the Spot is the Brooklyn Lyceum's new music series on Wednesday nights, curated by composer Kyle Saulnier and featuring groundbreaking artists presenting new music in open defiance of genre lines. Just the right vibe and just around the corner, the Spot is your one-stop shop for the best new music in New York City.
04/13/2012
artist profile: Jacob Teichroew Quintet
Jacob Teichroew - saxophones, compositions
Syberen Van Munster - guitar
Jarrett Cherner - piano
Petros Klampanis - bass
Ronen Itzik - drums
The Jacob Teichroew Quintet toys with standard forms to offer fresh perspectives within weathered contexts. Influenced by a broad swath of musical landscape tilled by musicians such as Warne Marsh, Stan Getz, Sarah Vaughan, and Maurice Ravel, the Jacob Teichroew Quintet attempts to uncover hidden beauty in familiar places.
at the Spot:
06-13-2012
01/02/2012
artist profile: Yoni Kretzmer
Yoni Kretzmer - tenor saxophone
Sean Conly - double bass
Reuben Radding - double bass
Mike Pride - drums
Before moving to NYC in 2010, Jerusalem born tenor saxophonist and composer Yoni Kretzmer was an active member in the growing Tel Aviv nu-music scene leading various groups such as "New Dilemma" (chamber/free jazz string quintet) and "Far From Home" (free/folk quintet with two acoustic guitars). For the premier of "New Dilemma" (Jerusalem/Khan Theater) Tel Aviv Jazz Festival Producer Barack Weiss wrote for NANA “It has been a long time since I have last experienced such a sincere and impressive performance, in its willingness of the artist to expose the full force of his most inner feelings.” Kretzmer has been a sideman for Albert Beger, Harold Rubin and performed and curated many shows and festivals including October Jazz Fest, Red Sea Jazz Festival and Tel Aviv Jazz festival.
Yoni attended the American School of Modern Music (Paris, France) and has studied with Rick Margitza, Matthieu Donarier, Ellery Eskelin and Assif Tsahar. He currently leads “Two Bass Quartet” (Sean Conly, Reuben Radding, Mike Pride) and “66 Boxes” (Daniel Levin, Eyal Maoz, Andrew Drury) and has released four CD`s under his own name: New Dilemma (Tanchelson, Cohen-Shani, Ettun, Feinglod), One Afternoon (Jacoby, Fershtman), Nevertheless (Ajemian, Pride) and Overlook (Levy, Ran, Peskoff). New Dilemma was rated top five in Ha`aretz. Kretzmer actively runs record label Out Now Recordings with two other well known Israeli musicians Ido Bukelman and Yair Yona.
More info at www.yonikretzmer.com
Two-Bass Quartet
Derived straight from the classic Sax-Bass-drum trio, Kretzmer's latest projects augments this standard setting with the addition of an extra double-bass, thus creating a different balance, sound, deepness and flavor yet still maintaining some of the esthetics and clarity that made the sax trio so popular in the first place. One might say this quartet's sound is obvious yet unfamiliar simultaneously.
Kretzmer's compositions, written specifically with these great bassists and drummer in mind, take full advantage of the profound, even haunting, sound a band of this instrumentation can create and act as a vague frame for further development and expression.
Their new and first Album, Weight, will be available in February 2012.
at the Spot:
02-01-2012
11/27/2011
11/25/2011
artist profile: Robbyn Tongue Band
Pushing the boundaries of style and genre, this "fresh and invigorating" bandleader has garnered awards and accolades from peers and professionals alike since arriving on New York's jazz scene. His big mellow alto saxophone sound is in demand with groups such as Valery Ponomarev's Big Band, the Stan Rubin Orchestra, vocalist Matthew Bryan Feld, and The Ben Geyer Sextet, with which he recently recorded The Narrative, the bands first studio album. He has performed throughout New England and in New York at Dizzy's Club Coca Cola, Iridium Jazz Club, and The Jazz Standard, alongside jazz masters such as Dave Leibman, John Faddis, and Candido Camero.
at the Spot:
02-08-2012
11/14/2011
artist profile: Caleb Curtis
Caleb Curtis, alto saxophone
Duane Eubanks, trumpet
Mike Pinto, vibraphone
Dylan Shamat, bass
Shawn Baltazor, drums
New York musician Caleb Curtis has shown himself to be an engaging and entertaining saxophonist and composer. His original compositions are informed by a wide swath of the jazz tradition, at times introspective, brash and melodic. Caleb grew up in Ann Arbor, Michigan in a family that values creativity and happiness, encouraging artistic expression. He was given his first saxophone by his grandfather, an amateur saxophonist himself, when he was ten years old. During the following school year Caleb began playing saxophone despite the band director insisting he play trumpet instead. Now, legendary pianist Mulgrew Miller says “Caleb has a wonderful, singing, projecting sound. To me, that’s the ultimate for a horn player.”
