ONE-TWO-THREE-GO!
Concert #7
Sunday, January 6, 2002 at 4:30 PM
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ALEXANDRA MONTANO, MATT MORAN & MARK DRESSER
music for voice, vibes, & acoustic bass
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Mark Dresser
Aperitivo (2001)
Matt Moran
complication, consternation, contemplation (2002)Alexandra Montano
Voice Alone with Vibes (2000/2002)Mark Dresser
Hydrology (2001)Alexandra Montano
Sanftmütig Sein (2000)Mark Dresser
Between 17th and Bliss (2001)
Matt Moran
something (1998)Matt Moran
Get Rick Quick! (1999)
Alexandra Montano
Watermelon (1998)===================================================================================
ALEXANDRA MONTANO, "whose voice one could listen to for hours" (New York Times), has written music for film and various vocal and instrumental ensembles. As a singer she has premiered works by composers Philip Glass, Tan Dun, David Lang and Meredith Monk. Also active in the Baroque music scene, she has performed as soloist in Bach's B minor Mass at Avery Fischer Hall. She is the mother of Gabriel and Luna and loves to road bike, cook chickpeas in coconut milk, and play the guitar and piano.
Vibraphonist and composer MATT MORAN has performed and recorded with artists as diverse as Gunther Schuller, Lionel Hampton, Paul Bley, Combustible Edison, Mark Dresser, and Merita Halili. His distinctive sound is integral to a group of emerging New York musicians who push the boundaries of composition in jazz, and of improvisation in composed music.
In May of 1995 Moran received a Master of Music degree in jazz composition from New England Conservatory in Boston, where he studied with the visionary composer and multi-instrumentalist Joseph Maneri. Since moving to New York in 1995 he has performed extensively both as leader and sideman, including billings for the Knitting Factory's What Is Jazz? Festival, the JVC Jazz Festival, the Panasonic Village Jazz Festival, Lincoln Center Out-of-Doors, and the Vision Festival, as well as leading tours in the U.S. and Europe.
TimeOut New York praises Moran and his collaborators for "such unusual breadth and wonderful inconsistency that calling it simply 'jazz' paints it into an inaccurate corner. Their performances don't focus on displays of whirring virtuosity (though that's certainly a part) or even on the nebulous quality of 'soul.' Instead, the musicians attempt to work beyond or outside the patterns to which they would ordinarily gravitate. Traditions are somehow upheld while being transformed, and the concerts often become vortices of focus and concentration, though mistakes are encouraged. Every show is drastically different." The Village Voice describes his playing as "superb, technically ingenious...when Moran's short-fuse pauses ignite into four-malleted pyrotechnics, it's like hearing an angel have a seizure."
Moran has increasingly been recognized as an important new voice in New York. In April 2001 the Brooklyn Academy of Music premiered Moran's Berance, a piece commissioned by BAM Café, which brought Balkan music into a new music context. Composers' Recordings Inc. recently issued the debut CD by Sideshow, Moran's project dedicated to the songs of Charles Ives. In October of 2000 Moran received funding from the Trust for Mutual Understanding to bring Slavic Soul Party! to Macedonia, where the group presented their take on Balkan music, and met with Macedonian traditional musicians. Moran has also received funding from Meet the Composer.
Moran is also active as a performer, teacher, and curator in the Balkan folk music scene, playing traditional percussion with Lefteris Bournias, the Kolevi 6, Merita Halili, and other master musicians from the Balkans who have immigrated to New York. With Slavic Soul Party!, Moran provided the inspiration for Balkan Cabaret, a downtown music series for Balkan and Balkan-inspired music.
Moran currently leads the groups Sideshow and Slavic Soul Party! He is also a member of John Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet, the Mat Maneri Quintet, Theo Bleckmann's ensemble, Ellery Eskelin's ensemble, the Kolevi 6, and Zlatne Uste Balkan Brass Band.
MARK DRESSER, has been composing, performing, solo contrabass and ensemble music professionally since 1972 throughout North America, Europe and the Far East. Emerging from the Los Angeles avant-garde jazz scene of the early '70s, Dresser performed with the Black Music Infinity. Concurrently he was performing with the San Diego Symphony and jazz master Charles MacPherson. After completing B.A. and M.A. degrees at UCSD and a Fulbright Fellowship in Italy, Dresser relocated to New York in 1986 having been invited to join the quartet of composer/saxophonist, Anthony Braxton. Dresser played with Braxton's longest performing quartet for nine years.
He has performed and recorded over eighty CDs with some of the strongest personalities in contemporary music and jazz including Ray Anderson, Tim Berne, Jane Ira Bloom, Chamber Music Society at Lincoln Center, Marilyn Crispell, Anthony Davis, Dave Douglas, Fred Frith, Diamanda Galas, Gerry Hemingway, Joe Lovano, Ikue Mori, Louis Sclavis, Henry Threadgill, John Zorn and
many others.As a composer Mark Dresser has received commissions from American tubist David LeClair, a 1998 McKim Fund at the Library of Congress commission for a violin and piano piece. Both titles are recorded on the CD Marinade (Tzadik-2000). He also has received a commission from flutist Matthias Ziegler for a piece for multiple flutes, bass and string quartet entitled Banquet (Tzadik-1997) He contributed to the collective the string trio, Arcado, resulting in multiple commissions, awards, and tours. The most recent commission is from Meet the Composer for the Rova Saxophone Quartet (2001). He has been awarded NYFA Fellowships twice and is a MacDowell fellow.
Since 1991 Dresser has written for his own ensembles including the quintet, Force Green, (Soul Note). In 1995 Dresser released his first solo CD, Invocation (KFW-1994) The Mark Dresser Trio has performed and recorded his scores for silent film including The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (KFW1994) and Un Chien Andalou (KFW1998) as well as modern works Subtonium (2000) by the Kunst Brothers, and Aquifer (Cryptogramophone-2002).
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sTRANGE qUOTE:
HARK! some wild trumpeter - some sTRANGEmUSICIAN,
Hovering unseen in air, vibrates capricious tunes to-night.I hear thee, trumpeter-listening, alert, I catch thy notes,
Now pouring, whirling like a tempest round me,
Now low, subdued-now in the distance lost.Walt Whitman
LEAVES OF GRASS (1900)
249. The Mystic Trumpeter