Tag Archives: rvamusic

ScottClark4tet “Bury My Heart”

ScottClark4tet BuryMyHeart cover CF 347

I know that in today’s culture it’s become “on to the next thing”. In music it’s the same way, “on to the next record”. Not many people want to know what you did but rather, “what are you doing?” There are some elements of that which I agree with, however last November I released a record on Clean Feed Records called “Bury My Heart”. Some of you may have heard the record or maybe saw a show, but after a recent concert performing the suite from that record, I feel that it is just as relevant today as it was the day that I started writing the music. I want to thank everyone that has checked out the record, and the inspiration/stories behind the music, as well as all the musicians that have played the suite with me live or on the record itself. (and also a special thank you to Pedro Costa at Clean Feed for helping get the record out into the world).
If you would like to check it out, you can find the music on my website as well as on Clean Feed’s site.
I am working on new music for this project…which I look forward to sharing with you soon. In the meantime, thank you all for your support and a special thank you to the people that I get to make music with for being so giving of their time and talents to make this music come alive and have the impact that it has had.
more soon…..

 

Exciting Upcoming Concerts…


For many years now I’ve been working (along with many other people) to try to bring world class musicians to our city to perform and connect with what we’re doing here in Richmond.  A lot of that wouldn’t be possible without the support of Chris Bopst at Balliceaux, Lucas Fritz at The Camel and The Broadberry and recently the Black Iris Gallery and their Tiny Bar Sessions.  (there have also been many other great venues and supporters of shows over the years….Tony Garcia and Darryl Harper at VCU, Gallery 5, Commercial Taphouse, ForInstance Gallery, Black Hand Coffee, Hardywood Brewery and many many many others!).

There are two shows coming up that I am very excited to be bringing to Richmond.  First is the group Friends and Neighbors joining us all the way from Norway on Friday, September 2nd at Black Iris Gallery.  Doors for the show open at 8:30pm and music starts right at 9pm.  Tickets are $10
Quoting from their website: “Friends & Neighbors represents a new generation of bands from the Norwegian jazz-scene. The music can be described as energetic and melodic free jazz inspired by musicians like Ornette Coleman, Archie Shepp, Pharoah Sanders and John Carter. On their debut album ”No Beat Policy”, Friends & Neighbors have created an authentic and acoustic atmosphere that refers back to the political roots of free jazz. Through original and strong compositions, this has resulted in a band sound with strong identity, crystal clear presence and personality.”

Being able to have an international jazz group playing in our city is a great thing…and I hope that you will come and support them and the music.
Find out more about them here:  Friends and Neighbors
Also hear their most recent release on Clean Feed Records here: http://cleanfeed-records.com/product/hymn-for-a-hungry-nation/

The second show is the group Battle Trance led by the great saxophonist/composer Travis Laplante.  This show will also be taking place at the Black Iris Gallery on Wednesday, September 7th (doors at 8:30pm music at 9pm. Tickets $10) Battle Trance’s new record “Blade of Love” was just released and it is a truly amazing record.
More on the group and the new record via their site:

“Blade of Love is the new album from tenor saxophone quartet Battle Trance. The follow-up to their widely acclaimed debut Palace of Wind (2014), Blade of Love is an elemental composition that aims to fulfill the tenor saxophone’s expansive potential as an ensemble instrument. Working within the intimate intersection of the human body/breath and the saxophone, Blade of Love is a spiritual and enigmatic work with a deep emotional resonance. 

Since forming in 2012, the four saxophonists in Battle Trance (Travis Laplante, Patrick Breiner, Matt Nelson, Jeremy Viner) have spent hundreds of hours deepening their musical connection with each other, maturing as an ensemble through relentless touring everywhere from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Montreal to Vancouver, and most places in between. 

The three movements of Blade of Love were composed by Battle Trance leader Travis Laplante and recorded by the group in a wooden room with soaring ceilings in the Vermont forest, after spending two years of rigorous rehearsals working to perfect the array of extended techniques, both virtuosic and primal, required to bring the challenging piece to life. 

