learning and absorbing the techniques," he recalls. "I spent a fair amount of time the summer of my 19th year doing some musical deep dives on mescaline, and at that point started to refine my earliest solo sax concepts. A couple of those first patterns eventually made it onto New History Warfare Vol. 1."

It was at university he began playing regularly with Transmission (later Transmission Trio) "searching, reaching, and exploring the instrument," before heading to San Francisco after graduating and, six years later, Brooklyn. Contributions were made to other artists' recordings, not least Tom Waits' ­ - "I learned from him the preciousness of the present moment and our initial, honest reactions," Stetson states, "and that at its core what we are doing is storytelling" - and he made his own lowkey records too. It wasn't, though, until 2007 that his breakthrough album, New History Warfare Vol. 1, was released, and this coincided with his drafting by Arcade Fire, with whom he'd play until 2010. He also moved to Montreal that year to join his future (but now ex-) wife, the band's Sarah Neufeld, with whom he recorded 2015's Never Were The Way She Was, and the following year released Sorrow, an extraordinary reimagining of Gorecki's legendary Symphony of Sorrow later performed in the composer's hometown of Katowice.

In-between he completed his New History Warfare trilogy, a virtuosic illustration of the "world-building", as he calls it, that's critical to much of his solo work. "I started writing a sort of corollary narrative in my head - I think it most resembles a graphic novel - so that the narrative and imagery, themes etc. inform the shape and structure of the individual songs, whole albums, and the larger trilogy arc. I connect all of that work - the solo records and some of my collaborations - in the context of a greater narrative and ethos. It's not necessary that anyone know what these stories are, though. I think of it as something I do to help me create the clearest and most wholly realised world in the music."

2017's All This I Do for Glory consolidated his reputation, earning multiple nominations for critics' Album of the Year lists, but if fans have had to wait for its promised sequel - though he confirms it's on its way - that's largely to do with the mass of scoring work he's attracted over the last decade. "I love the puzzles involved in designing a score," he says, "cracking certain codes for what each story needs and how best to bring it together in a way that's novel, effective and exciting." And all the time he's continued to enlarge upon his enviable reputation for live performances that match his intense technical prowess with exhilarating and emotionally gripping songwriting skills. "I'll always push myself physically in the making of this music," he adds. "There's something about the energetic state of being in the limits of our grasps, manoeuvring through extremities, that I find not only cathartic and hugely satisfying but which imbues the music with a quality that cannot be fully quantified."

Still, if his astounding physical engagement with his instruments has helped provoke headlines and draw audiences, Stetson remains dedicated first and foremost to his art. "I've always wanted to eschew the whole 'geek show' aspect of my performances," he concludes, "and just play in total darkness. To be there, present with the music, with the audience. It's still a kind of dream for me to not have the music be understood and experienced in any way through the lens of the physical feat of it, but just felt in that honest, visceral and immediate way." He needn't worry, though. Some things, after all, are meant to be, and anyone who's heard Stetson's music will verify that there's no other way to experience it than honestly, viscerally and immediately. As distinguished broadcaster Mary Anne Hobbs once observed, "he's an artist that can change the way you actually think about music." "

-Colin Stetson Website (https://www.colinstetson.com/bio)
3/13/2024

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"Josh Sinton, a native of Southern New Jersey, born in 1971, is a creative musician who specializes in playing the baritone saxophone and bass clarinet. Growing up, his musical inspirations were his father's record collection, his brothers' record collections and watching his father play stride piano at parties. There wasn't anyone else playing music so to this day Sinton remains mystified that the music bug stuck at all.

He studied composition at the University of Chicago and improvisation at the AACM in the 1990's and then proceeded to carve out a niche for himself in Chicago writing and performing music for dance (with Julia Mayer) and theater (at Steppenwolf Studio and Bailiwick Repertory) as well as performing and studying with local musicians such as Fred Anderson, Ken Vandermark, Ari Brown and Cameron Pfiffner. He would leave Chicago during this time for extended backpacking trips around Europe and India and found a lot of useful information for his later work.

