EyeShotJazz | Jazz Photography

Last Saturday night at the Chapel Performance Space, Earshot Jazz Festival presented two distinctive composers in Seattle, clarinetist Beth Fleenor and trumpeter Samantha Boshnack, to showcase their works for large ensembles in one of the city’s finest concert rooms.

Fleenor’s Workshop Ensemble (WE) presents exploratory scores grounded in Fleenor’s 20 Etudes for Blindfolded Musicians; WE also performs conduction, sonic meditation and Fleenor’s cross-stitched graphic scores. WE are Michele Khazak (voice), Kate Olson, Brian Bermudez, Chris Credit (reeds), Boshnack (trumpet), Naomi Siegel (trombone), Michael Owcharuk (piano), Paul Kemmish, Evan Flory-Barnes (bass), Campbell (percussion/horn), Adam Kozie (drums) and Fleenor (clarinet, voice, composition).

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Last Saturday night at the Chapel Performance Space, Earshot Jazz Festival presented two distinctive composers in Seattle, clarinetist Beth Fleenor and trumpeter Samantha Boshnack, to showcase their works for large ensembles in one of the city’s finest concert rooms.

Alt-chamber orchestra B’shnorkestra
 recently released Go to Orange (Present 
Sounds Recordings). The group’s bold
 and undulating blend of horn lines,
strings and percussion is conducted by
 Joshua Kohl, co-founder of the Degen
erate Art Ensemble. The B’shnorkestra
 features Alex Guy, Paris Hurley, Jherek Bischoff, members of Jim Knapp and Eyvind Kang’s Scrape, members of the SRJO, bassist Tim Carey and drummer Greg Campbell.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Saturday night at Town Hall Earshot Jazz Festival presented the Patricia Barber Trio +1. Her sparkling trio includes bassist Patrick Mulcahy and drummer Ross Pederson. Seattle’s Kate Olson, saxophone, was asked to join the Trio for this show and was great. I really enjoyed this performance.

The “conspicuously literate and restlessly inventive” (The New Yorker) vocalist-pianist is a distinctive social observer and gifted musician who turned from classical to jazz performance. Barber has drawn extravagant accolades since her early days leading a jazz trio in small Chicago nightclubs – first for her unique arrangements and coolly composed piano improvisations; then for her intoxicating vocals; then for her lyrical, evocative compositions. Her albums Modern Cool and Nightclub made her an international star; her newest, Smash (Concord Jazz, 2013), proves that her poetry continues to search more deeply as her music grows more magical.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Also last night at the Royal Room Earshot Jazz Festival presented  the Steve Treseler Group with Ingrid Jensen.Seattle tenor saxophonist Steve
 Treseler celebrates the release of Center Song, with renowned guest trumpeter Ingrid Jensen, pianist Dawn
 Clement, guitarist Chris Spencer,
 drummer Steve
 Korn. The group explores new material by Treseler, a piece by Jensen, a Lee 
Konitz tune, a Sunny Day Real Estate
 adaptation and some short improvisations.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Friday night at  Poncho Hall, Cornish College, the  Earshot Jazz Festival presented Nicole Mitchell and her Ice Crystal Quartet.
Nicole Mitchell, “the most important jazz flutist of her generation” (All About Jazz), plays in the spirit of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians: she draws gospel, African percussion, and other elements into a thrilling extension of jazz. Jason Adasiewicz (vibes), Joshua Abrams (bass) and Frank Rosaly (drums) join her at the PONCHO Concert Hall.

Founder of the critically acclaimed Black Earth Ensemble and Black Earth Strings, Mitchell is a composer whose works reach across sound worlds to create a fascinating synthesis of postmodern jazz. She has performed with creative luminaries such as George Lewis, Miya Masaoka, Lori Freedman and James Newton, and has also worked on projects with Anthony Braxton, Ed Wilkerson, David Boykin and Rob Mazurek.
Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Trombonist Naomi Siegel appeared with soprano saxophonist Kate Olson first and then with her Sunchasers quartet last night at Chapel Performance Space as the Earshot Jazz festival moves on.

