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Event
Myra Melford and Ben Goldberg Duo
Pianist Myra Melford and clarinetist Ben Goldberg present a concert program of new compositions. Melodic, exploratory, lyrical, swinging, virtuosic this is chamber music for the twenty-first century where composition meets improvisation to surprise and enlighten. Their music combines the precision of classical music with the creative spirit and soul of jazz.
They have been performing duets since 2008. Each concert has been a chapter in an evolving musical conversation two musicians speaking the same language with slightly different points of view, and, like any good conversation, always finding something new.
For pianist, composer and Guggenheim fellow Myra Melford, the personal and the poetic have always been intimately and deeply connected. Raised outside Chicago in a house designed by the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Melford grew up literally surrounded by art. Where most of us find the beauty in our childhood homes through the memories and associations we make within its four walls, Melford saw early on that aesthetic expression could both be built from and be a structure for profound emotions.
Over the course of a career spanning more than two decades, Melford has taken that lesson to heart, crafting a singular sound world that harmonizes the intricate and the expressive, the meditative and the assertive, the cerebral and the playful. Drawing inspiration from a vast spectrum of cultural and spiritual traditions and artistic disciplines, she has found a "spark of recognition" in sources as diverse as the writings of the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi and the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano; the wisdom of Zen Buddhism and the Huichol Indians of Mexico; and the music of mentors like Jaki Byard, Don Pullen, and Henry Threadgill.
The latest incarnation of this ever-evolving cross-disciplinary dialogue is Language of Dreams, which premiered in November 2013 at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The multi-media work is inspired by Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano's Memory of Fire trilogy, a history of the Americas told through indigenous myths and the accounts of European colonizers. The piece will combine music for Melford's quintet Snowy Egret with narration by a multi-lingual actor, dance by Los Angeles-based choreographer Oguri, and video by Bay Area filmmaker David Szlasa.
While Language of Dreams is her most ambitious project to date, it is not the first time that Melford has constructed a piece from such a wealth of disciplines. In 2006, the Walker Arts Center premiered Knock on the Sky, a piece inspired by Albert Camus' essay "The Myth of Sisyphus" and Kobo Abe's novel Woman in the Dunes, in which Melford collaborated with New York Citybased choreographer/dancer Dawn Akemi Saito and Austrian architect Michael Haberz.
Snowy Egret, Melford's latest working group, made its debut in 2012. The quintet comprises some of creative music's most inventive and individual voices: trumpeter Ron Miles, guitarist Liberty Ellman, bassist Stomu Takeishi, and drummer Tyshawn Sorey. Melford's spacious, contemplative, exploratory compositions have long attracted and almost demanded such forward-thinking artists. Her past ensembles have included Be Bread, with Cuong Vu, Ben Goldberg, Brandon Ross, Stomu Takeishi, and Matt Wilson; The Same River, Twice, with Dave Douglas, Chris Speed, Erik Friedlander, and Michael Sarin; Crush, with Takeishi, Vu, and Kenny Wolleson.
Melford also currently is one-third of the collective Trio M with bassist Mark Dresser and drummer Matt Wilson; their most recent CD, The Guest House, was one of 2012's most acclaimed releases. She also performs in the duo ::Dialogue:: with clarinetist Ben Goldberg and will release her first solo album in October 2013, a collection of work inspired by the paintings of the late visual artist Don Reich.
Clarinetist Ben Goldberg was born and raised in Denver, Colorado, later earning an undergraduate music degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz and a subsequent Master of Arts in Composition from Mills College. A student of Rosario Mazzeo, Steve Lacy, and Joe Lovano, Goldberg initially won acclaim as a member of the New Klezmer Trio, debuting in 1991 with Masks and Faces; two years later he won a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to mount a retrospective series spotlighting the music of key American jazz composers including Thelonious Monk and Herbie Nichols, a project on which he collaborated with the likes of Andrew Hill and Bobby Bradford. After teaming with Kenny Wollesen for the 1993 LP The Relative Value of Things, Goldberg resurfaced two years later with another New Klezmer Trio record, Melt Zonk Rewire; with the group Snorkel, he also contributed to 1996's Live at the Elbo Room. In 1998, Goldberg headlined no less than four new recordings: Eight Phrases for Jefferson Rubin, Twelve Minor, Here by Now, and What Comes Before.
