Independent

Independent artist, ensembles and releases.

Will Guthrie | Solo – Sticks, Stones & Breaking Bones

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The hardest thing in the world is to have an original idea. As much as creative musicians hate to admit, free improv/experimental/underground (and all other useless adjectival identifiers) music now has as many stylistic tropes as your standard 19th century symphony: the endless variations on white noise, the orgiastic free ensemble climaxes, reassuring bass drones, “brutality”, all of which point to performance, not playing. Musicians cling to the next solution that the media spotlights, as if consensus actually ever helped anything in art. — Anthony Pateras Continue reading →

Ken Filiano

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(Kenneth Steven), bassist. b. Patchogue, NY, October 27, 1952. Son of Anna Filiano (born Giuliano; May 19, 1930) and Leonard Filiano (July 12, 1930), both of New York. Brother of James Filiano (20 May 1954; an M.D., also play ssaxophone), Diana Filiano Dana (9 Dec 1961; plays guitar), and Gregory Filiano (24 July 1964; plays oboe). Ken began trumpet studies at the age of nine and played in bands throughout grammar school and high school. In his sophomore of high school, while Ken was at home recovering from an illness, his band director sent over a copy of the Ornette Coleman/Gunther Schuller record, “Jazz Abstractions.” Upon hearing the freedom expressed within the music, Ken abandoned plans to study oceanography and decided to devote his life to music. The following summer, Ken and his brother, Jim (who played saxophone), met the composer David Amram, who invited the brothers to weekend jam sessions at Amram’s house on Fire Island, NY. Here, Ken had the great fortune to play with the likes of Pepper Adams and Elvin Jones. Strongly influenced by these great players and by Amram’s record, “No More Walls,” Ken was increasingly inspired to explore the universe of music. Continue reading →

Andrea Wolper

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Andrea Wolper has an ever-growing reputation as a gifted jazz singer, songwriter, and improviser with a very individual sound and style, solid understanding of jazz traditions, and spirited sense of adventure. She has been described both as “a highly original performer” (Contra Costa Times) and “a singer with an uncanny emotional touch for the past 50 years of jazz” (Tuscon Citizen). Andrea is as accomplished and at home with the Great American Songbook as she is with spontaneous improvisation. A creative songwriter, lyricist, and arranger, Andrea’s original compositions and unusual arrangements of standard material, as well as of poetry and music from a variety of genres, reveal a dynamic, singular musical sensibility. Continue reading →

Misha Feigin | The Dew Drop Blues

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With “Dew Drop Blues” Misha Feigin has created a beautiful set of anomalies, poetics that turn on an angle that only a bent mathematician such as he could invent and filled with a sardonic wit that is simultaneously dark and euphoric. And when words fail or need to transcend, Misha’s virtuosic guitar continues to propose impossibilities and hallucinations that tie everything together. — Elliot Sharp Continue reading →

Ken Silverman

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I’m Ken Silverman a NYC-based Guitarist/Composer, who also plays Oud, Charango, Bass Guitar and hand percussion. My interest as an Improvisor is in taking everything I’ve been exposed to and using it to try to create something distinctive and creative. For me that means using what I’ve learned from blues, jazz, rock, ethnic and to some extent classical and concert music in an improvised or “free” setting, or within the realm of “Composition.” My goal is to create my own brew of sound and to keep forever expanding, both through playing with others and through working on my sound and playing as an individual. I have been active concertizing in NYC with a variety of musicians, including Daniel Carter and Roy Campbell. June, 2010 saw the release of the Quartet CD “Macroscopia” on the Metier label. Continue reading →

Sureau | Jean-Michel Van Schouwburg | Jean Demey | Kris Vanderstraeten | Gianni Mimmo | Enzo Rocco | The Leuven Concert

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The SUREAU trio trio is playing free spontaneous improvisations based on mutual listening, musical invention and sound exploration. Double bass , voice and percussion. This collective music is shaped with our own very individual sounds research since years of practice and reflection with the help of our imagination. Extended techniques and tangent interactive thinking. These five new tracks of the whole concert in Leuven’s Oratorium 22 oct ’09 is a good starting point for the listener and one crucial step in our evolution. Continue reading →

Otzir Godot

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Drum-artist Otzir Godot dives to the improvising worlds of sounds, rhytms and words. The narration of the his lyrical-orchestration drumwork is a far reaching project to the problematics of esthetics sublim: to the semantics, feelings and visions beyond the words. Godot works with solo projects and in different duo-and trio environments. Drum-artist Otzir Godot has received classical education in percussion. However his main aim is to expand the creative possibilities of the drum set. Improvising has always been the key word to Godot’s world. The path has gone from classical music trough various rock bands, world music and jazz towards to free areas of expression. Together with drums, marimba, gongs and ethnic percussion he provides lyrical landscapes of sounds, rhytms and words. In recent years Godot has been in close co-operation with modern dance professionals and theatre work. Nowadays Godot is deeply involved with trio KAN together with butoh dancer Aki Suzuki and shakuhachi / khaen mouth organ player Jone Takamäki as well as free improvising band ZOGA with violin player Mikko-Ville Luolajan-Mikkola and singer Reija Lang. Continue reading →

Kevin Frenette

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Featuring Kevin Frenette on guitar Andy McWain on piano, Todd Keating on bass and Tatsuya Nakatani on drums. I am previously familiar with just 2 members of this quartet. Boston pianist, Andy McWain, has had a couple of strong discs on this same label, a quartet date with Assif Tsahar and a trio with Albey Balgochian & Lawrence Cook that I reviewed. Former Boston-based percussion wiz, Tatsuya Nakatani, remains one of the best and most distinctive of all improvising drummers and moved to Pennsylvania a couple of years back. Although Kevin has nice round jazz guitar tone, his playing is quite free and focused. Both he and pianist, Andy McWain, have a special relationship as they swirl layers of notes around one another with a magical connection. The other magic is the way the acoustic bass and drums also swirl freely at an astonishing pace that is sparse and well-connected simultaneously. It is as is there are two incredible duos playing at the same time yet they are subliminally always connected. — Bruce Lee Gallanter Continue reading →

Bayou Seco

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Ken Keppeler and Jeanie McLerie who form the heart of Bayou Seco, have been researching and playing the music of the Southwest USA – from the Mississippi to the deserts of Arizona – for twenty two years. Respectfully drawing from these traditions and from their own ancestors, they present to the public an exciting and informative overview of Southwestern music on diatonic accordions, fiddles, guitar, mandolin, banjo and harmonica. Continue reading →

Tim Perkis | Noisy People

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Noisy People is a new feature length video documentary, presenting portraits of eight sound artists and musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tim Perkis says about his film: “At first I thought I was simply stepping in to do a job I wished someone else had done, documenting a little-known musical scene with an interesting story. But it soon became clear that the film also touched upon a more basic question: what is the nature of a creative life, and how can one live it?” Continue reading →