Blade of Love’s central focus is on the physical and spiritual intersection of the saxophone and the human body. The saxophone is one of the few instruments that literally enters the body of the person playing it, and Blade of Love is a medium for this sacred meeting place, with each member of Battle Trance using the saxophone as a vessel for the human spirit. 

Singing has an inherent power, but that power is heightened in the context of Blade of Love. At times, the four players sing while exhaling through the saxophone tubes, using the instrument’s keys to shift the timbre of their voices. Laplante also integrates non-traditional mouth articulations, using the saxophone as a resonant chamber for these inventive sounds.”

You can purchase your copy of their new record at the show and also hear a sample of the music via the bandcamp page here: https://battletrance.bandcamp.com/album/blade-of-love

These two shows are just the most recent, in a long list of shows, that will pass through Richmond.  I hope that you will come support the music and help to continue to make Richmond a destination for other musicians to stop at and share their music with us.

For both of these shows my group, the ScottClarkOther4tet, will be opening.  For the show on September 2nd the 4tet will be playing music that we’ve been working on over the past few months, stemming from some of my early compositions.  For the show on September 7th we will be performing the suite “Bury My Heart” from our most recent release on Clean Feed Records.  This will be the first performance of the suite with guitarist Alan Parker, and I am very excited to share this music with you.  If you haven’t already heard the record you can hear it here (https://cleanfeed-records.com/product/bury-my-heart/) and I will also have hard copies for sale at both shows.
ScottClarkOther4tet

As always, thank you for all of your support….

more soon…..

Rick Parker/Li Daiguo & ScottClarkOther4tet @ Balliceaux

Join us for a special night of music, on Wednesday August 3rd, as we welcome the duo of Brooklyn’s Rick Parker and China’s Li Daiguo to Richmond for a great night of music at Balliceaux. The ScottClarkOther4tet will be opeing (featuring Cameron Ralston, Bob Miller, Alan Parker and Scott Clark).
Doors open at 9:30 and the show is free….
Balliceaux: 203 N. Lombardy St Richmond, VA 23220

Read more about Rick and Li below…they are touing in support of their new record and this is really something that you don’t want to miss. (you can hear a sample of what they do here…..https://youtu.be/yayQMF6LyeU)

ABOUT LI DAIGUO AND RICK PARKER
Sounds of the trombone, cello, pipa human voice and a variety of electronic remedies are conjured to form the psychoacoustic duo of Brooklyn’s Rick Parker and China’s Li Daiguo. “The sounds that the two create together are uncategorizable, a fluid blend of past and future, traditional and modern. They move from the ambient to the abstract, with folk-like acoustics colliding strangely with sci-fi electronics.” (Shaun Brady). With performances and recording sessions over the last 2 years in both NYC and Dali, a small city in southwest China, Parker and Li will release their debut record, Free World Music, on Brooklyn’s eleven2eleven record label in June 2016.

Their unlikely collaboration began in 2014 with Parker’s visit to Li’s current hometown of Dali where they performed and recorded. Later that fall, Li travelled to NYC where they spent another day in the recording studio and performed concerts at Manhattan Inn and Trans-Pecos presented by Lucas Ligeti’s Pigeon Culture. Their performance in Philadelphia presented by Fire Museum was also named a 2014 Best Performance in Philadelphia by Ken Weiss in Cadence Magazine. In the summer of 2015, they were invited to take part in a week long composition residency at COART in Lijiang, China which culminated in a concert of the music they created together during that week.

Both musicians have shaped their own successful careers on their own. Li Daiguo is a major figure in the experimental traditional music world in China and abroad. The multi-instrumentalist has performed solo concerts on cello, pipa, throat singing and beat boxing at Paris Cite De La Musique, Sonic Protest Festival France, Culturescapes Arts Festival in Switzerland, World Sacred Spirits Festival in India as well as festivals all over China. He has also composed for the Guangzhou Modern Dance company, Guangzhou Ballet company, Nobu Khan Malaysian Butoh Dance festival and has released numerous recordings on his own.