Sunchasers – Geoff Harper (bass), Thione Diop (percussion), Claudio Rochat-Felix (drum set), Steven Bell (vibraphone) – the latest project by Seattle-based trombonist and composer Siegel, employs deep grooves, folk-like melodies and collective improvisation in compositions inspired by Siegel’s influences while traveling in Senegal, Gambia and Costa Rica.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Syrinx Effect is an experimental platform for Naomi Siegel and Kate Olson. The duo plays contemporary, improvised music with electronics. Siegel plays trombone with guitar pedals and Olson plays soprano saxophone with laptop and other toys. Exploring everything from simple folk melodies to abstract, ambient noise, each piece is a meditation, an exploration and sometimes a romp.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Tuesday night Earshot Jazz Festival presented the SFJAZZ Collective at Benaroya Hall.
Stunning virtuosity and drive from the most spectacular all-star ensemble in jazz – with Miguel Zenon (alto sax), David Sanchez (tenor sax), Avishai Cohen (trumpet), Robin Eubanks (trombone), Warren Wolf (vibes), Edward Simon (piano), Matt Penman (bass) and Obed Calvaire (drums).

This fall, the award-winning SFJAZZ Collective celebrates its 10th anniversary by highlighting their greatest arrangements and original compositions – tributes to Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, Thelonious Monk, Wayne Shorter, McCoy Tyner, Horace Silver, Stevie Wonder and Chick Corea. For each of the past ten years, the collective has convened annually to perform new arrangements of compositions by a modern music master and new compositions by members, commissioned by SFJAZZ. Through this pioneering approach, honoring jazz history while championing the music’s up-to-the-minute directions, the collective embodies the commitment to jazz as a living, ever-relevant art form. As soloists, composers and bandleaders, collective members represent what’s happening now in jazz, and they demonstrate that jazz is truly an international language – with members from Puerto Rico, Baltimore, New York, Venezuela, Israel and New Zealand. Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Sunday night Earshot Jazz presented Phillip Glass in concert at the KIRKLAND PERFORMANCE CENTER in a beautiful concert.
A cultural and artistic giant, Glass is an iconoclast of contemporary composition. He returned to Seattle for a rare solo piano performance. Through his operas, his symphonies, his compositions for his own ensemble and his wide-ranging collaborations with artists ranging from Twyla Tharp to Allen Ginsberg, Woody Allen to David Bowie, Glass has had an extraordinary and unprecedented impact upon the musical and intellectual life of his times. His operas play throughout the world’s leading houses; he has written music for experimental theater and for Academy Award-winning motion pictures, such as The Hours and Martin Scorsese’s Kundun; while Koyaanisqatsi, his initial filmic landscape with Godfrey Reggio and the Philip Glass Ensemble, may be the most radical and influential mating of sound and vision since Fantasia.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Sunday Night at the Triple Door Earshot Jazz presented  one of my favorite groups The Bad Plus. The were BAD. So intense and interesting to watch.
As badass as highbrow gets. A rollicking and thought-provoking good time with the acclaimed Reid Anderson (bass), Ethan Iverson (piano) and Dave King (drums), who always go a leap ahead of the conventional piano trio.

The Bad Plus has spent almost fifteen years redefining what a piano-bass-drums trio can be. They’ve reached audiences of all demographic stripes with an uncompromising body of original music (plus some ingenious, genre-jumping covers) and dedicated touring around the globe. On their eighth studio album, Made Possible, they take their distinctive musical MO to captivating new heights, proving once again that the rules of musical convention are made to be broken.

Throughout, The Bad Plus has held fast to a band ethos and belief in what the trio likes to call avantgarde populism (progressive, musically sophisticated ideas without the highbrow trappings). Made Possible is a vivid and convincing document of this passionate stance, loaded with genre-defying music that is at once complex, heartfelt and instantly engaging.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.

Here is a link to the Earshot Jazz Festival website  schedule for the rest of the Festival.