Improvised music trio GLACIER is starting a weekly residency at the Dragonfly Lounge, Madison’s newest music venue. While there are several excellent weekly residencies in town (particularly the New Breed jam session every Tuesday at the Cardinal), this will be the first weekly series in town in over ten years to focus primarily on improvised music. Each week will feature a special guest to round out the ensemble for the second set, beginning this week with Trevor Saint on extended range glockenspiel; next week violist Jen Clare Paulson will join the band. The Dragonfly is offering some pretty incredible drink specials, like half off house wine and rail drinks, so in addition to being a great hang, it will be the best spot in town for cocktails on a Wednesday night. Scott Gordon of the Isthmus wrote a great article about it here.

You can see/hear more about Glacier at their tumblr page here.

Thursday, February 16^th – Audio For The Arts (7 S. Blair St., Madison) – $8 general admission – doors at 7:30

WRACK skirts the boundaries of an ever-evolving tradition hovering at the crossroads of other traditions. It is both a chamber ensemble with a highly unusual instrumentation and a book of compositions tailor-made for the personalities of its members. While the compositions’ melodic and contrapuntal content is reminiscent of European-American classical modernism, their modular structures and improvisational procedures are heavily indebted to the innovations of the African-American Creative Music continuum.

Oboist Kyle Bruckmann founded the project in Chicago in 2002, enlisting trombonist Jeb Bishop, percussionist Tim Daisy, bassist Kurt Johnson, and violist Jen Clare Paulson. Their debut record on Red Toucan demonstrated the band’s “ability to combine turned-up flame with clear-headed attention to texture and space” and was hailed as “a document of exciting new directions from some of Chicago’s best players.” (Dusted magazine)

Bruckmann moved to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2003, but has maintained ties to Chicago’s vibrant avant-jazz and improvised music community ever since. During a 2005 homecoming visit, Wrack reconvened with bass clarinetist Jason Stein and bassist Anton Hatwich replacing Bishop and Johnson, who were unavailable at the time. The resulting album on 482 Music, Intents & Purposes, provides “dazzling proof that intricately arranged, angular modern jazz can be accessible and enjoyable.” (The Wire)

Wrack is touring in support of their new album Cracked Refraction, out on Porter Records. They will perform two sets of new music in the warm, intimate setting of Audio For The Arts.

Luke Polipnick – guitar/compositions
Chris Bates – double/electric basses
Joey Van Phillips – drums/percussion

Avant rock-jazz trio Volcano Insurance makes their return to Madison this Friday, bringing with them a new set of music composed by SBR veteran Luke Polipnick. This band has become the stuff of legend in the Twin Cities, performing infrequently enough to garner serious attention from the jazz cognoscenti at their rare live appearances. This year marks their fifth year as a working band, and their sound has distilled down from an “everything goes” compositional approach, to an ear-bending punk jazz aesthetic.

Dead Cat Bounce (Brooklyn)

location: Audio for the Arts (7 South Blair, Madison)
time: 7:30
$8 at door

Featuring four saxophones of all ranges plus upright bass and drums, Dead Cat Bounce since 1997 has been the unique artistic vision of founder and composer Matt Steckler. Word of DCB’s high caliber as a performance ensemble has brought them to festivals and concerts nationally, and garnered distinctions from Meet the Composer, Chamber Music America, American Composers Forum, American Music Center, Boston Music Awards, Jazz Times, The Washington Post, Cadence and many others in the creative music community.

Dead Cat Bounce invokes Charles Mingus and the World Saxophone Quartet with their “tightly arranged, swirling contrapuntal reeds and multi-part, blues n’ roots-infused tricky compositions” (Jon Garelick, the Boston Phoenix). Their eclectic approach to rhythm is informed by traditions from the Caribbean, Deep South, Brazil, West Africa, Eastern Europe and Detroit. In Dead Cat Bounce, solo and collective improvisations energetically complement the poise of its ever-expanding compositional repertoire.

According to Dave Liebman, Dead Cat Bounce “does it all with exquisite writing, the subtle use of a bass-drum rhythm section and above all a definite sense of communication between the members that I am sure will be apparent to even the casual listener. These musicians are not just playing the music on the page, but listening and communing together.”

Dead Cat Bounce’s members are on the cutting edge of today’s jazz, rock and world music scenes and have performed and/or recorded with: Dave Douglas, Steve Lacy, Ray Charles, Lonnie Plaxico, Roswell Rudd, Matt Wilson, Anthony Braxton, John Tchicai, Michael Cain, Pheeroan Aklaff, Curtis Fowlkes, Melvin Sparks, Leroy Jenkins, the Either/Orchestra, Miracle Orchestra, Jazz Composers Alliance Orchestra, Mango Blue and others. To boot, DCB’s lineup is comprised of great bandleaders in their own right, offering a heady combination of musicians both self-taught and mentored under such renowned artists as Danilo Pérez, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Jim McNeely, Bob Moses and Cecil McBee.

In 2011 Dead Cat Bounce will tour to promote its fourth full-length album Chance Episodes, and also set to work on the new electro-acoustic cycle Eco-Beat Heresy. To their résume add the globally merchandized and seminal recordings Home Speaks to the Wandering (Innova), Lucky By Association and Legends of the Nar (Chonsky), and you have in Dead Cat Bounce one of the most prolific and soul-searching bodies of work available to one Little Big Band That Could.

FRODE GJERSTAD TRIO

Frode Gjerstad Trio plays at Audio for the Arts on September 2

Ben Watson, Hi-Fi News:
“This trio has a freshness which the big names in London and New York find it hard to muster these days.”

Glenn Astarita, All about Jazz:
“This band often performs with a distinct sense of spiritualism to coincide with an abundance of hearty soloing and curiously interesting three-way dialogue.”

Valentine Trio (Chicago)

Valentine Trio plays Audio for the Arts on October 7

Valentine Trio
Friday, October 7
location: Audio for the Arts (7 South Blair, Madison)
time: 7:30
$8 at door

Fred Lonberg-Holm – cello
Frank Rosaly – drums
Jason Roebke – bass

The Valentine Trio was begun as a tribute project to  the jazz cello great Fred Katz.   The first record was titled A Valentine for Fred Katz and featured Katz’s compositions and others he recorded.  The bassist was Jason Roebke and the drummer was Glenn Kotche.  The second record, Other Valentines covered compositions by a diverse collection of composers including Gil Scott-Heron, Syd Barrett, Jeff Tweedy, Sun Ra, Cat Power, as well as originals by Lonberg-Holm and Roebke.  Frank Rosaly replaced Kotche, Roebke stayed on.  The third and most recent disc, Terminal Valentine, continues the same line-up and features original compositions by Fred Lonberg-Holm.  The music for this record was conceived of for his quartet Terminal Four.  After trying the charts with Roebke and Rosaly, he decided to develop the book with the trio.

http://www.lonberg-holm.info/valentinetrio

SAMUEL BLASER TRIO

location: UW-Madison Memorial Union Terrace
time: 5:00-7:00 pm
FREE!
(Generous support for this show from WUD Music. This show is part of the weekly Behind the Beat series)

Samuel Blaser- trombone
Michael Bates – bass
Jeff Davis – drums

By combining exquisite melodies, the tradition of Albert Mangeldforff great 70’s
trio and inspiration from classical composers, this exciting band blurs the line between composed and
improvised music.

http://www.samuelblaser.com/

Samuel Blaser Trio will play UW Memorial Union on Sept 9, 5-7 pm