Saxophonist Trish Clowes has been described as “one of the
most agile and original jugglers of improv and adventurous composition to have
appeared in the UK in recent times” (John Fordham, the Guardian). A BASCA
British Composer Award winner and former BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist,
Clowes has received critical acclaim for all four of her releases for Basho
Records.
Her My Iris quartet – with Chris Montague on guitar, Ross
Stanley on piano and Hammond organ and James Maddren on drums – has been hailed
as “the jazz of the future” (Augsburger Allgemaine). The band have toured and
performed in the UK, Ireland and Germany, including appearances at the Barbican
(EFG London Jazz Festival), the National Opera House (Wexford), Gateshead
International Jazz Festival, Turner Sims, Women in (e)motion Festival and the
Stadthaus Ulm.They have also recorded broadcasts
for BBC Radio 3 and Radio Bremen. Their 2017 album, also called ‘My Iris’,
received plaudits and acclaim from jazz critics. Dave Gelly of The Observer
wrote that ‘with just four players, the variety of tone colour is remarkable’
and Cormac Larkin in The Irish Times suggested that “(My Iris) represents the
front rank of the new generation of UK jazz.” My Iris will release a brand new
album in May 2019.
Born on May 11th 1984, Clowes was raised in Shrewsbury,
Shropshire and moved to London in 2003 to study at the Royal Academy of Music, notably
with saxophonist Iain Ballamy and composer Pete Churchill. Clowes was later
honoured as an Associate of the Royal Academy of Music (2013). She formed her
first group ‘Tangent’ following a development award from the Musicians
Benevolent Fund (now Help Musicians UK) in 2008. Clowes’ first album ‘Tangent’
in 2010 featured this band, special guest pianist Gwilym Simcock and an
orchestra conducted by Jules Buckley and was noted for its “promise – and
ambitious vision” (Guardian). Her second album ‘and in the night-time she is
there’ (2012) featured an improvising string quartet led by Thomas Gould and
Clowes recorded her “highly individual” (Schweiz am Sonntag) third album
‘Pocket Compass’ (2014) while a BBC Radio 3 New Generation Artist, working with
the BBC Concert Orchestra on three tracks.
Clowes has been commissioned by BBC Radio 3 on two occasions
to write for the BBC Concert Orchestra. The first commission, ‘The Fox, the
Parakeet and the Chestnut’, was premiered at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in 2014,
featuring a quintet with Gwilym Simcock, Mike Walker, Calum Gourlay and James
Maddren. The piece went on to win Clowes a BASCA British Composer Award in
2015. Clowes premiered her most recent commission, entitled ‘Loujean and Lucy’,
at the Royal Festival Hall in November 2017 as part of the EFG London Jazz
Festival – this time featuring just two soloists, Clowes and pianist Ross
Stanley. The piece celebrates the story of two women brought together through
the Homes for Syrians initiative. During the same concert Clowes and Stanley
made use of the hall’s famous organ, performing a duo version of Clowes’ ‘A cat
called Behemoth’ (inspired by a character in Bulgakov’s The Master and
Margarita).
Alongside her work as a performer and composer Clowes has
been curating her own new music project Emulsion since 2012, which she now
organises with saxophonist Tom Harrison. Emulsion has hosted various events and
festivals in London, Birmingham, Shrewsbury and at Cheltenham Music Festival,
receiving coverage on BBC Radio 3 along the way, and to date has commissioned
seventeen new works. Featured collaborators include ECM artists Food (Iain
Ballamy and Thomas Strønen), pianist-composers Nikki Iles and Robert Mitchell
and composers Joe Cutler and Cevanne Horrocks-Hopayian. Over the years the
project has received funding from PRS for Music Foundation, Arts Council
England, Musikfondene (Norway), Jerwood Charitable Foundation, Birmingham City
University and its own Kickstarter backers.
