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Matthew Steckler
About Me
Biographical Information
Dead Cat Bounce, Boston�s Outstanding Jazz Act (Boston Music
Awards, Phoenix Music Poll and Improper Bostonian) and recipient of
commissions from Meet the Composer and Chamber Music America, is
one of the few recent jazz bands to have arrived on the scene with its
own distinctive voice. Featuring four saxophones of all ranges plus
upright bass and drums, Dead Cat Bounce is the unique artistic vision of
Matt Steckler, its founder and leader. The group formed late in 1997 as a
recording project. Word of DCB�s high caliber as a performance
ensemble quickly spread, and now the group plays festivals, concert
series and notable clubs throughout North America.
Dead Cat Bounce invokes Charles Mingus and the World Saxophone
Quartet with their tightly arranged, swirling contrapuntal reeds and
multi-part, blues n� roots-infused tricky compositions (Jon Garelick,
the Boston Phoenix). Their eclectic approach to rhythm is informed by
traditions from the Caribbean, Deep South, Brazil, West Africa, Eastern
Europe and Detroit. In Dead Cat Bounce, solo and collective
improvisations energetically complement the poise of its ever-expanding
compositional repertoire. According to Dave Liebman, Dead Cat Bounce
does it all with exquisite writing, the subtle use of a bass-drum rhythm
section and above all a definite sense of communication between the
members that I am sure will be apparent to even the casual listener.
These young, Boston-based musicians are not just playing the music on
the page, but listening and communing together.
Dead Cat Bounce�s members are on the cutting edge of today�s
jazz, rock and world music scenes and have performed and recorded
with: Dave Douglas, Steve Lacy, Lonnie Plaxico, Roswell Rudd, Matt
Wilson, Anthony Braxton, Cecil McBee, Michael Cain, Pheeroan Aklaff,
Curtis Fowlkes, Leroy Jenkins, Bob Moses, the Either/Orchestra,
Miracle Orchestra, Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, the Fela
Project, as well as smaller groups in which individual members lead.
Most of DCB�s lineup attended the New England Conservatory of
Music in Boston and studied there with such renowned artists as Danilo
P�rez, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Bob Moses and Cecil McBee.
Dead Cat Bounce boasts a nuclear mailing list already thousands
strong, and is regularly advertised on the lists and websites of some of
the above-mentioned peripheral combos. The CDs Home Speaks to the
Wandering (Innova), Lucky By Association and Legends of the Nar
(Chonsky) are available for sale at all live Dead Cat Bounce
performances, online retail stores or at www.deadcatbounce.org.
Calendar
Wednesday, February 4, 2004
Persiflage @
The Pourhouse
Overground Series
790 Metropolitan Ave.
Brooklyn, NY 11211
(718) 599-0697
www.thepourhouse.com
9 pm o $5
(w/ Chris Van Voorst Van Beest,
Eliot Krimsky and Eric Thompson)
Saturday, February 7, 2004
Dead Cat Bounce @
The Center for Arts in Natick
14 Summer St.
Natick, MA 01760
(508) 647-0097
www.natickarts.org
8 pm o $12 adv/$14 day off
w/ James Merenda's Masked Marvels
DCB CD release tour:
Monday, February 16, 2004
Zeno�s
100 West College Ave.
State College, PA 16801
(814) 237-2857
10 pm o $3 o 21+
Tuesday, Feb. 17, 2004 o
The Smoke Daddy
1804 West Division St.
Chicago, IL 60622
(773) 772-MOJO
www.thesmokedaddy.com
9:30 pm o free o all ages
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
The Sanctuary
405 South Gilbert St.
Iowa City, IA 52240
(319) 351-5692
9 pm o $3 o all ages
Thursday, February 19, 2004
Washington University
Holmes Lounge Jazz Series
St. Louis, MO 63130
[email protected]
8 pm o no cover o all ages
(group clinicFri.-music school)
Friday, February 20, 2004
Pete Miller�s Steakhouse
412 N. Milwaukee Ave.
Wheeling, IL 60090
(847) 243-3700
www.petemillers.com
8:30 pm o no cover o all ages
Saturday, Feb. 21, 2004
5:01 Jazz Bar
501 Park St.
Columbus, OH 43215
(614) 464-0882
www.501jazzbar.com
10 pm o call for price o 21+
Sunday, February 22, 2004
Kerrytown Concert House
415 N. Fourth Ave
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
734-769-2999
www.kerrytown.com
8 pm o call for pricing o all ages
Monday, February 23, 2004
The Eye
4814 Penn Ave., Bloomfield
Pittsburgh, PA 15224
(412) 361-2393
8 pm o call for price o
with Impossible Shapes
Tuesday, February 24, 2004
The Regattabar
1 Bennett St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-876-7777
www.concertix.com
8:30 pm o $12 o all ages
CD RELEASE PARTY
Friday, February 28, 2004
Colby College
Coffeehouse Series
Waterville, ME 04901
[email protected]
8 pm o no cover o all ages
Sunday, April 4, 2004
Dead Cat Bounce @ CBGB's
Freestyle Jazz Series
313 Bowery
New York, NY 10003
(212) 677-0455
www.cbgb.com
festivities begin 7 pm
$10 - tell them who you came to see
Dead Cat Bounce Praise & Recognition
Recipient of a 2003 New Works: Presentation grant from Chamber
Music America/Doris Duke Charitable Foundation:
[Matt Steckler�s] whip-smart sextet of four saxes, bass, and drums
rolls through his multi-sectioned compositions with toe-tapping ease.
