Other Minds Festival 25: Concert 3

Joelle Leandre is a master-architect whose medium is idea-craft. Impeccable musicianship and a singular talent for the seamless integration of a panoply of techniques make her amongst Europe’s leading bassists in both the world of new music and free improvisation. She’s performed with l’Itinéraire, 2e2m and Pierre Boulez’s Ensemble Intercontemporain and has realized works specifically composed for her by Cage, Scelsi, Lacy, and Clementi among others. Improvisatory collaborators include Derek Bailey, Anthony Braxton, George Lewis, Irene Schweizer, Barre Phillips, Steve Lacy, John Zorn, and India Cooke. At present, her oeuvre boasts over 200 recordings, teaching appointments at Mills College, and residencies in Berlin and Kyoto.

Lauren Newton‘s spiraling, clarion vocalise is a recombinant force, de-contextualizing syllabic sounds and rearranging breath-born sonorities in accordance with the sort of logic of poetics that makes possible interactive improvisatory performance. She’s worked with luminaries as diverse as Anthony Braxton, Jon Rose, Vladimir Tarasov, Joelle Leandre, and Aki Takase and has lent her considerable talents to the Vienna Art Orchestra and the European Chaos String Quintet. Her sparkling creativity has led her to cross-disciplinary ventures such as radio plays, dance productions, and the performance of challenging contemporary works written for her by A. Hölszky, B. Konrad, W. Dauner, H.J. Hespos, and H. Zerbe.

The music of Wadada Leo Smith is comprised of brilliant flurries of pearlescant orbital light, each a well of potential to be drawn from by anyone brave enough to call out in their own unique voice. A trumpeter, multi-instrumentalist, composer-improviser, and scholar; Smith’s music arises from an admiration of each individual’s tone-colors and a systematized creative practice which has contributed to the formation his original musical language, Ankhrasmation. He is amongst the most prolific and celebrated musicians of the AACM, receiving honors and distinctions from the Doris Duke Award, DownBeat Magazine, the Jazz Journalists Association, and the Pulitzer Prize (for which he was a finalist in 2013). Wadada Leo Smith additionally has a proud history teaching and mentoring at universities nation-wide, including The University of New Haven, Bard College, and CalArts, from whom he was awarded and honorary doctorate and is now celebrated as Faculty Emeritus.

Amirtha Kidambi’s unparalleled ingenuity as a vocalist draws deeply from variegated, interstitial streams: studies in Carnatic music, formal training in classical music including forays into the experimental-avant garde, and a zeal for the free jazz of Alice and John Coltrane all converge to produce a vocal technique acutely sensitive to the sonority of each phoneme in and of itself. Kidambi’s voice and harmonium playing lead with august gusto in Elder Ones (her quartet with Matt Nelson, Max Jaffe, and Nick Dunston), which Ben Ratliff of the New York Times has referred to as “a gauge for how strong and flexible the scene of young musicians in New York’s improvised and experimental music world can be.” In addition to leading Elder Ones, Kidambi serves on the faculty of the New School, regularly performs with Mary Halvorsen, Darius Jones, and Lea Bertucci and has collaborated with Tyshawn Sorey, Matana Roberts, and Ingrid Laubrock amongst many others.

The music of Darius Jones gales and glistens as his superlative melodic sensibility and superior command of the saxophone work in concert to produce spellbinding, air-enriching improvisations. Based in New York City since 2005, Jones is widely regarded by critics (including writers for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and DownBeat) as an exquisite musician who’s time-large, entirely singular artistry simultaneously engages African-American music’s rich history while presenting a compelling vision of its present, extending to the beyond in recording projects “evocative of Black Futurism.” His peerless creativity as a composer and performer has brought him to stages as elevated as Carnegie Hall and ensembles featuring all-time greats such as Gerald Cleaver, Oliver Lake, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Mike Reed, Nasheet Waits, Marshall Allen, Tyshawn Sorey, Amirtha Kidambi Steve Lehman, the Sun Ra Arkestra, Fay Victor, Matthew Shipp, and many others.