Combining jazz, experimental, electronic and rock, Rick Parker casts a broad net with his trombone playing augmented by electronics and synthesizers. His music has been described as “an expressive new-breed fusion, informed by a few generations of downtown experimentation.” Nate Chinen, New York Times. He leads/co-leads several groups including: jazz quintet, the Rick Parker Collective; Little Worlds a trio dedicated to the performance of Bela Bartok’s Mikrokosmos and 9 Volt with Eyal Maoz. These groups have 5 releases on labels including OutNow Recordings, Fresh Sound New Talent and eleven2eleven. Parker has worked with a large cross section of notable musicians including Tim Berne, Mingus Big Band, Charli Persip, Frank Lacy, Ravish Momin’s Tarana, Super Hi-Fi, Tim Kuhl, Beninghove’s Hangmen, hip hop legends the Wu Tang Clan, Ghostface Killah, DMC and mexican pop stars Ximena Sariñana and Natalia LaFourcade.

ScottClark4tet Kennedy Center Video

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On February 24, the ScottClark4tet played at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as part of their Millennium Stage series.  The concert was streamed live and is now on their website as part of their archive (which has an amazing selection of videos to watch!).  I want to thank everyone that attended the concert that night and also thank you to everyone that watched online.

If you missed it, you can view the performance via this link http://www.kennedy-center.org/video/index/M6669 
This performance was of our suite “Bury My Heart” and is available on our new record by the same name.  You can purchase your copy on my site under the “music” tab (https://scottwclark.com/listen/) as well as on the Clean Feed Records website (https://cleanfeed-records.com/product/bury-my-heart/).  It is also available on your favorite online music service (amazon, iTunes etc).

Thank you for all of your support….more soon

Premier of “Bury My Heart” at VCU Oct. 30th

photo by Lauren Serpa

photo by Lauren Serpa

I am excited to announce that on Thursday, October 30th, 2014, the ScottClark4tet, will be premiering a new work that I have written called “Bury My Heart”.  I have been writing and researching this piece for quite some time and I look forward to debuting it at Virginia Commonwealth University.

“Bury My Heart” comes from a journey of self-discovery into my own ancestry and the profound impact that reading and studying the history of Native Americans has had on my life. Many years ago I began researching my family’s Native American ancestry and the history of the many tribes of North America. The way I viewed life and nature had always intrigued me; and when I began to discover my own Native American background, those views led me to intensify my research.

One of the first books that opened my eyes to these events in the history of Native Americans was Dee Brown’s Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee. (Subsequent books that had profound impacts on me included The Sand Creek Massacre by Stan Hoig, The Killing of Crazy Horse by Thomas Powers, and Trail of Tears by John Ehle and many others). The events described in these books sent me on a path of discovery and research that has inspired the songs contained in this suite of music.

Of all the events described in these books, the one that has had the biggest impact on me is the Sand Creek Massacre, in which a village of peaceful Cheyenne and Arapaho were attacked and over 100 men, women and children were killed. November 29, 2014 will mark the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre. We are premiering this music, at VCU, as a remembrance of one of the most tragic days in American history. The history of so many Native American tribes goes completely untaught in our society. One of my hopes is that through this music, and the stories behind the music, I can do a small part to reach others who will be inspired to look further into the histories, and present-day realities, of so many tribes in North America.

I hope that you will be able to join us for this night of music…and we look forward to sharing the music with you.

