LaPlante + Nazary / Jen Gelineau / Meginsky + Flaherty / Nat Baldwin

10 Fiske Avenue,Greenfield MA 01301

11 September, 2021

Description

Travis LaPlante + Jason Nazary duo, Jen Gelineau, Jake Meginsky + Paul Flaherty Duo / Nat Baldwin TRAVIS LAPLANTE is a saxophonist, composer, improviser, and qigong practitioner living in Brooklyn, New York and southern Vermont. Laplante leads the acclaimed tenor saxophone quartet Battle Trance and Subtle Degrees, his duo with drummer Gerald Cleaver. Laplante also recently composed long-form works for new music ensembles the JACK Quartet and Yarn/Wire while performing alongside them. Laplante is also known for his raw solo saxophone concerts and being a member of the avant-garde quartet Little Women. He has performed and/or recorded with Trevor Dunn, Ches Smith, Peter Evans, So Percussion, Michael Formanek, Buke and Gase, Ingrid Laubrock, Darius Jones, Mat Maneri, and Matt Mitchell, among others. He has toured his music extensively and has appeared at many major international festivals such as The Moers Festival (Germany), Jazz Jantar (Poland), Saalfelden (Austria), Jazz em Agosto (Portugal), Earshot (Seattle), Hopscotch (North Carolina), and the NYC Winter JazzFest. As a composer, Laplante has recently been commissioned by the Lucerne Festival (Switzerland), the JACK Quartet, Roulette (Brooklyn, NY), Yarn/Wire, and The Jerome Foundation. As a qigong student of master Robert Peng, Laplante has undergone traditional intensive training. His focus in recent years, under the tutelage of Laura Stelmok, has been on Taoist alchemical medicine and the cultivation of the heart. Laplante is passionate about the intersection of music and medicine. He and his wife are the founders of Sword Hands, a qigong and acupuncture healing practice based in Brooklyn, New York and Putney, Vermont. JASON NAZARY is a drummer/producer/improviser/composer from Atlanta and based in Brooklyn. Jason has been a force in New York's creative music scene for over a decade. Fascinated by the intersection of acoustic & music, Nazary has released 2 EPs and most recently a debut record, entitled Spring Collection, that explore the use of acoustic drums as trigger and control sources for electronic instruments in the context of raw, minimalist composition and improvisation. On Spring Collection, the Wire says - "wonky and woozy, teaming with detail, this is truly cosmic music." He also co-leads a number of ensembles, among them the dystopian electro noise duo Clebs with singer Emilie Weibel, and Anteloper, an improvising modular beat shredding duo with trumpeter/juno explorer Jaimie Branch. He is also well known for his work in the avant garde free jazz soul quartet, Little Women. Nazary has also performed & recorded with celebrated musicians from across the musical spectrum, including Helado Negro, Olga Bell, Darius Jones, Joe Morris, to name just a few. He has also performed internationally at festivals such as La Villete (France), Moers (Germany), Jazz Jantar (Poland), Saafelden (Austria), Jazz em Augusto (Portugal), Jazz Cerkno (Slovenia), Winter Jazz (NYC) and Sonic Transmissions (Austin, TX). JAKE MEGINSKY is an electronic musician, percussionist, composer, and filmmaker. A New Music USA and Massachusetts Cultural Council fellow in both music and film, he has collaborated and performed with such artists as Milford Graves, Alvin Lucier, Joan La Barbara, Kim Gordon, Vic Rawlings, Greg Kelley, Bhob Rainey, Joe McPhee, Thurston Moore, William Parker, Daniel Carter, Paul Flaherty, Arthur Brooks, Bill Nace, and John Truscinski. Music critic David Keenan called Meginsky’s 2014 solo record, L’appel Du Vide, “a hallucinatory electro percussion masterpiece” and in the WIRE Magazine review of the album, Nick Cain wrote, “the album uses little more than a couple of sounds, extracting often head spinning complexity from a minimum of means.” Art In America Magazine says, “Meginsky’s digital concrète takes percussion to outer extremes.” He lives in western Massachusetts. Alto and tenor saxophonist Paul Flaherty is New England's purveyor of the ecstatic jazz pulse. Even before his 1978 debut Flaherty remained unshakable in the pursuit of soul healing and demon dashing through freedom music. That first record, In the Midst of Chaos was cut with his local clan, under the banner Orange. For the next 20 years Flaherty remained exclusively in the great North East and recording over a dozen blasting, freely improvised albums with drummer Randall Colbourne, and others, for Cadence and their own Zaabway imprint. Since 2001 Flaherty's notoriety has risen in tandem with his hyper-acclaimed duo with drummer Chris Corsano and collaborations Dream/Aktion Unit (with Jim O'Rourke and Thurston Moore), Cold Bleak Heat, Dredd Foole, Joe McPhee, Steve Baczkowski, Marc Edwards, and many others. "He's been at it since the '70s and has become an underground champion of chasing the Eternal Now. The subject of these sonic musings is freedom--freedom from the constraints of traditional harmonic, melodic, and compositional forms--freedom to go, baby, go wherever the Spirit takes him." -- Farrell Lowe, All About Jazz Nat Baldwin is a bassist, improviser, composer, and songwriter from Maine, currently living in Northampton MA. He’s released numerous solo albums ranging from minimalist songs to harsh acoustic noise. A former member of Dirty Projectors, Baldwin has most recently toured with indie-folk act Little Wings, and currently collaborates with improvisor/guitarist E. Jason Gibbs. In the fall of 2020, he started the experimental music label Tripticks Tapes. Jen Gelineau is a Violinist, improvisor, and composer currently playing in: Donkey NoNo, Moose, Sunburned Hand of the Man, Monstars, Willie Gussin & Jen Gelineau, and Jen Gelineau solo.