Live Music In Town & Down the Road

My long-time friend and former Middletown resident Joe Fonda called the other day to remind me of the 7th Annual Composers & Improvisers Festival taking place Saturday October 15 in the friendly confines of The Buttonwood Tree, 605 Main Street in Middletown.  As usual, Mr. Fonda has organized an impressive lineup.

Opening the evening at 7:30 p.m. will be guitarist/composer Michael Musillami in a duo setting with bassist Rich Syracuse.  Musillami (pictured left) is a California native but has been plying his musical wares on the East Coast for nearly 3 decades.  He has worked with the late saxophonist Dewey Redman and organist Richard "Groove" Holmes but is best known for his musical relationships with Connecticut-born musicians Thomas Chapin (saxophones) and Mario Pavone (bass).  He started Playscape Records in 1999 not only to release his own music but also artists such as Pavone, pianists Ted Rosenthal and Peter Madsen and drummer George Schuller.  Schuller and Fonda have been the basis of the Musillami Trio for the past 8 years.  Bassist Rich Syracuse is best known for his long relationship with pianist Lee Shaw and is a strong as well as musical player.

Speaking of strong musical bass players, Avery Sharpe (pictured left) certainly fits that description.  After studying as UMASS/Amherst with bassist Reggie Workman, Sharpe "hit the road" with saxophonist Archie Shepp and then spent 2 decades with pianist McCoy Tyner.  He's released several CDs on his own JKNM Records and also composed the music for the one-person show "Raisin Cane", featuring Jasmine Guy. Sharpe also teaches at the Litchfield (CT) Jazz Camp in the summertime.  There is a good possibility he'll be playing solo but don't let that deter you - he's a bassist who loves melody.  Avery Sharpe's set begins at 8:30 p.m.

The evening closes with a quartet of impressive brass players featuring Stephen Haynes (trumpet, cornet - pictured left)), Bill Lowe (bass trombone), Peter McEachern (tenor trombone) and Ben Stapp (tuba).  Haynes spent many years working with the legendary trumpeter and conceptualist Bill Dixon (1925 - 2010) but also has created music with pianist Cecil Taylor, violinist Leroy Jenkins and modern classical experimentalist La Monte Young.  His Trio recording, "Parrhesia" (Engine Records), with Joe Morris (guitar) and Warren Smith (percussion) was issued just last year. Over the 4+ decades of his career, Bill Lowe has played with James Brown, Eartha Kitt, Dizzy Gillespie, James "Jabbo" Ware, and hed co-led bands with guitarist Andy Jaffe as well as the Boston Repertory Orchestra. He has taught at Wesleyan, University of Pennsylvania, the New England Conservatory of Music and elsewhere.  Peter McEachern also played alongside Thomas Chapin and Mario Pavone as well as the legendary Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown. He currently teaches at the University of Connecticut and the Litchfield Jazz Camp.  Like his cohorts, Ben Stapp plays all kinds of music, from brass band to classical ensembles to improvised jazz.

This unit performs at 9:30 p.m.  For more information and reservations (recommended), call 860-347-4957 or go to www.buttonwood.org.

The trio of Amanda Baker (flute, voice, percussion), Beth Meyers (viola, voice) and Nuiko Wadden (harp, percussion, voice) performs under the name Janus and they are appearing Sunday October 16 at First Church of Christ, Congregational, 499 Town Street in East Haddam.  The concert is part of the Church's "Music at the Meetinghouse" series and is part of the Daniel Pearl World Music Days (to read more about that, go to www.danielpearlmusicdays.org.)

The indie-classical chamber ensemble, formed in 2002 by Ms. Baker and Ms. Meyers, plays a heady and attractive repertoire of (mostly) 21st Century composers, folks such as Jason Treuting (from So Percussion), Caleb Burhans and Sofia Gubaidulina), with many of the works commissioned by Janus. It's important that the repertoire for flute, harp and viola began in the early 20th Century with a work by Claude Debussy.  Their debut CD, "I Am Not (blank)", took 3 years to come together and was released late last year on New Amsterdam Records.  For more information about the ensemble, go to www.janustrio.org. To purchase tickets, call 860-537-2052.

Ms. Baker, a alumna of the Yale School of Music and the Coast Guard Band, has been a guest on my radio show twice this year (she's a resident of Bozrah) and is informative, intelligent, fun and willing to put up with my silliness.  Here's a link to our January 2011 interview - www.archive.org/details/Nshoma-AmandaBakerjanus-1.31.11.  

This post is a combination of 2 different columns on my music blog, Steptempest.