Daniel Levin Quartet in Portugal and France!

Daniel Levin Quartet Tour Dates!

Tuesday, 22 February, 9:00 pm

Espace Vauban
17 avenue Georges Clémenceau 29200 Brest, France
penn-ar-jazz.com

Thursday, 24 February

Casa da Musica
Av. da Boavista 4149 4150 Porto, Portugal
casadamusica.com

Friday, 25 February

Portalegre Jazz Fest
Praça da República, 7300 Portalegre, Portugal
cm-portalegre.pt

Sunday, 27 February and Monday, 28 February

Culturgest
R. do Arco do Cego, 1000 Lisboa, Portugal
culturgest.pt

Debut Recording of Nate Wooley Quintet in March!

The debut recording of my quintet, (Put Your) Hands Together, is going to be out in March from Clean Feed Records. This is a series of compositions for jazz quintet that we've been working on and were dedicated to the women who have raised me into the fine upstanding gent I am today.

I was listening to the masters the other night and, yeah, it's kind of the over the top Grammy acceptance speech way of saying it, but I am honored and humbled by the guys in the band. They took some tunes that vacillated somewhere between a rock solid concept that was really hard to pull off to kind of a half baked idea that needed some musical love and stuck it out while I got it together to make a jazz album (my first real "jazz" album as a leader) that I think is a pretty personal statement. That's a big deal for me. It's scary and wonderful and I'm in that phase where "my baby's the cutest" with it, so don't burst my bubble. Drop me a line if you want to reserve a copy. I really think it is going to be a fun one.....

Nate Wooley Quintet....featuring Josh Sinton, Harris Eisenstadt, Matt Moran, and Eivind Opsvik....pic by Peter Gannushkin!

Lytton/Wooley and Lytton/Wooley/Vandermark Dates

For the first time since their recent release, Creak Above 33 on Evan Parker's Psi imprint, the duo of British percussionist Paul Lytton and American trumpeter Nate Wooley hits the U.S.

There's lots and lots of special guests on these shows, including a great trio with Joe Morris that I've wanted to do for a long time, two trio shows with the great Ikue Mori, a couple of hits with a new quartet with C. Spencer Yeh and Okkyung Lee, the new recording of Seven Storey Mountain (with the monster Corsano/Lytton drum double team), tons of fun in Chicago and a tour with the inimitable Ken Vandermark! Try and make it out if you can. If you can't find info about times and addresses, drop me a line at natewooley@gmail.com and I'll make it happen!

March 2nd
The Stone
New York, NY
...8 pm Lytton/Wooley
10 pm Lytton/Wooley/Ikue Mori

March 4th
Sonic Circuits
Washington, DC
Sam Pluta/Peter Evans/Jim Altieri
Lytton/Wooley

March 5th
Ars Nova
Vox Populi Gallery
Philadelphia
Lytton/Wooley/C. Spencer Yeh/Okkyung Lee

March 6th
Hallwalls
Buffalo, NY
Lytton/Wooley

March 7th
Cornell University
Time and Place TBA
Lytton/Wooley

March 8th
Bard College
Time and Place TBA
Lytton/Wooley/Ikue Mori

March 9th
NEC masterclass
6 pm
Lytton/Wooley

Lily Pad
9 pm
Lytton/Wooley/Joe Morris

March 11
Seven Storey Mountain
Issue Project Room
Brooklyn, NY
Lytton/Wooley/Chris Corsano/C. Spencer Yeh/David Grubbs/Matt Moran/Chris Dingman
Live Recording!

March 12
Roulette
New York, NY
Lytton/Wooley/C. Spencer Yeh/Okkyung Lee
Also Christine Bard/Jim Pugliese and Vincent Chancey

March 15
Sugar Maple
Milwaukee, WI
Lytton/Vandermark/Wooley

March 16
The Hideout
Chicago, IL
Lytton/Vandermark
Lytton/Wooley
Lytton/Vandermark Wooley

March 17
Elastic
Chicago, IL
Lytton/Wooley/Dave Rempis/Michael Zerang/Jim Baker/Jason Roebke/Jeb Bishop/Kent Kessler

March 18
The Stone
NY, NY
8 pm Ken Vandermark/Joe McPhee
10 pm Lytton/Vandermark/Wooley

and just for kicks

March 19
The Stone
NY, NY
10 pm Vandermark/Morris/Wooley

When you're #3 You Try Harder

Proud to say...the Argentinean music mag El Intruso held their annual critics poll and I was voted #3 in the trumpet category. Okay, why not #1? I hear you, I could be trying harder. I'll get on that, but think that Peter Evans and Taylor Ho Bynum are pretty inspiring choices for #s 1 and 2.

Some nice votes for Creak Above 33, Tooth and Nail, and Trumpet/Amplifier in the annual musicians polls as well.

You can see the whole thing here:

www.elintruso.com

A Paper of Note

Ben Ratliff says nice things about Crackleknob!

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/23/arts/music/23vision.html

It's Hot....I'm outta here!

I officially recognized that I was going to sweat for the next 9 weeks solid. There is always that morning when I"m going through my shirt drawer and it dawns on me that it really doesn't matter what I wear, I'm going to be a totally gross, stinky sweat mess for 63 days. It doesn't matter how many showers I take, the fact remains that I am from Oregon. I am of broad countenance. I am hirsute. Therefore, I'm just going to leave in July and leave you "oh, I love the warm weather" people to slowly wilt. Let's talk again mid-September when the first rains hit and you can complain to me. I will gladly listen.

Until I leave, however, I have a couple of performances I'm calling "sweating to the....." I hope you'll come out and feel the burn.