Determined to overcome his technical shortcomings, he gave all this up and moved to Boston in 1999 to resume studies at the New England Conservatory. He spent five years in Boston and met, played and studied with a variety of folks including Steve Lacy, Ran Blake, Dominique Eade, Jerry Bergonzi, Bob Moses, Jim Hobbs and the Either Orchestra. Despite their encouragement, Sinton was overjoyed when he got to leave Boston in 2004.

Since then, Sinton has lived in Brooklyn, New York. He's been fortunate enough to be a long-standing member of Darcy James Argue's Secret Society, the Nate Wooley Quintet, the Andrew D'Angelo DNA Orchestra and Anthony Braxton's Tricentric Orchestra. With these groups he's travelled to several countries in Europe and South America as well as played many festivals (Moers, Newport, BMW, Bergamo, Tampere Jazz Happening, etc.). Sinton is proud of the collaborators he's been able to work with (Kirk Knuffke, Tomas Fujiwara, Chad Taylor, Mary Halvorson, Ingrid Laubrock, Jeremiah Cymerman, Josh Roseman, Harris Eisenstadt, Roswell Rudd, James Fei, Denman Maroney, Han-Earl Park, Greg Tate, Curtis Hasselbring, Mike Pride, Jon Irabagon) but the list of people he still hopes to play with is vast.

As a long-standing member of the Douglass Street Music Collective, Josh Sinton has hosted hundreds of concerts over the past 7 years Brooklyn. His work has been recognized by Downbeat (Critics' and Readers' Poll), Jazz Times (Critics' Poll) and El Intruso (International Critics' Poll) and has been discussed in The Wire, Signal to Noise, Point of Departure, the New York Times and the New York City Jazz Record.

Sinton defines himself as a "creative musician" rather than a jazz musician and has done so since 2011. His reasons for this are varied and personal, but some of them are outlined here and here. Suffice to say, friendly listeners can label him what they will. Sinton will just continue creating sounds with the goal of wasting nobody's time.

Currently Sinton leads the band Ideal Bread as well playing regularly with the Nate Wooley Quintet and the Tricentric Orchestra. He is busy writing new music for himself and his collaborators as well as contributing essays to the websites of Darcy James Argue, Ethan Iverson's Do The Math, Destination: Out and Sound American."

-Josh Sinton Website (http://joshsinton.com/about/)
3/13/2024

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"Dan is a tubist currently living and working in New York City. Since his move there in 2005, he has been active as a soloist, improviser, and sideman in a wide variety of settings. Dan's current interests are in experimental music and improvisation, and he has performed at many of New York City's most respected venues for creative music including The Stone, Roulette, and Issue Project Room. Dan has collaborated with many New York artists, including Tony Malaby, Nate Wooley, Michael Attias, Ben Gerstein, Tom Rainey, Peter Evans, Kris Davis, Ingrid Laubrock, and Matthew Welch. Recent projects include recordings with Tony Malaby's Novela (Clean Feed), Harris Eisenstadt's Canada Day Octet (482 Music), and Jeff Newell's New Trad Band. Dan will also be on a forthcoming Anthony Braxton release, featuring music from the Falling River Series in small ensembles from Wesleyan University.

Dan currently leads a trio comprised of himself, Tom Blancarte (bass) and Brian Osborne (percussion). The group plays a mix of freely improvised music and his compositions, some of which are influenced by music of the Doom Metal genre. Their debut LP, "Acid Soil", is out on the Heat Retention Records label. In March of 2011, the Trio completed a 9 day tour of the midwest/east coast.

Equally at home in more traditional jazz settings, Dan plays in the old-timey jazz band Grandpa Musselman and His Syncopators. The Syncopators appear frequently at high society events in and around New York City, and in 2007 took part in the Jazz at Aspen Festival, directed by bassist Christian McBride.