Melford's musical evolution has long run in parallel with her spiritual search, a personal journey that has led her to Aikido, Siddha Yoga, and the wisdom traditions of the Huichol people of Mexico's central highlands. Sonically, that quest is expressed via her wide-ranging palette, which expands from the piano to the harmonium and electronic keyboards or to amplifying barely audible sounds in the piano's interior. Her playing can build from the blissful and lyrical to the intense and angular, with accents from Indian, African, Cuban and Middle Eastern musics or the cerebral abstraction of European and American jazz and classical experimentalism.
While Melford's music continually reaches toward a state of transcendence, it still remains deeply rooted in the blues traditions she heard growing up in the Chicago area. In 1978, she first encountered violinist Leroy Jenkins, her introduction to the AACM, whose boundary-free, adventurous approach to jazz remains an influence. She would go on to study with Jenkins, together forming the collective trio Equal Interest with multireedist Joseph Jarman in 1997.
Melford moved to the east coast in 1982 and began performing in New York City's thriving Downtown scene, making her recorded debut as a leader in 1990; she has since released more than twenty albums as a leader or co-leader and appeared on more than 40 releases as a side-person. In 2000, she spent a year in North India on a Fulbright scholarship, immersing herself in the region's classical, devotional, and folk music. Melford relocated to the west coast in 2004, joining the faculty of the University of California, Berkeley as an associate professor of contemporary improvised music. There, she engages students in the theory and practice of improvisation, employing diverse creative strategies.
Her work has earned Melford some of the highest accolades in her field. In 2013 alone, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow and received the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation's Performing Artist Award and a Doris Duke Residency to Build Demand for the Arts for her efforts to re-imagine the jazz program at San Francisco's Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. She was also the winner of the 2012 Alpert Award in the Arts for Music. She has been honored numerous times in DownBeat's Critics Poll since 1991 and was nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association as Pianist of the Year in 2008 and 2009 and Composer of the Year in 2004.
"...a visionary bandleader with a singularly expansive sound embracing a global array of influences. While she's known for her percussive attack and roiling keyboard technique, Melford is also a deeply soulful player with a passion for Afro-Caribbean grooves, the blues and classical Hindustani music."
Andrew Gilbert, Berkleyside
"Melford is a firebrand at the piano, delivering punch well above her diminutive stature."
Roger Mitchell, Ausjazz Blog
"There is great depth in the leader's writing and arranging that imbues this set with a real gravitas...a superlative example of how to create and sustain an emotionally charged mood that loosely recalls a Coltrane or Dolphy fanfare without falling into cliché...her compositional style has its own signature."
Kevin Le Gendre, Jazzwise
"...a fearless pianist and harmonium player..."
Nate Chinen, New York Times
"Melford's intrepid virtuosity is consistently breathtaking..."
Troy Collins, AllAboutJazz.com
"Melford is a startlingly versatile musician, whose stylistic oeuvre spans the wide arc of pure lyricism to knotty cluster pounding and "prepared-piano" explorations."
Robert Bush, San Diego Reader
"Myra is the genuine article, the most gifted pianist/composer to emerge from jazz since Anthony Davis."
Francis Davis, Philadelphia Inquirer
"Melford is an explosive player, a virtuoso who shocks and soothes, and who can make the piano stand up and do things it doesn't seem to have been designed for."
David Rubien, San Francisco Chronicle
Check out sound samples at https://soundcloud.com/myra-melford-ben-goldberg
Myra Melford website:
www.myramelford.com
Ben Goldberg website:
www.bengoldberg.net
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LocationThe Sanctuary for Independent Media (View)
3361 6th Avenue
Troy, NY 12180
United States
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| Kid Friendly: Yes! |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: Yes! |
| Wheelchair Accessible: Yes! |
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