Skewed tangos, deviant marches, churchy hymns, and dissonant
abstraction, swing band riffs, collective improvisations, and individual
solos roll and tumble their way over funky vamps, swinging grooves and
unclassifiable beats. Great ensemble playing, high spirits, an endearing,
but twisted, sense of fun make Dead Cat�s second release a winner.
- Ed Hazell, Signal to Noise Magazine
I am sure you will be impressed by the great writing, the originality of
style, the wide variety of moods, individual solo efforts and most of all, a
real group that is single minded and totally involved in the music.
- Dave Liebman, saxophonist and multi-label recording artist
Winner of Boston Phoenix Best Music Poll 2001 and 2002 in the
category of Best Local Jazz Act:
Dead Cat Bounce epitomize the best of the Boston jazz scene � to
make the most of working outside conventional commercial structures,
to treat a band as a workshop of ideas, to look forward while drawing on
the best of the past. Think of Mingus�s swirling counterpoint and
rhythm shifts with the similarly rich voicings and solo-ensemble balance
of the World Saxophone Quartet. What more could you ask for?
- Jon Garelick, The Boston Phoenix
Winner of Best Local Jazz at the 2002 Boston Music Awards and a 2002
Meet the Composer grant to premiere the suite Home Speaks to the
Wandering in several cities on tour:
With Dead Cat Bounce twentysomething Boston saxophonist Matt
Steckler livens up the mix: incorporating a sensibility weaned on rock
and at least on speaking terms with jam bands, the music easily morphs
from straight-ahead jazz rhythms into a cool backbeat, a tango lilt, or a
punk-derived pulse� The writing offers enough variety to occasionally
make you forget that all the music comes from these same six guys.
- Neil Tesser, Chicago Reader Critic�s Choice
Critic�s Tip and Sound Choice honors from the Boston Globe 1/6/01
and 10/5/01:
The six-piece group� has become one of Boston�s most original jazz
units.
- Bob Blumenthal, Boston Globe
DCB revels in a reed-driven sound marked by sharply contrasting
forms, textures and tones...strident, joyful, lush and strutting use of a
horn section.
- Mike Joyce, Washington Post
Made of fresh ingredients, their music was all abrupt cadences, fast-
mutating sonorities and jagged surfaces, but it was polished brightly to
an impressive sheen, as the four-saxes-and-rhythm-section sextet just
gets better and better. Dead Cat Bounce presented uncompromisingly
challenging but often jubilant tunes� Smart, spirited and soulful, the
music rocked to exciting effect all night.
- Michael Hochanadel, the Daily Gazette (NYS)
Dead Cat Bounce is addictive...this group takes the sax quartet, mixes
in bass and drums, and ends up with the unique sound that results when
high caliber musicians share a musical vision and a love of innovation.
DCB possesses these qualities, which combine to make Legends of the
Nar a triumph.
- Katie DeBonville, Northeast Performer, Spotlites Section
[Dead Cat Bounce�s] reputation � for knife-sharp technique, and
formal and stylistic elasticity � is quickly beginning to precede them.
The Cats drop proverbial science with headstrong melodic and
structural foundations, Mingus-tinged arrangement sensibilities, and an
almost Mancini-like accessibility and playfulness. They conjure solid,
straightforward grooves as well as more interstellar regions, while
continually presenting tight riffs, and expressing memorable melodies.
- Jordan Weeks, Pittsburgh City Paper
Working some of the outside-the-box terrain favored by bands such as
the 29th Street Sax Quartet and the World Sax Quartet� Dead Cat
Bounce manages to blend serious composition and improvisation with
wit, never an easy trick to pull off.
- Bob Young, Boston Herald
The solos are almost always exciting. The compositions nicely combine
a gritty, bluesy feel with intricate, catchy heads. The final product is fun,
good music, probably a lot of fun to shake your hips to. In other words,
this is definitely worth a listen, and then several more.
- Eric Saidel, Cadence Magazine
Matt Steckler intones the frivolous and laughable - the distinctly non-
uptight - with his compositions on Dead Cat Bounce�s Lucky By
Association. [He] proves himself a talented composer, and this group
shows substantial potential in revealing the best in his material.
- Jonathan Babu, Northeast Performer Magazine, Spotlites Section
o Featured on WGBH�s Eric in the Evening 10/01 and 1/02; on
WERS 88.9 FM Boston as part of Live Music Week 4/99 and 4/00; on
WBUR/National Public Radio 90.9 FM�s Hear & Now 7/00; WEMU
Ann Arbor, WGYU Grand Rapids, Miles Ahead Jazz Radio Chicago,
KDHX St. Louis, KCCK Cedar Rapids