Other significant achievements include a television
appearance as part of BBC Proms Extra, a songs project called Under Your Wing
with vocalist Norma Winstone and guitarist Mike Walker (broadcast on BBC Radio
3, 2014), solo appearances with BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra (Celtic
Connections 2014) and Northern Sinfonia, a debut at Wigmore Hall (2015) with
the Heath Quartet and Gwilym Simcock and commissions for Onyx Brass and London
Sinfonietta.
After an inspirational experience at the Banff International
Jazz Workshop (2015, curated by Vijay Iyer), Clowes decided to research
Emulsion’s potential as an immersive performance space and is currently a PhD
candidate at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire with a STEAM Scholarship. Her
supervisory team includes Dr Nicholas Gebhardt, Dr Joe Cutler, Dr Tony Whyton,
Dr Vijay Iyer and Fiona Talkington.
The work of a musician goes beyond the stage and Clowes is
passionate about her roles as professor at the Guildhall School of Music and
Drama and ambassador for the charity Donate4Refugees.
Matthew Golombisky is a USA-born, Buenos
Aires-living acoustic & electric bassist, composer, improviser, conductor,
and educator who also wears many hats like the director/founder of independent
record label ears&eyes Records, (past) conductor & artistic director of
youth orchestra, Orquesta Creer Es Crear, in Avellaneda, Argentina, curriculum
developer, teaching artist and board member of 501(C)3 non-profit Institute for
Creative Music and in the past has taught in schools such as SPACE, Mynah
Music, Hilldale, Asheville Music schools, stage managed for Pitchfork Music
Festival, Hideout Block Party, The Swell Season, Peter, Bjørn & John,
DJ-ed/produced radio for WNUR 89.3FM, curated an annual ears&eyes
Festivals, ideated for Clorox, and wrote, composed and directed musical theatre
for Bizzo!.
Matthew has lived and been active in music,
festival, and film scenes in the San Francisco Bay Area, Chicago, New Orleans,
Buenos Aires Argentina, upstate New York, and Asheville NC, as well as toured
the USA and Europe with bands such as IfCM, NOMO, Zing!, Jhelisa,
Golombisky-Kirchner duo, WATIV, QMRplus, & more.
AllAboutJazz and writer Jakob Baekgaard
recently called Matthew a modern “renaissance man” (the article has more than
26,000 views/reads). He is a forward moving, fast acting, and busy artist.
Between his acoustic/electric bass performing, commissioned compositions
(including his work on Australian singer/songwriter Via Tania’s latest album,
featuring his Tomorrow Music Orchestra, his film scoring contributions to
Argentine director Alejo Domínguez’s feature film, La Soñada, or creating
improvisation teaching supplements for the Institute for Creative Music),
directing, filming and editing music videos and/or release trailers (ie.
Cuentos, Chad Taylor, Nate Lepine, TMO, Quintopus, Matija Dedic, blink.),
creating layout design work and/or photography for websites and albums (e&e.com,
Matija Dedic, Hood Smoke, Pedway, Quintopus), conducting, directing and
composing for at-risk youth orchestra, Orquesta Creer Es Crear in Argentina
where they performed in the tango-famed Teatro Roma, founding/directing
Chicago-based indie label, ears&eyes Records (2018 marks eleven years), and
now releasing his newest double EP cassette, Cuentos Vol. 1 & 2, just maybe
he can back AllAboutJazz’s forceful claim.
Matthew's undergraduate studies at the
University of North Carolina at Asheville led to a B.A. in Jazz Studies/Bass
Performance with an emphasis on 20th Century Classical music & theory,
while earning the Distinction in Music Award, and masters studies to a M.M. in
(classical) Composition from the University of New Orleans after a brief stint at
Northwestern University after Hurricane Katrina swept through New Orleans in
August 2005.
Matthew’s discography includes over 50
recordings featuring his performance, compositions, conducting, film scoring,
artwork/design, photography, recording/mixing, and/or production.