He went on to study music at Michigan State University and William Paterson University, performing at many popular venues as well as at the Detroit International Jazz Festival and the Lansing Jazz Festival. He also led his band in radio performances on numerous radio shows in Michigan and New York including The Mitch Albom Show, The Barry Z Show, and Live from Blue Lake with Lazaro Vega. Since moving East, Caleb has performed at NYC clubs Iridium, Smoke, Small’s Jazz Club, The Garage, The Metropolitan Room, Miles’ Cafe, Puppet’s Jazz Bar, Cleopatra’s Needle, and Puffin Cultural Forum among others. The Caleb Curtis Trio was featured at the 2009 Stoop Celebration presented by F.O.K.U.S. He currently leads his Wheelhouse Band, and plays with Manner Effect, the Kenji Yoshitake Trio, The Seguine/Baker Jazz Orchestra and a Harry Nilsson tribute project called Pointless Forest.
Caleb has received DownBeat Magazine awards both as a soloist and arranger; led his quintet in the invitational, full scholarship Jazz Aspen Snowmass Band Academy; received recognition from The Kennedy Center in Washington, DC as an outstanding instrumentalist and composer with performances on their Millennium Stage as part of the Betty Carter Jazz Ahead residency; he was also a finalist in the Gene Harris Jazz Competition. In 2008 he traveled with the Michigan State University Jazz Orchestra and Yutaka Shiina to Japan (Osaka, Kobe, Nagoya, Kyoto, Tokyo, Narita) for performances and master classes.
In addition to performing and composing, Caleb enjoys teaching in a variety of settings. In 2008 and 2009 he served as the jazz saxophone instructor at Blue Lake Fine Arts Camp where he taught saxophone, improvisation, jazz history and conducted rehearsals. He enjoys teaching students of wildly different ages and ability levels.
at the Spot:
11.16.2011
10/09/2011
artist profile: Minerva
J.P. Schlegelmilch, piano
Pascal Niggenkemper, bass
Carlo Costa, drums
Drummer Carlo Costa formed the band Minerva with pianist JP Schlegelmilch and bassist Pascal Niggenkemper in New York City in the Fall of 2009. Since its inception the band has been concentrating on collective improvisation as well as original compositions penned by all three band members. Over the last several months Minerva has performed at several venues in New York City including Issue Project Room, the Cornelia Street Café, Korzo, IBeam, Douglass Street Music Collective, etc. In May 2011 Minerva released it's debut recording Saturnismo on Between the Lines Records.
“An impressively cohesive avant-jazz trio” (Time Out New York)
"... this is not about fast runs on the keys or uptempo pyrotechnics, but about mature music, woven lightly but solidly out of thin sounds.Really strong. **** ” (Stef Gijssels, Free Jazz Blog, review of Minerva's CD Saturnismo)
http://www.carlocostamusic.com/carlocostamusic/Minerva.html
at the Spot:
12.21.2011
10/07/2011
artist profile: New Tricks
Ted Chubb, trumpet
Mike Lee, tenor saxophone
Kellen Harrison, bass
Shawn Baltazor, drums
New Tricks is a tight knit chord-less quartet rooted in the jazz tradition and committed to musical exploration,featuring memorable compositions and dynamic group interplay. New Tricks has developed a unique sound and singularity of purpose over the past five years of touring nationally and performing locally.
“New Tricks has all of the cohesion and assuredness of a working band – something not experienced as often as it once was in jazz. New Tricks mirrors the personality of Its leader, Mike Lee, a brilliant saxophonist of the highest level.” - Christian McBride
"New Tricks conveys a distinct New York sound on its aggressively swinging sophomore effort. The quartet puts a new spin on an old hard-bop formula without crossing over into the avant-garde camp." - Bill Milkowski, JazzTimes
"Mike lee and New Tricks have a real New York sound..very seasoned and swinging..I like this band.." - George Garzone
New Tricks is keeping the music alive with a fresh approach - creative, stretchin', and groovin'....check them out! - Dave Stryker
at the Spot:
01.04.2012
10/06/2011
artist profile: Nate Wooley Quintet
photo by Peter Gannushkin
Nate Wooley, trumpet
Josh Sinton, baritone saxophone
Matt Moran, vibraphone
Dan Peck, tuba
Harris Eisenstadt, drums
Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances.
Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.
Wooley’s solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet. Along with Peter Evans and Greg Kelley, Wooley is considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, as well as demolishing the way trumpet is perceived in a historical context still overshadowed by Louis Armstrong. A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings “exquisitely hostile”.
