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 … Read more
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!
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
Three years ago, I posted here about playing in the premieres of Central Park Five, the brilliant and moving opera by Anthony Davis. I am fortunate to have studied with Anthony in the ’90s and as I wrote in that tribute, Anthony deepened my understanding of Duke Ellington’s music (among … Read more
Mark Dresser gave an incredible recital recently at UCSD, sharing his wide creative range as both an improviser and composer. I enjoyed playing as a guest performer on a couple of his compositions that we performed as a duo, “Gloaming” and “Hobby Lobby Horse.” These are pieces we originally developed … Read more
I enjoyed performing again on LA’s homegrown Angel City Jazz Festival, playing with Mark Dresser’s incredible quintet featuring Chris Speed, Joshua White and Mark Ferber. It was great to play for an in-person audience at REDCAT, after so long playing only in online formats! I’m grateful to Rocco Samazzi and … Read more
It was a joy as always to play a concert with Myra Melford and Mark Dresser recently, in this case a live telematic performance presented by Simon Rentner’s WBGO podcast, The Checkout. We played together from 3 separate locations in California, using low latency software. The three of us have … Read more
I am always grateful for a chance to perform with Anthony Davis and Mark Dresser, but never more than this concert, my first time performing with people in the same room in over a year. The streaming concert was a benefit to raise funds for Feed San Diego, through the … Read more