He has taught performance, improvisation,
composition, theory, recording techniques, and music marketing to children and
adults for 20 years in schools and colleges across the nation. He joined the
IfCM Collective to travel the USA, teaching clinics to high school and college
students his methods of composing, improvising and conducting. In 2013, he
teamed up with like-minded musicians/educators John Nash, Patrick Liddell and
Elisabeth Johnson and founded a not-your-typical music-school school in Oakland
CA to promote experiencing/learning music as a whole art form, as something
relevant and exciting, called Mynah Music. Most recently, he became the Music
Director and conductor of a youth orchestra in Buenos Aires, Argentina in a
government funded program inspired by Venezuela's El Sistema.
His composition style is wide ranging,
steeped in modern classical, experimental, experiential, thoughtful, jazz, rock
and pop genres, but never limits himself to anything and absorbs all music
listened to. He creates moods and aural images that captivate, intrigue,
invigorate, confuse and/or excite his audience.
Bright Dog Red (BDR), an improvising collective from Albany,
New York, fuses free improvisation, electronica, jazz, hip hop, psychedelia,
and noise music.
BDR debuted in September 2015. In short time, the band’s
regular performances have generated comparisons to “Mahavishnu Orchestra meets
Digable Planets” (Paul Schulman), “electronic Ahmad Jamal,” (Don Lucoff), and
to other psychedelic, jazz fusion, and hip hop luminaries.
In October 2018, BDR released “Means to the Ends,” the
group’s debut album on the influential Ropeadope Records label.
In addition to leader Joe Pignato, drums and concepts, BDR
features MC Cully, Electronic musician Cody Davies, Trumpeter Jarritt Sheel,
Saxophonist Mike LaBombard, and Bassist Anthony Berman.
Baltimore bass clarinetist, composer, and arranger Todd
Marcus is one of the few jazz artists worldwide to focus exclusively on use of
the bass clarinet as a solo instrument. While most uses of bass clarinet in
jazz typically lean towards avant-garde and free-music styles, Marcus’ playing
presents the instrument with a modern straight-ahead jazz approach. His music
swings hard with both fiery and introspective intensity but also maintains a
strong lyrical sensibility. Marcus has presented music for 15 years and along
the way received accolades including a Jazz Hero Award from the Jazz
Journalists Association in 2017, Maryland’s $25,000 Baker prize in 2014,
selections as a rising star by national jazz magazine Downbeat annually in its
annual critics poll since 2013, and an NPR pick for one of the top 10 jazz
albums of 2012, and a JazzTimes pick for one of the top 40 albums of 2015.
Born and raised in the northern New Jersey
suburbs of New York City, the half-Egyptian Marcus began music at age six with
early piano lessons. He picked up clarinet at age 10 first playing band then
classical music repertoire. While in high school, an English teacher who also played
New Orleans style jazz piano would introduce Marcus to jazz. But upon trying to
join the school’s jazz band, Marcus was told saxophones, not clarinets, were
the reed instruments allowed in the band and he was turned away.
In 1994 Marcus moved to Baltimore, MD to study political
science at Loyola University and again attempted to join the school’s big band.
This time Marcus was allowed to play and embraced the opportunity. With this
first exposure to modern jazz along with a friend’s borrowed jazz records of
artists like Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and John
Coltrane, Marcus began to further explore the music by learning improvisation
from records and teaching himself theory and harmony. “I started exploring and
realized I would have to figure out how to understand theory and harmony. So
I’d just mentally drill myself by thinking - Ok, what is the minor 7th of an E
dominant chord? – just exercises like that. And then of course, I learned a lot
by just sitting at the piano and plucking away till I could play chord
progressions.”
While at Loyola, Marcus also began volunteering at a local
chapter of Habitat for Humanity in west Baltimore’s Sandtown-Winchester
community. He soon began to build relationships with community members including
a life-long resident and pastor, Rev. C.W. Harris, who mentored him about the
African-American community’s rich legacy of the arts and jazz, segregation
challenges, and battles to overcome decades of poverty resulting from
destruction by 1960’s riots, flight by black professionals, and an influx of
drugs. Harris’ mentoring nurtured Marcus’ interest in Civil Rights era history,
its deep connection with the jazz music of that time, and Marcus’ feelings of
the need for greater racial reconciliation in America. With a resulting belief
in a need to be engaged in community based revitalization, Marcus left college
and in 1997 moved into the neighborhood doing community work by day and
pursuing his ongoing study of jazz at night.