Tonight!
Local 269
Vision Festival!
269 E. Houston, Manhattan
Come sweat to the progressive music interplay of CRACKLEKNOB!
Nate Wooley/Mary Halvorson/Reuben Radding
Mary Halvorson/Reuben Radding/Nate Wooley
Reuben Radding/Nate Wooley/Mary Halvorson

We play at 10:30.

Tomorrow!
Issue Project Room
232 3rd Street, Brooklyn
Come sweat to compositional linguistics!
Critical Theory discussion about the music of Kenneth Gaburo
featuring performances by Megan Schubert, Warren Burt, Chris Mann, and a very rarely seen video piece of Gaburo's
and a panel discussion led by myself and featuring David Dunn, Larry Polansky, Warren Burt, and Chris Mann

8 pm

Friday!
IBEAM
168 7th street, Brooklyn
Come sweat to a reductionist version of THE NATE WOOLEY QUINTET
Nate Wooley
Josh Sinton
Matt Moran

8:30

and finally,

Wednesday, June 30!
Barbes
6th and 9th in Brooklyn
Come sweat to the same thing you sweat to tonight!
CRACKLEKNOB!
see above
early show 7 pm
followed by Huntsville from Norway!

woohoo, get out your electric fans and let's get this mess on the road.

New Review and show tonight!

Saturday, May 22, 2010 from Killed in Cars

Also, the quintet will be playing tonight, May 24th at Douglass Street Music Collective.....2 sets, good times....starts at 8 pm on the nose! See you there!

Nate Wooley & Paul Lytton - Creek Above 33 (Psi, 2010)

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Artist
Label
Discogs
last.fm
RYM

For such a young trumpeter, Nate Wooley has performed and recorded with a healthy range of challenging experimental artists, from Wolf Eyes to John Zorn to Akron/Family. The first time I saw him perform was with a trio consisting of C. Spencer Yeh and Chris Corsano, and the last time was with Trevor Dunn’s PROOFReaders (with Darius Jones and Ryan Sawyer) who were presenting selected works by Ornette Coleman for Ars Nova Workshop's Composer Portrait Series. Both were very different but immensely rewarding music experiences that demonstrated the full force and diversity of Wooley’s abilities as a player. With the first ensemble, Wooley did not produce a traditional note or scale all evening, instead emphasizing the instrument’s hidden potential for emitting whispers, heavy ghost breaths, industrial screams, and deep, earth shattering, low-end booms. With the second, Wooley nailed Coleman’s complicated trumpet phrases, excellently representing Coleman’s ability to create pieces that simultaneously reinforce and push beyond the traditional jazz idiom.

On Creek Above 33, both of these aspects of Wooley’s playing are united. This is the second time that Wooley has recorded as a duo with percussionist and electronicist Paul Lytton, the first being a 2008 limited edition LP on Brokenresearch. The two have performed together on many occasions, however, including in trio form along with David Grubbs at 2007’s Festival of New Trumpet Music, where Wooley debuted a composition that was recorded and released last year titled The Seven Storey Mountain (read my Tiny Mix Tapes review of the album here). Lytton is a veteran in experimental circles, working with Evan Parker for many years, and more recently with Ken Vandermark’s various Territory Band large ensembles, that include Paal Nilssen-Love, Kevin Drumm, Dave Rempis, Kent Kessler, and many others. The creative partnership between Lytton and Wooley has no doubt been a beneficial one, as Wooley confesses in the liner notes for this release that Lytton led him to completely re-evaluate his approach to making music. The harbinger of this transition was a “mind map” created by Lytton – which appears here as the cover art – in which he attempted to visualize both of their intertwining and agonistic trajectories as artists within jazz and improvised music continuums. The sonic result of this radical rethinking is Creek Above 33.

Lytton’s screeching friction opens the album with Wooley’s amplified horn pushing out rapid, reverb-drenched blasts. “The Mbala Effect” is a spatial delight as Lytton produces poly-textural percussive splatters that enter from near and far. Wooley’s approach to the horn is reminiscent of Bill Dixon’s playing on 2009’s fantastic Tapestries For Small Orchestra, though his inclusion of more breathy, volcanic notes and moans is significantly more violent and disruptive. The piece gets truly terrifying around the 8 minute mark: it’s as if Lytton is cranking up a jackhammer, or commanding a demolition squad, rather than working behind a drum kit. Meanwhile, a possessed Wooley resurrects a Takashi Miike-esque demon-growl with his horn. Lytton has been experimenting with electronics for many years, as well as homemade instruments like the Lyttonophone and Dopplerphone, which were both used in the Evan Parker Trio. However, given Lytton’s textural and friction-centric approach to percussion, as well as the multiple instruments that his infamously massive kit contains, it’s difficult to tell what sounds are the result of electronics and what are not.

Lytton shines on “The Gentle Sturgeon,” creating a chaotic array of mysterious scrapes and bangs while Wooley’s breath-play drones and screams above the myriad layers. Half-way through the track the demolition squad returns, but this time more lunar (or, perhaps given the song-title, deep sea) drops of electro-ping and tension follow. Whatever revelation Wooley and Lytton sparked in one another from their pre-recording ruminations on their artistic pasts and futures worked. Creek Above 33 is a fantastic journey through the music histories of both artists and the reference nodes span across the diverse, but overlapping, traditions of experimental musics and jazz (perhaps most evident in Wooley’s deconstructed bop tendencies on “Filtering The Fogweed”). This is an excellent display of both artists’ perpetual development. Lytton continues to be pushing music further forward, as he has been for over 40 years, and Wooley’s approach to his instrument somehow gets even more perplexing and engaging.

Elliott Sharp

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