Thursday October 30th, 2014
8pm 
Admission is Free and open to the public 
Vlahcevic Concert Hall,
W. E. Singleton Center for the Performing Arts
922 Park Avenue
Richmond, Virginia 23284-2004

you can see a small preview of the music from our performance on Virginia This Morning via the link below
http://wtvr.com/2014/10/24/celebrate-your-friday-with-two-jazz-numbers-by-the-scott-clark-4tet/

also on 10/29 you can hear an interview and performance of some of the music from the suite on WCVE FM 88.9 NPR starting at 7pm.  (http://ideastations.org/radio)

https://www.facebook.com/events/1476847545873294/?ref=br_tf

This concert is co-sponsored by VCU Jazz (http://arts.vcu.edu/music/events/) and the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs (<www.omsa.vcu.edu>) in anticipation of Native American History Month (November) and of the 150th anniversary of the Sand Creek Massacre (November 29).

The ScottClark4tet is:
Cameron Ralston-bass
Bob Miller-trumpet
Jason Scott-saxophone
Scott Clark-drums

thank you for your support….
more soon………

design by Cary Ralston

 

New Recording….coming soon

 

image © ScottClark

image © ScottClark

I’m very excited to be going into the studio this week to record some music that my band (ScottClark4tet) and I have been working on for quite some time now.  The music was inspired in part by some of the events described in Dee Brown’s book “Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee” as well as many other books describing the history of Native Americans, and their dealings with white settlers and politicians.  This music has been a great source of inspiration to me, and the musicians in the band have really made this music come to life over the past few months.  I am really looking forward to recording this music and I am planning for debut of the suite sometime this November.

On November 29th of this year, there will be a remembrance of  the Sand Creek Massacre (one of the main events that inspired this music and spawned much of my personal study on the subject).  It is described by the National Parks Service as “…one of the most emotionally charged and controversial events in American history, a tragedy reflective of its time and place.”  

More from the National Parks Service website about Sand Creek (http://www.nps.gov/sand/historyculture/index.htm)
     “At dawn on November 29, 1864, approximately 675 U.S. volunteer soldiers commanded by Colonel John M. Chivington attacked a village of about 700 Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians along Sand Creek in southeastern Colorado Territory. Using small arms and howitzer fire, the troops drove the people out of their camp. While many managed to escape the initial onslaught, others, particularly noncombatant women, children, and the elderly fled into and up the bottom of the dry stream bed. The soldiers followed, shooting at them as they struggled through the sandy earth. At a point several hundred yards above the village, the women and children frantically excavated pits and trenches along either side of the streambed to protect themselves. Some adult men attempted to hold back the Army with whatever weapons they had managed to retrieve from the camp, and at several places along Sand Creek the soldiers shot the people from opposite banks and brought forward the howitzers to blast them from their improvised defenses. Over the course of eight hours the troops killed around 200 Cheyenne and Arapaho people composed mostly of women, children, and the elderly. During the afternoon and following day, the soldiers wandered over the field committing atrocities on the dead before departing the scene on December 1 to resume campaigning.

Since the barbarism of November 29, the Sand Creek Massacre maintains its station as one of the most emotionally charged and controversial events in American history, a tragedy reflective of its time and place. The background of the Sand Creek Massacre lay in a whirlwind of events and issues registered by the ongoing Civil War in the East and West; the overreactions by whites on the frontier to the 1862-63 Dakota uprising in Minnesota and its aftermath; the status of the various bands of Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians relative to each other as well as other plains tribes; the constant undercurrent of threatened Confederate incursions; and the existing state of politics in Colorado including the intrigues of individual politicians in that territory. Perhaps most important, the seeds of the Sand Creek Massacre lay in the presence of two historically discordant cultures within a geographical area that both coveted for disparate reasons, an avoidable situation that resulted in tragedy.”

This music and these events don’t just exist in a vacuum.  Many of these topics still are being dealt with today.  From the debate over the Washington Redskins team name (http://cnn.it/1vtPsZQ) (also, read the comment section to see more) to History Colorado’s (the Colorado Historical Society) dealing with the upcoming remembrance of the Sand Creek Massacre (http://bit.ly/1kivPyK) or to all of the many events happening in and around the Native American community (http://bit.ly/1sLRAYA) there is a lot going on right now.  I don’t claim to be an expert on all of the inner workings of what is happening now, or what has happened in the past.  I have however been deeply affected by what I have learned and how it informs my own life.  Through my research and through this music, I hope to share a part of my dealings with these subjects with as many people as I can.  I also know that this is just the beginning of a lifelong search for more knowledge and understanding.

