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Matt Choboter
Award-winning Canadian composer and pianist, Matt Choboter’s music paints subliminal sound narratives between the cracks of avant-jazz, experimental and contemporary classical. Informed by non-western cultures and eclectic spiritualism, he embraces liminal psychology and dream work; immersive explorations into wild nature; a rather sentient, animistic existential orientation; and a musical practice which absorbs particular features of South Indian classical and Balinese Gamelan.
Choboter’s music invites reflection into the deep past whether on a personal or collective scale. This reflects itself in his travels to places like Chennai (studying oral musical traditions of South India), Delphi (explorations into myths of ancient Greece) and the Dordogne Valley (delving into palaeolithic cave art of southern France).
Matt makes music with international artists like Lotte Anker, Trichy Sankaran, Maria Faust, Peter Bruun, François Houle, Peggy Lee, and Simon Toldam. A member of Inner Circle Music (NY) , ILK Music (DK) and Songlines Recordings (CA), his music has been described as: “post-jazz of a distinctly personalized kind” (Ron Schepper of Textura); “Densely expressive music” with a “dreamlike aura” (Fabricio Vieira); music that is “reminiscent of very original film music” (Ken Vos).
Choboter’s recent release “Sleep Inertia” was heralded “Best Jazz of 2022” (All About Jazz, U.S.A) and “Best Jazz on Bandcamp for July 2022” (Dave Sumner). Sumner writes that the music is – “at times heavy and impenetrable, other times soft and ethereal, but always in motion and perpetually transforming”.
Based in Copenhagen, Matt holds an Advanced Post Diploma in Composition and research from the Rhythmic Music Conservatory. His “microtonal prepared piano” continues to be a nucleus for surprising and ambitious chamber ensemble-commissioned formats.
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Matt Choboter And Tania Giannouli: Pianistics
by Doug Collette
More than merely a study in contrasts, these recordings by Matt Choboter and Tania Giannouli are mirror images of each other. Both artists take markedly different approaches to illustrate the versatility of the three-hundred plus year old percussion instrument that is the piano. On the one hand, Giannouli's recording is the definition of bare-bones, at least on the surface. But as a composite of her alone in front of an audience, taken from multiple concerts, deep in the spirit of ...
read moreDoug Collette's Best Jazz Albums Of 2022
by Doug Collette
Just the tip of the proverbial iceberg... in alphabetical order... Joey Alexander Origin Mack Avenue Records Will BernardPond Life Dreck to Disk Matt Choboter's Hypnopompia Sleep Inertia Songlines Recordings Goldings / Bernstein / StewartPerpetual Pendulum Smoke Sessions Records Gordon Grdina Oddly Enough: The Music of Tim Berne Attaboygirl Records
read moreMatt Choboter's Hypnopompia: Sleep Inertia
by Doug Collette
In keeping with its title, these eight tracks of just over fifty-minutes comprise a waking/sleeping dreamscape where conscious thoughts crystallize. then turn amorphous in an engrossing cyclical pattern. The fourteen or so minutes of the two-part “Converging Diverging" elucidate the most literal instrumental explication of the concept: replete with far too much ornate detail to fit the description of free jazz, the musicianship nevertheless radiates an abiding spontaneity with all instrumental commentary and elaboration/embellishment from around the quintet.Canadian ...
read more“Hearing Matt is, first and foremost, an emotional experience. Knowledge, virtuosity and sound are at the service of a vision, and Matt’s fearlessness and dedication grab you and never let go. He displays the same intensity in his highly personal compositions, which always tell a story and stay on the listener’s mind for a long time.” (Jean-Michel Pilc, Pianist)
