Results for "experimental"

Sharada Shashidhar

Los Angeles-based vocalist, composer, and producer Sharada Shashidhar has a deep awareness of the cosmos. There’s a distinct tug-of-war in her music, an understanding that scanning the heavens to answer existential queries isn’t quite enough; there are internal depths to plumb as well. Shashidhar’s first album, 2020’s Rahu, found her voice billowing out of smoky, post-beat-scene soundscapes, meditating on the collective unconscious and the energy exchange between all living things. Her newest work, Soft Echoes, is a bold step forward, eschewing her previous work’s hip-hop tilt for expansive compositions that blend jazz and Indian classical influences into a swirling, spiritual whole.

Though she has an extensive resume as a collaborator in LA’s experimental jazz scene, notching work with the likes of Carlos Niño, Zeroh, and the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra, Soft Echoes marks Shashidhar’s first outing as a bandleader. Gathering an ensemble that includes Anna Butters on bass, Julian Rodriguez on keys, Devin Daniels on saxophone, and Timothy Angulo on drums, Shashidhar sought to create a band that ostensibly functioned as an extension of herself. Her primary goals in writing these songs were to “let [her] body do what it wanted to do,” to trust her intuition, and “play without judgment.” Through that process, making Soft Echoes became a practice of presence and exploration, a chance to unlearn rigid structures and rediscover the joy of creating for oneself.

Recording took place over three brief, distinct sessions at Altamira Sound in Alhambra, California. Though the full band wasn’t ever present at the same time, Soft Echoes sounds like the work of a group in complete, mind-meld focus. Splashy drums nudge up against skronkingsaxophone on “Canyon Song,” while mushrooming synth tones stack up behind rippling Rhodes piano on “Luckiest.” Shashidhar’s elegant voice is the anchor for each of these tracks, sometimes gracefully stretching between instruments like a lithe dancer’s limbs, other times scattering through psychedelic delay.

She describes the album as having “two poles,” illustrated by the whimsical, buoyant opener “Soft Echoes” and the darker, more anxiety-ridden closer, “New Echoes.” The songs in between may come from different emotional spaces, but “it’s all really reflective,” she explains. The album can play like a loop, with Shashidhar entering a portal “into the endlessness” during “New Echoes,” only to be transported back to the beginning, full of gratitude and pondering “how strange it is to be alive.” On Soft Echoes, Shashidhar leads us on a journey through her mind, traversing its peaks and canyons in search of greater connection. “I want to take people places,” she says, pausing thoughtfully. “I can’t always guarantee that they’re good places, [but] hopefully you’ll feel something.”

Naomi Moon Siegel

Born: August 18, 1984

An award-winning trombonist, improviser, composer, and educator, Naomi Moon Siegel is committed to creating a positive, transformative music culture beyond conventional genre norms. Her original musical vocabulary draws on the richness of a variety of global musical traditions and the sonorities of the natural world.

Siegel has been an innovative performer and recording artist since graduating from Oberlin Conservatory in 2006. She explores the trombone as a vehicle for sonic expression colored by breath, spit, and physicality. As a composer and bandleader, Siegel has released two albums to critical acclaim. Her third album, “Shatter The Glass Sanctuary,” produced by Siegel and Allison Miller, is slated to come out in 2024, inspired by the theme of holding paradox in our troublesome and beautiful world.

Stefano Pisu

Born: August 4, 1974

European drummer, composer, sound designer and producer, deals mainly with Free Jazz, Modal jazz, Avant-Garde Jazz, Post Bop.

His style is characterized on the one side by a highly experimental approach especially as a composer and through unusual everyday electric tools played as musical instruments (demolition hammer, tig welder, ect) and with a component of electronic and noise music, on the other side the approach of a traditional jazz performance, free jazz, hard bop and avant-garde,  as a musician with drums.

Bex Burch

Born: May, 1984

Composer, percussionist, producer and instrument maker Bex Burch has employed handmade xylophones and percussive instruments to carve out a unique sonic space. Her restless creativity and desire to embrace new challenges has seen her music straddle minimalism, avant-garde, post-punk, and improvisation with equal success.

Burch’s critically acclaimed 2023 solo album, 'There is only love and fear' was released via Chicago’s International Anthem and named The Guardian's Contemporary Album of the Month. She has previously released music as part of Boing! with Leafcutter John, and Flock with Sarathy Korwar and The Comet Is Coming’s Danalogue. She runs the band and label Vula Viel and has collaborated with influential artists like Peter Zummo, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Ben LaMar Gay, and Dan Bitney.

Amy Aileen Wood

Amy Aileen Wood is a Grammy Award winning drummer and producer based in Los Angeles. In addition to her work behind the drum kit, Wood is a composer, engineer and mulit-intrumentalist. 

