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Nate Wooley
Nate currently resides in Jersey City, NJ and performs solo trumpet improvisations as well as with his trio Blue Collar with Steve Swell and Tatsuya Nakatani. He has also performed regularly with Anthony Braxton, Bhob Rainey, Alessandro Bosetti, Fritz Welch, Herb Robertson, Kevin Norton, Tony Malaby, Randy Peterson, Scott Rosenberg, Matt Moran, Chris Speed, Andrew D’Angelo, Tim Barnes, Okkyung Lee, Assif Tsahar, and other improvisation luminaries.
" Nate has striven to blur the demarcations between tonality and texture, extreme sound and the protracted use of silence, nervous energy and an almost painful amount of patience. His trumpet playing is a obscene distillation of Booker Little, Leo Smith, Axel Dorner, and Bill Dixon. The scary part is how powerfully 'Nate' this distillation is. His solo shows have made me revisit all of my childhood fears while he has enough straight up jazz prowess to rival almost anybody in New York. "
" If you were to draw a graph of the dynamics of Nate Wooley's playing there would be no sudden spikes. Each peak and valley would be approached with a thoughtful curve. He plays with great timbral variety, but every sound is musical. "
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Ivo Perelman and Nate Wooley: Polarity 3
by Hrayr Attarian
The stimulating Polarity 3 is the third installment in a series of spontaneous duets between innovative saxophonist Ivo Perelman and equally creative trumpeter Nate Wooley. On these 10 tracks, the two improvisers use silent pauses to craft haunting atmospheres and contemplative melodies. The performances are akin to two complimentary yet independent introspective musings. Languid, wistful tones from both men start off the opener “One." The soft howls and undulating refrains are interspersed in the hypnotic quietude and thus ...
Continue ReadingModney: Ascending Primes
by Vincenzo Roggero
"Ascender" ti investe con la forza di un uragano. Poco più di sette minuti dove il solitario violino di Joshua Modney, collegato ad un pedale distorsore, scatena un'onda d'urto di emozioni che stordisce. Ingannati da un inizio che ha le cadenze di una ballata folk improvvisamente il suono si stratifica, ruggisce, deborda in rumore, rende lo spazio denso e grumoso salvo poi scivolare in una dolcezza apparente, strattonata com'è da dissonanze e armonici. È l'apertura di Ascending Primes, ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier: Chimaera
by John Sharpe
Even though pianist Sylvie Courvoisier has bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen on hand for Chimaera, the six-piece band is a long way from being merely the storied threesome, which made Double Windsor (Tzadik, 2014), D'Agala (Intakt, 2018) and Free Hoops (Intakt, 2020), plus added guests. As she explains in the liners, the music was originally commissioned for the 2021 Sons d'Hiver festival in Paris and was inspired by the surreal works of French Symbolist artist ...
Continue ReadingChes Smith: Laugh Ash
by Glenn Astarita
Ches Smith's Laugh Ash is not your garden-variety jazz concoction. Instead, it is a genre-defying, shape-twisting auditory escapade that does not just push the envelope--it sends it soaring into the stratosphere. It is both bewildering and bedazzling. These compositions stand as a towering testament to Smith's impressive acumen as a drummer, percussionist, and composer, a veritable Houdini of the music world who escapes the shackles of convention to chart a mesmerizing course through uncharted musical terrains.Right from the ...
Continue ReadingChes Smith: Laugh Ash
by Vic Albani
Dopo lo straordinario lavoro dedicato al Vudù haitiano del 2021 (Path of Seven Colors) anch'esso uscito per la straordinaria Pyroclastic Records di Kris Davis, il batterista, percussionista e compositore Ches Smith, acclamato dal New York Times come “uno dei batteristi più dinamici della scena sperimentale del pianeta," colpisce ancora con un nuovo sorprendente lavoro immensamente variegato, sorprendente (bisognerebbe scriverlo almeno due volte una dopo l'altra) ed imprevedibile sotto ogni punto di vista. La singolare visione musicale del musicista ...
Continue ReadingIvo Perelman, Nate Wooley, Mat Maneri, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Joe Morris, Matt Moran: Seven Skies Orchestra
by Hrayr Attarian
Ever the intrepid innovator, saxophonist Ivo Perelman takes his music in a new direction on the double-disc set, Seven Skies Orchestra. After a long series, primarily of duets, Perelman returns to a larger ensemble setting, a sextet in this case. That is not the only difference between this release and his previous output; the music here, although still entirely improvised and easily recognizable as Perelman's, moves in a more spacious, contemplative direction, less introspective and more outgoing. Vibraphonist ...
Continue ReadingSylvie Courvoisier: Chimaera
by Troy Dostert
It says something about pianist Sylvie Courvoisier's current profile in creative jazz that she could assemble such a distinguished ensemble for her latest release, Chimaera. Augmenting her usual trio of bassist Drew Gress and drummer Kenny Wollesen are trumpeters Wadada Leo Smith and Nate Wooley, and with the always interesting Christian Fennesz completing the group on guitar and electronics, one would expect extraordinary results. And so they are--worthy of a lengthy, two-CD treatment, in fact. Courvoisier's work with ...