1997 also marked an important move for Marcus musically as
he made the switch from clarinet to bass clarinet shortly after hearing the
work of jazz legend Eric Dolphy on the instrument. “I felt it offered a lot
more options than regular clarinet,” Marcus explains. “It hasn’t been easy
because of challenges the bass clarinet presents on a sonic and mechanical
level but I’ve worked to present the horn as an equal to saxophones in a
straight-ahead playing context. With so few examples of people playing bass
clarinet in modern jazz though, I think it’s ended up being an opportunity for
me to chart some new territory for the instrument.”
In late 1998 Marcus
returned to New Jersey to complete his college degree in urban studies with two
semesters at Rutgers University. While there however, he spent a majority of
his time at the school’s jazz department. Though not a music major, he was
accepted by audition into the department’s jazz combos getting his first
experience of performing in quartets, trios, and composing.
By mid 1999 Marcus
was back in Baltimore working again with Rev. Harris where together they have
worked since to run Intersection of Change (intersectionofchange.org), a
nonprofit addressing poverty related issues in the community. These efforts
have resulted in the establishment in 2000 of Martha’s Place, the
organization’s recovery program for women overcoming substance abuse and
homelessness, Jubilee Arts, a program established in 2008 to offer arts
classes, entrepreneurship, and community beautification for children and adults,
and Strength to Love II in 2016 which operates an urban to address the
community’s food desert crisis and need for employment opportunities. Work to
date has resulted in significant neighborhood community revitalization through
the full renovation of six previously vacant and dilapidated buildings,
transformation of 18 vacant lots into community green spaces and meditative
gardens, creation of a dozen neighborhood murals, and conversion of 96,000
sq./ft. of vacant lots into an urban farm.
Marcus’ music career
has also grown during these years as he has charted new ground on the bass
clarinet and developed as a composer and arranger with his Todd Marcus Quintet,
Quartet, Trio, and Duo as well as his nonet, The Todd Marcus Jazz Orchestra. In
2006 he released his debut album In Pursuit of the 9th Man with his Todd Marcus
Jazz Orchestra as well as his Todd Marcus Quartet’s 2012 release Inheritance.
He again featured his jazz orchestra with 2015’s Blues for Tahrir and a 2018
quintet album On These Streets.
Though self taught in jazz theory and composition, Marcus’
compositions draw largely on intricate but lyrical straight-ahead jazz,
classical influences, and over recent years have also increasingly explored the
Middle-Eastern sounds from his Egyptian-American heritage. His work includes
international performances, clinics, and radio play and he has worked with
other jazz artists such as Gary Bartz, Bennie Maupin, Don Byron, Larry Willis,
Odean Pope, Gary Thomas, Joel Frahm, Tim Warfield, Ralph Peterson, Warren Wolf,
Sean Jones, Xavier Davis, George Colligan, and Orrin Evans.
Marcus’s work includes regular performances in Baltimore,
Washington DC, New York, and Philadelphia as well international performances,
clinics, and radio play. He was a featured artist in 2017 Jazz Tales Festival
in Egypt, 2015 Cairo Jazz Festival in Egypt, and in 2005 at the 1st World Bass
Clarinet Convention in Rotterdam, Holland.
“My adult life has really been about being a part of and
serving my community by day and cultivating my music by night,” Marcus shares.
“I think I’ve always felt upset by the injustice of inequities in the world and
so being a part of my community has allowed me to specifically deal with
ongoing issues that stem from systemic racism and poverty. And at the same time,
my music has allowed me to try to create some beauty that hopefully unites
people across all races through the power of music.”