In the past three years, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language. Time Out New York has called him “an iconoclastic trumpeter”, and Downbeat’s Jazz Musician of the Year, Dave Douglas has said, “Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole”. His work has been featured at the SWR JazzNow stage at Donaueschingen, the WRO Media Arts Biennial in Poland, Kongsberg and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals, and the New York New Darmstadt Festivals. He is currently an artist-in-residence at Brooklyn’s Issue Project Room and just completed a residency at London’s Café Oto.
at the Spot:
11-30-2011
09/18/2011
artist profile: Michael Webster Quintet
Michael Webster, saxophone
Chris Dingman, vibraphone
Jesse Lewis, guitar
Ike Sturm, bass
Jared Schonig, drums
Michael Webster's compositions have been played by Joe Lovano, Tom Harrell and Arturo O'Farrill at Birdland and by John Benitez at the Blue Note in New York City. In March 2008, Michael conducted the Grammy winning Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra at Symphony Space in Manhattan, where they premiered his original commissioned composition "Mombogro". He returned to lead the ALJO 's performance of two commissioned arrangements in October 2008 featuring guitarist/composer Michele Ramo.
Michael appears regularly with the National Arts Centre Orchestra of Canada as an orchestral saxophonist, and has been a featured soloist in this capacity with John Pizzarelli, Doc Severinsen, Barbara Cooke, Lou Rawls, Ian Tyson, Glen Campbell & Carol Welsman.
Originally from Ottawa, Canada, Michael earned his Bachelor of Music in Jazz Saxophone at the University of Toronto in 1999. He was awarded the J.B.C. Watkins Award for Postgraduate Studies, along with a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts, which enabled him to move to New York City in 2002.
Michael graduated from the Manhattan School of Music in May 2004 where he earned his Master of Music degree in jazz composition under the tutelage of Michael Abene (Maynard Ferguson, GRP All-Star Big Band, WDR Big Band).
While at MSM, Michael began collaborating with Grammy-winning bassist John Benitez (Chick Corea, John Scofield, Danilo Perez, Roy Hargrove) playing saxophone, co-writing and arranging music for the John Benitez Group and the 12-piece Gospel Latin Jazz Project.
Since 2003, Michael has been collaborating with Puerto Rican trombonist/percussionist William Cepeda (Dizzy Gillespie, Slide Hampton, Lester Bowie) as an arranger for big band and symphony orchestra, as well as playing saxophone in Cepeda's International Sextet. In Spring 2010, Webster completed "Posesíon", a concert-length continuous piece for big band and strings adapted from Cepeda's melodic sketches. The piece will be premiered in Fall 2010.
In September 2005 Michael recorded his debut CD as a leader entitled Leading Lines. The album presents 8 original works, for jazz nonet, woodwind quintet and strings. Featured are John Benitez on bass, drummer Obed Calvaire, trumpeter Michael Rodriguez, and Gordon Webster on piano.
Presenting a unique blend of Latin Jazz rhythms, classical textures, funky odd meter settings and sheer groove, Michael's 16-piece orchestra, Leading Lines, is a perfect springboard for melodically accessible, harmonically rich & rhythmically infectious music. The group features some of NYC's best young jazz musicians in a unique setting, including Sara Caswell on violin, Rob Mosher on soprano sax & oboe, and Erica vonKleist on saxophone & flute. Leading Lines appears September 10 at St Peter’s Church in Manhattan with special guest Dick Oatts.
A passionate educator, Michael served as musical director of United Rhythms & Visions, a New Jersey-based arts agency bringing music, art & drama to inner-city schools from April 2008 - September 2009. He is on faculty at the New York Jazz Academy and has over ten years of experience teaching private lessons in saxophone, clarinet, flute, composition, arranging, jazz theory & improvisation.
at the spot:
11-02-2011
09/06/2011
artist profile: Laghima
Frederika Krier, violin
Gian Luigi Diana, live electronics, sound manipulation
Laghima is an electro-acoustic duo born in the density of New York's creative energy. While G.L. Diana is improvising with the laptop using loops, real time sound manipulation and different ethnic instruments, violin virtuoso Frederika Krier improvises over this sonic carpet. Their performances and recordings are free improvisations, instant compositions unfolding in the moment.
Laghima is an ancient Sanskrit Word which means ''levitation'', to become lighter than a feather, to go beyond gross-bodily conceptions. Laghima is a dialogue between the two to find balance, to be lighter, using all colors to merge into the white one, using different languages to obtain one common simple pure language.
http://www.myspace.com/laghimamusic
at the Spot:
12.07.2011