Her percussive sounds can be heard on Fiona Apple’s 2020 record Fetch the Bolt Cutters, which Amy co-produced. Most recently, she composed the score for the Netflix documentary White Hot and released her debut album The Heartening on Colorfield Records.

Over the past decade, Amy has performed live or recorded with a variety of artists including
Fiona Apple, David Garza, Tired Pony, Shirley Manson, Blake Mills, Lucy Woodward, Ultan Conlon, The Donnies The Amys.

Ultraviolet

Active since: 2013

Formed on Vancouver Island, within the unceded, traditional territory of the Kómoks First Nation, Ultraviolet is a groovy, cinematic music project that comprises guitarist Oscar Robles Diaz (from Mexico City), bassist/vocalist Brittany Christina Bowman (from the Comox Valley), and drummer Beau Stocker (from Toronto). These three come from different backgrounds, both geographically and musically speaking, and their combined touring curriculum boasts performance experience in Latin America, Asia, the United Kingdom, Europe, and Canada.

A far-reaching river of influences and the members’ collective interests in spontaneous composition combine to present a palette of ever-evolving musical ideas unique to each performance. The result is a genre-defying sound that has been described as “refreshingly creative” and “equal parts mysterious, groovy and spacey.” 

Greg Hammontree

Greg Hammontree is a dynamic NYC multi-instrumentalist and composer, whose extensive credits range from The Blue Note NYC, Radio City Music Hall, Symphony Space, and The Jazz Standard to Bing Concert Hall (Stanford), The Kaufman Center (Kansas City), and Concert House Berlin (Germany). His appearances include Netflix, CBS, HBO, RAI, PBS, and ABC, and he's enjoyed opening for such popular names as Josh Groban, Ginuwine, and Christian McBride.

Hammontree currently tours internationally with The Queen’s Cartoonists. They regularly headline at performing arts centers and jazz festivals, and have opened for the New York Philharmonic. As an arranger and composer, Hammontree has worked for various artists such as Jason Trachtenburg (Late Night with Conan O'Brien & MTV) in addition to his own new music.

Marcus Gilmore

Born: October 10, 1986

Marcus Gilmore is a multi-Grammy award winning drummer, composer, producer, and educator.  

The New York based musician has been recognized with numerous awards, residencies, and fellowships - including becoming a 2018 - 2019 Protege in the Annual Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. 

Gilmore, in all his playing, integrates a unique style where he is musically expanding rhythm, while supporting the great musicians with whom he plays.  He has had the distinct privilege of performing/recording with Mulatu Astatke, Chick Corea, Pharoah Sanders, Savion Glover, Pat Metheny, Ambrose Akinmusire, Gonzalo Rubalcaba ,Clark Terry, Wynton Marsalis, Ravi Coltrane, Common, Flying Lotus, Robert Glasper, Natalie Cole, Steve Coleman, Vijay Iyer, Derrick Hodge, Chief Xian aTunde Adjuah, Thundercat, Brad Mehldau, Cassandra Wilson, Nicholas Payton, Jill Scott, Talib Kweli, Queen Latifah, Norah Jones, Black Thought, Zakir Hussain, The Cadillacs, Bilal, Terrence Blanchard, Roy Hargrove, Terrace Martin, Taylor Mcferrin, and Fred Armisen.

Hilde Marie Holsen

Norwegian Hilde Marie Holsen has carved out something very particular and niche in music. Processing her trumpet in the electronic realm, she blends the mournful tone of the brass instrument with the explorative field of electronic music to make music that lists somewhere between jazz, the contemporary and drone music. Holsen’s music has unpicked the frayed boundaries of traditions, calling in a new generation of artists that abandoned stale and repetitive conventions in favour of establishing something unique, in the realms of contemporary music.

Holsen’s debut album «Ask» was released on the Norwegian label Hubro in 2015, and hit the shelves with critical acclaim from amongst others The Guardian, The Wire and The Quietus

Ashlae Blume

Born: March 28

Ashlae Blume is an American musician, composer and producer based in and out of New Orleans and New York City.

Born in Baltimore, they began to study piano and trumpet at the age of 5, and were composing music as early as age 6. Upon moving to New Orleans in 2008, Ashlae began performing regularly both in and out of clubs as a vocalist, accordionist, pianist, and trumpetist. They have gone on several tours throughout North America and Europe, leading projects of original music, hot jazz, and solo performance, in addition to playing with a wide variety of other groups.

Their primary musical project, Laelume, has a rotating cast of characters, and is a concept body of work that draws on elements from minimalism, genres of global folk music, jazz and black american music