Dan also plays a lot of contemporary music. He has premiered solo tuba works at St. Bartholomew's Church, Merkin Hall, and The Stone. In 2009, Dan was featured as part of Kagel Nacht, a celebration of the music of composer Mauricio Kagel, in which he performed two of Kagel's solo works, Atem and Mirum. As an orchestral performer, Dan has played under great conductors such as James Levine and Herbert Blomstedt, and has worked personally with composers such as Helmut Lachenmann and Alvin Lucier. Dan is a member of the International Contemporary Ensemble, and has also worked with the American Composers Orchestra, Signal Ensemble, New York City Ballet, New World Symphony, and the Tanglewood Festival Orchestra. Dan recently recorded a DVD of Iannis Xenakis' chamber music for Mode Records, with the International Contemporary Ensemble and percussionist Steven Schick conducting.

Currently, Dan plays on the Broadway musical Chicago, and is adjunct-faculty at New Jersey City University."

-Dan Peck Website (http://danpeckmusic.com/bio.html)
3/13/2024

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"Christopher McIntyre leads a varied career in music as a performer, composer, educator, and curator/producer. He performs a wide variety of material on trombone and synthesizer, ranging from fully notated concert works to open improvisations. Current projects include TILT Brass (Co-Founder & Director), Either/Or Ensemble (curator, performer), and frequent collaborations with choreographer Yoshiko Chuma and the School of Hard Knocks. McIntyre's trombone skills have been utilized in ensembles including SEM, Talea, Musikfabrik, The Knights, the Tri-Centric and Flexible Orchestras, Merce Cunningham Dance Co. (Legacy Tour including Park Ave Armory Events), among many others. He has worked directly with many composers, in their projects and in his own ensembles, including Joan La Barbara, Kitty Brazelton, Zeena Parkins, Lois V. Vierk, Richard Barrett, David Behrman, Jonathan Bepler (w/ Matthew Barney), Anthony Braxton, Anthony Coleman, James Fei, Fast Forward, David First, Daniel Goode, Chris Jonas, John King, Phill Niblock, Elliott Sharp, Michael Schumacher, Charles Waters, and Nate Wooley. Recordings of his performing and composing can be heard on New World, Tzadik, Mode, Edition Modern, POTTR, zOaR, and Non-Site Records, and on Archive.org.

McIntyre has contributed to the revival of composer, pianist, and vocalist Julius Eastman's (1940-90) music, having transcribed and/or created score realizations for several works since 2006 including Stay On It (1973), Trumpet (1971), and Femenine (1974). McIntyre also led performances of Eastman's music during Philadelphia-based Bowerbird's Julius Eastman Festival in May 2017 and again during The Kitchen's Julius Eastman: That Which Is Fundamental Festival in January 2018. He was interviewed by the NY Times to discuss the process of realizing the score for Trumpet.

McIntyre's compositions express a wide-range of musical and intellectual interests. He often experiments with spatialization, improvisative strategies, serialized rhythmic cycles, and symmetrical pitch construction. He uses conventional, instructional, and graphic notation systems to achieve these conceptual ends, frequently employing combinations of them within a single piece. He often finds inspiration in the work and ideas of visual artists, in particular Robert Smithson (Smithson Project), Sol LeWitt (Stuplimity Series), and Richard Serra (Precensing Pieces.) The work invests a great deal in the creativity and musicianship of its players; each performance is a unique iteration of the original material. His compositions have been performed by TILT Brass, Ne(x)tworks, 7X7 Trombone Band, Ullu, and Flexible Orchestra, with performances at venues including The Kitchen, Gagosian Gallery, City Center, ISSUE Project Room, Knockdown Center, Roulette, and Wave Farm.

Since 2018, McIntyre has been a member of the Brass & Chamber Music Faculty at Mannes School of Music at The New School. His nearly 30 years of experience in the fields of contemporary and experimental music inform every interaction with students. At Mannes, McIntyre created Chamber Brass Workshop, a course designed to expose students to a wide range of practices via performative work and research, approaching brass repertoire from historical, contemporary, and varied cultural perspectives to encourage inclusivity in 21st century brass practitioners. Prior to Mannes (his graduate school alma mater), he taught in various contexts, ranging from beginning trombone students to co-leading a lecture/workshop for Ensemble Connect at Carnegie Hall called Exploring Graphic Notation (for educators).

