Interview with Samo Šalamon
Thanks to Samo for the invitation to do this hour-and-a-half interview, talking about many topics!
New telematic concert video, Roulette-UCSD
In February 2023, Mark Dresser and I co-directed a telematic concert featuring Fay Victor, Ingrid Laubrock and Patricia Brennan performing at Roulette (Brooklyn) and Mark, myself, Joshua White and Gerald Cleaver performing at UC San Diego. I finally finished mixing/editing the recordings and can now share the full concert on this YouTube playlist. It includes my own 20-minute composition “What … Read more
Ancestral Numbers 1, by Jason Robinson
Happy to announce this new album by Jason Robinson (sax/flute), with Joshua White (piano), Drew Gress (bass) Chess Smith (drums) and myself. We recorded it last summer and the album is out now in all the usual places as well as Bandcamp. We’ll be playing the music again on a Northeast tour in October 2024.
Performance with Anne LeBaron
It was a joy to perform in duo with Anne LeBaron recently, and in a trio with Drew Sensue-Weinstein, for an event at UCI Libraries celebrating the opening of the exhibit “Electrifying Music: The Untold Story of Remi Gassmann.” I have known Anne for many years and always enjoy her music and presence, but we only performed together once before, … Read more
Improvisation festival in Ensenada, MX
The Semana Internacional de Improvisación is a unique festival in Ensenada, Mexico that has been running for almost 10 years, directed by my wonderful friends Wilfrido Terrazas, Esther Gamez and Iván Trujillo. It was joy to participate this year as a guest artist, presenting a concert with an ensemble of great improvisers from Ensenada including Frida Hidalgo, Jose Solares, Matha … Read more
Bogotá!
I’m grateful to have been able to spend three weeks in Bogotá, Colombia in September, thanks to a residency supported US Fulbright Specialist Program and the Jazz emphasis in the Faculty of Arts at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana. The wonderful bassist-composer-improviser Santiago Botero helped set all this up, and at La Javeriana I taught and performed with a jazz combo, did … Read more
Recording with Jason Robinson quintet
I’ve been collaborating with my good friend Jason Robinson for 25 years, including over a dozen in the collective quartet Cosmologic along with Scott Walton and Nathan Hubbard, and many other bands. Jason’s latest project is a double album of new compositions with a quintet featuring Joshua White, Drew Gress and Chess Smith, that we just recorded at Firehouse 12 … Read more
Iván Trujillo quartet in Tijuana
I recently enjoyed playing a concert with Iván Trujillo’s quartet, featuring Yamil Almaguer and Gabri Grijalva, on a beautiful afternoon in the Jardin Botánico of the Centro Cultural Tijuana. It was refreshing to be able to play for such a multi-generational audience, including children!
Vision Festival with Mark Dresser 7
It was a joy to perform again with the Mark Dresser 7, and on the Vision Festival held at Roulette in NYC. Mark’s multidimensional music, which we’ve recorded on a couple albums on Clean Feed Records in recent years, is always worth the effort to put together, and we had a really fun set. You can watch the livestream here. … Read more
Tele-Espacios Activos X, Colombia-USA
Since 2015, I’ve been collaborating on concerts and events within the Tele-Espacios Activos series that Mario Humberto Valencia directs each year within the Festival Internacional de la Imagen in Manizales, Colombia. This year I traveled to Colombia – my first time returning there since before the pandemic – to co-direct and perform on a telematic concert with UC Irvine, with … Read more
Santa Ana High School partnership
I always enjoy working with students and teachers in the Santa Ana High School music program, especially the Puentes Telemáticos / Telematic Bridges program that I co-direct in summers. This year, I also did some workshops with their jazz big band and performed with them on their spring concert, which featured some UCI students playing a great combo set and … Read more
Nevertheless, she persisted (and danced)
It was a powerful experience performing a soundscape for this recent durational performance created by artist Mariángeles Soto-Díaz at Grand Central Arts Center in Santa Ana, CA. I created an algorithmic sonic collage based on her direction, which included audio samples from marches that were part of the #niunamenos movement protesting femicide in Latin America, as well as texts read … Read more
Telematic concerts, CA-NY and CA-Korea
I recently had the privilege to co-direct two telematic concerts from the black box theatre at UC San Diego, with wonderful collaborators in New York and Korea. On Feb. 2nd, we performed with Fay Victor, Ingrid Laubrock, and Patricia Brennan at Roulette in NYC, with Mark Dresser, Gerald Cleaver, Joshua White and myself performing from UCSD. Fay, Ingrid, Mark and … Read more
Iván Trujillo Ensamble in Tijuana
I had a great time playing yesterday in Tijuana with an 8-piece band led by the wonderful creative trumpeter Iván Trujillo, who was invited by the Centro Cultural Tijuana to present a “Binational Jazz” concert as part of a series of events celebrating the bicentennial anniversary of diplomatic relations between Mexico and the US. In addition to Iván, the band … Read more
Tele-Espacios Activos, Festival de la Imagen, 2022
Since 2015, I have enjoyed participating in Mario Valencia’s “Tele-Espacios Activos” series within the Festival Internacional de la Imagen, sometimes in person in Manizales, Colombia and in other years performing remotely from California. I missed being there in person this year but it was still a pleasure to perform on the concert, this time improvising on digibone in response to … Read more
Gentle Prowess Deliberations
I recently collaborated on sound for this excellent new project by artist Mariángeles Soto-Díaz at Grand Central Arts Center in Santa Ana, CA. Soto-Díaz composed and directed a unique performance that took place within her art installation and featured four black belt judokas, two art performers, and original sounds including texts she wrote along with other live-processed samples. As she … Read more
Circadian Etudes, by The Assembly For Distance Alchemy
I’m happy to share that this collective album is now released by Infrequent Seams! In spring 2021, the final quarter of the year when we were still in COVID lockdown and holding classes entirely remotely, I was teaching a seminar on improvisation as part of our PhD program in Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology (ICIT), and it happened that all … Read more
New video on Puentes Telemáticos / Telematic Bridges
I’m excited to share this new video about Puentes Telemáticos / Telematic Bridges, a telepresent, intercultural music course linking students from Santa Ana High School in CA and the Fundación Batuta in Manizales, Colombia. I made it for a showcase at the online Connected Learning Summit, which I’m looking forward to attending later this month. It has footage and student … Read more