Continue ReadingStLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Ikue Mori & Nate Wooley
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St. Louis Jazz Notes by Dean Minderman
This week's grab-bag of videos features electronic musician Ikue Mori and trumpeter Nate Wooley, who will be performing in a concert presented by New Music Circle next Saturday, February 18 at The Luminary. Mori, 63, is a Japanese native who first gained recognition in the late 1970s as the drummer for the NYC-based “No Wave" band DNA. She subsequently began working with drum machines and electronics, eventually abandoning the drums entirely for a laptop computer, which remains her preferred instrument. ...
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Nate Wooley / Scott R. Looney / Damon Smith / Weasel Walter - Scowl (Ugexplode, 2011) ****a1/2
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Free Jazz by Stef Gijssels
By Paul Acquaro I wonder what would make music like 'Scowl' of interest to the 'lay' listener? I suppose this is a question that has been asked in varying ways many times before, and no doubt will continue to be asked as members enter and (dare I say?) leave the fold of avant-garde jazz. I don't pretend to have an answer, nor will I even posit a theory, all I can offer is that It is a compelling listen that ...
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Nate Wooley Keeps On Getting Better: "(Put Your) Hands Together"
Source:
Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards
With Nate Wooley, and with his latest quintet album (Put Your) Hands Together (Clean Feed CF218CD), there is plenty to suggest that growth is a factor. Nate as an artist, trumpet-composer-bandleader, does not stand still. It's a very balanced album with a band that provides the freewheeling solo work you would expect from Nate's outfit, yet also has developed an ensemble sound, thanks in part to Nate's compositions-arrangements, but also thanks to the sensibilities of the players involved. Some of ...
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Nate Wooley - Trumpet/Amplifier (Smeraldina-Rima 2011) *****
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Free Jazz by Stef Gijssels
By Joe Higham This is one of the strangest records I've listened to in a while, and yet it's also an easy record to give 5 stars to simply because what you hear on this record defies any expectations of what a solo trumpet record, even with an amplifier, would or should sound like. It's this second element, the amplifier, which defines the outcome of Nate Wooley's sound explorations. I use the expression 'sound exploration' as what you hear on ...
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Nate Wooley - (Put Your) Hands Together (Clean Feed, 2011)
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Music and More by Tim Niland
Trumpeter Nate Wooley has played in a plethora of situations from relitavely straight post-bop to free improvisation. On this Clean Feed date, he combines all on these influences in a very well donce album where he is joined by Josh Sinton on bass clarinet, Matt Moran on vibraphone, Eivind Opsvik on bass and Harris Eisenstadt on drums.
The three part “Shandra Lee" shows the band that their most open and abstract. Part One has Wooley playing solo, spare and lyrical ...
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Interview | Nate Wooley
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Ars Nova Workshop
On March 5, Ars Nova Workshop presents a performance at Vox Populi by trumpeter Nate Wooley, violinist and electronicist C. Spencer Yeh, cellist Okkyung Lee, and percussionist Paul Lytton. With expansive avant-garde affiliations – noise, jazz, free improv, downtown – Wooley assembled this quartet “to see if a collision of forward thinking practitioners of each of these histories will create something greater than a well-thought out musical fusion." This Philadelphia concert is the third stop on a Wooley-Lytton US tour, ...
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Free-Jazz Manifestoes Declared Nightly
Source:
Michael Ricci
Nate Wooley, sitting and aiming his trumpet toward a microphone about four feet in front of him, played free improvisation almost without affect. On Monday, at the Lower East Side bar Local 269, he was a third of the band Crackleknob, the guitarist Mary Halvorson, the bassist Reuben Radding.
Mr. Wooley used a lot of extended technique, of which there's been a long history in free jazz: drawn-out tones decaying into hisses and pops, sucking air inward through the instrument, ...
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Nate Wooley and Paul Lytton - Creak Above 33 (Psi)
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Master of a Small House
A truism easily lost in the primacy of pedagogy, but some of the best musical moments occur when the getting from Point A to Point B remains a mystery. Trumpeter Nate Wooley comes to this conclusion in his brief, but fascinating notes to this release. His conclaves with British percussionist/electronicist Paul Lytton initiated a fundamental reassessment in his philosophy toward music-making. Lytton presaged this sea change through the formulation of what Wooley refers to as a “mind map", a hand-drawn ...
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Nate Wooley Quintet to Perform Hands Together at Douglass Street Music Collective May 24th, 2010
Source:
Michael Ricci
The Nate Wooley Quintet will be the featured performers at one of Brooklyns greatest new underground venues for jazz music on May 24th. The quintet, which premiered last year at The Stone, highlights compositions of its leader, Nate Wooley for his trumpet with the support of Matt Moran on vibraphone, Josh Sinton on bass clarinet, Eivind Opsvik on bass, and Harris Eisenstadt on drums. The group has been working through a series of new compositions, called Hands Together, that pay ...
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Nate Wooley Quintet Performs Special Easter Concert
Source:
Michael Ricci
The Nate Wooley Quintet stretches the limits of traditional context. Although the orchestration harkens back to the Blue Note recordings of Eric Dolphy, Wooley's compositions cover a much wider stylistic swath, from the jazz experimentalism and third stream sensibilities of trumpeters like Don Ellis and Shorty Rogers to the rigorous DIY canons of James Tenney, with stops at American lyricism and folk music and harsh noise along the way. Wooley has assembled a quintet of some of New York's finest ...
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Photos
Music
Ascender
From: Ascending PrimesBy Nate Wooley
Returning to Drown Myself, Finally
From: Ancient Songs of Burlap HeroesBy Nate Wooley
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