Beyond performing, creating, and teaching music, McIntyre is active as a curator and concert producer. He currently creates concert programs for Either/Or Ensemble, 2015 awardee of a CMA/ASCAP Award for Adventurous Programming. From 2007 to 2010 he was Artistic Director of MATA, a non-profit organization that commissions and presents the work of young composers. During his tenure, McIntyre conceived and launched the successful concert series Interval (co-presented with ISSUE Project Room) with friend and colleague Missy Mazzoli. He also curated and co-produced (with Mazzoli) three annual, week-long MATA Festivals, featuring groups such as Ensemble Pamplemousse, Argento Chamber Ensemble, Calder Quartet, So Percussion, NOW Ensemble, Either/Or, and Boston Modern Orchestra Project. As curator for the creative music group Ne(x)tworks from 2006 to 2009, he was responsible for concert programming including three annual multi-event residencies. He served as Associate Music Curator at The Kitchen, acting as Artistic Director of the ten-piece experimental chamber orchestra Kitchen House Blend, and lead curator of live events during New Sound, New York Festival (April '04). Independent curatorial projects include After 9 Evenings: A 50th Anniversary Celebration (September, 2016) and Syncretics Series (2017-18) at ISSUE Project Room; Composing With Patterns: Music at Mid-Century heard in the Rotunda at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (July '12); A full month of programs at The Stone (East Village) in June 2007 which featured the festival Trombonophilia and TILT Brass' mini-festival ALL TILT; and multi-event projects at The Kitchen including Let's Go Swimming: A Tribute to Arthur Russell (May '08) and A Power Stronger Than Itself: A Celebration of the AACM (Oct '08). McIntyre has served on the Board of Directors for MATA Festival and Tri-Centric Foundation."

-Christopher McIntyre Website (http://cmcintyre.com/about)
3/13/2024

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"Tim Leopold - Trumpet

A native of Kansas, trumpeter Tim Leopold is equally adept in the worlds of classical music, jazz, world music and popular idioms, and he is an active performer and freelance musician in New York City. Mr. Leopold is an active member of the Meridian Arts Ensemble, the Pittsburg Collective, Slee Sinfonietta, the TiLT Brass, Zosimos Ensemble, and has performed as a member of Joshua Roseman's Extended Constellations, Manhattan Brass and other ground-breaking, genre-straddling ensembles. He has played extensively in clubs as a leader of his own projects and as a sideman to others. A talented, experienced performer and educator, Mr. Leopold has taught trumpet, improvisation, and the art of music across the globe and extensively throughout the Americas. Mr. Leopold can be heard in numerous settings in and around New York City from Broadway's Chicago the Musical to Buffalo, New York's Slee Sinfonietta. Mr. Leopold is sponsored by Bach trumpets, a division of Conn-Selmer. Tim received a Bachelors Degree from the University of Kansas and a Masters from the University of Oregon."

-Miller Theater (https://www.millertheatre.com/explore/bios/tim-leopold)
3/13/2024

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"Jen Baker, trombonist/composer, has collaborated with artists all over the world in site-specific mixed media performance, concert halls, solo and chamber commissions. As an improviser she is featured on the soundtrack to Werner Herzog's Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World. She has performed internationally in festivals and has toured with Arijit Singh, Karole Armitage, and Mansour, and new music ensembles S.E.M., TILT brass, and the mobile ensemble Asphalt Orchestra (founding member). Her forthcoming book, Hooked on Multiphonics aides composers and trombonists in understanding and executing the deep complexities of multiphonics."

-Jen Baker Website (http://jenbakersounds.com/)
3/13/2024

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Track Listing:



1. Seven Storey Mountain V 49:16

Related Categories of Interest:


Improvised Music
Jazz
NY Downtown & Jazz/Improv
Large Ensembles
Nate Wooley
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Pleasure of the Text Records.


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