ADVANCE: $16
DAY OF SHOW: $20
DAY OF SHOW: $20
Audio / Video
Gallery
About This Event
Minimum Age:
18+Doors Open:
10:00 PMShow Time:
10:30 PMDescription:
This is a first come seated event. Seating is limited and not guaranteed; please arrive early.
Artists
Myra Melford's Be Bread
Over the course of two decades and more than 30 recordings, Ms. Melford has carved out a distinctive niche among the creative music’s most respected pianist-composers. Her signature sound skillfully combines early influences such as classical music and the traditional blues piano styles of her native Chicago with her later immersion in the music of Eastern Europe and India and extensive musical studies with such legendary figures as Ran Blake, Jaki Byard, Don Pullen and Henry Threadgill. In addition to Be Bread, she currently leads/co-leads a variety of ensembles, including Happy Whistlings, Trio M and duos with multi-instrumentalist Marty Ehrlich, pianist Satoko Fujii and dancer/ choreographers Oguri and Dawn Akemi Saito. Since 2004, she has also served on the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley, where she develops and teaches courses about contemporary improvised music. Learn more at http://myramelford.com
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"There’s always room in the precincts of improvised music for a new album by the pianist Myra Melford. “The Whole Tree Gone” (Firehouse 12), her first as a leader in more than three years, is a knockout by any standard, including the bar set by her previous work. Ambitious but approachable, suffused with airy warmth and restless calm, it unpacks a suite of lyrical compositions Ms. Melford has been refining since 2004. Their character ranges from slyly furtive (“Moon Bird,” inspired by Miró) to gracefully frantic (the title track) to starkly elegiac (“A Generation Comes and Another Goes”), often shape-shifting in mid-song.
Be Bread, Ms. Melford’s coolly intuitive cohort, girds every structure with a pliable integrity, making these pieces feel both supple and sturdy. The group has a sympathetic front line (and a pair of commanding soloists) in the trumpeter Cuong Vu and the clarinetist Ben Goldberg; its rhythm section consists of the guitarist Brandon Ross and the bassist Stomu Takeishi, both playing acoustic instruments, and the drummer Matt Wilson, an endless fount of effervescence. Ms. Melford leads from within the stir, meting out her pianism in surges or shimmers, according to the music’s needs.
-Nate Chinen, New York Times, January 24, 2010
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"There’s always room in the precincts of improvised music for a new album by the pianist Myra Melford. “The Whole Tree Gone” (Firehouse 12), her first as a leader in more than three years, is a knockout by any standard, including the bar set by her previous work. Ambitious but approachable, suffused with airy warmth and restless calm, it unpacks a suite of lyrical compositions Ms. Melford has been refining since 2004. Their character ranges from slyly furtive (“Moon Bird,” inspired by Miró) to gracefully frantic (the title track) to starkly elegiac (“A Generation Comes and Another Goes”), often shape-shifting in mid-song.
Be Bread, Ms. Melford’s coolly intuitive cohort, girds every structure with a pliable integrity, making these pieces feel both supple and sturdy. The group has a sympathetic front line (and a pair of commanding soloists) in the trumpeter Cuong Vu and the clarinetist Ben Goldberg; its rhythm section consists of the guitarist Brandon Ross and the bassist Stomu Takeishi, both playing acoustic instruments, and the drummer Matt Wilson, an endless fount of effervescence. Ms. Melford leads from within the stir, meting out her pianism in surges or shimmers, according to the music’s needs.
-Nate Chinen, New York Times, January 24, 2010