I am very grateful to Spacebomb Studios for allowing us to record in their great studio and specifically to Trey Pollard, Matthew E. White, Pinson Chanselle, Cameron Ralston and the rest of the Spacebomb family for helping me to realize this recording. I look forward to sharing this music with as many people as possible and as soon as possible. Most importantly, I can not thank the guys in the band (Cameron Ralston, Bob Miller and Jason Scott) enough for being so giving of their time over the past few years….and also to everyone along the way for all of your support.  THANK YOU!!

more soon…..

ScottClark4tet @ Commercial Taphouse Nov. 17th 9pm

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This Sunday (November 17th) at 9pm the ScottClark4tet will be playing at the Commercial Taphouse in our fair city #rva.  It’s always a great honor to get to play with this group and we’re excited to try out some of our new music.

I still have a few copies of our record A&B and I’ll have them with me.
(in the meantime you can still purchase digital copies here http://scottclark4tet.bandcamp.com/)

I hope that you can join us….

November 17th, 2013
ScottClark4tet
Commercial Taphouse
9pm FREE
11 North Robinson St.
Richmond, VA 23220

ScottClark4tet:
Cameron Ralston-bass
Bob Miller-trumpet
Jason Scott-saxophone
Scott Clark-drums

more soon….and thank you for all of the support

Ken Vandermark & Nate Wooley Duo w/ EGAHI @ ForInstance Gallery 10/5

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I’m really excited to announce a show that will be happening on Saturday, October 5th at ForInstance Gallery (107 E. Cary St. Richmond, VA).  The show will feature the duo Ken Vandermark (saxophone) and Nate Wooley (trumpet).  Both musicians have been to Richmond many times in the past, but this is the first time that they will be here playing together.  Ken and Nate are truly two of my favorite musicians and I can’t wait to have them both back in Richmond.

Opening the show will be a new group of mine called “EGAHI” featuring Scott Burton on guitar and Jason Ajemian on bass.  Scott and I have been making music together for many years in various bands.  I have also had the opportunity to get to play with Jason a number of times and it’s a real honor for me to have a group with both of them.

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More information on Ken Vandermark and Nate Wooley can be found below…or by clicking on the links to their websites.  If you are unfamiliar with their work, I hope you will take the time to check out more of their music and join us to hear these world class musicians live.

Ken Vandermark/Nate Wooley Duo w/EGAHI
Saturday October 5th, 2013
ForInstance Gallery
107 E. Cary St. Richmond, VA
$10 suggested donation
Doors at 7pm

https://www.facebook.com/events/506367972790026/

Ken Vandermark

http://www.kenvandermark.com

Born in Warwick, Rhode Island on September 22nd, 1964, Ken Vandermark began studying the tenor saxophone at the age of 16. Since graduating with a degree in Film and Communications from McGill University during the spring of 1986, his primary creative emphasis has been the exploration of contemporary music that deals directly with advanced methods of improvisation. In 1989, he moved to Chicago from Boston, and has worked continuously from the early 1990’s onward, both as a performer and organizer in North America and Europe, recording in a large array of contexts, with many internationally renowned musicians (such as Fred Anderson, Ab Baars, Peter Brötzmann, Tim Daisy, Hamid Drake, Terrie Ex, Mats Gustafsson, Devin Hoff, Christof Kurzmann, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Joe McPhee, Paal Nilssen-Love, Paul Lytton, Andy Moor, Joe Morris, and Nate Wooley). His current activity includes work with Made To Break, The Resonance Ensemble, Side A, Lean Left, Fire Room, the DKV Trio, and duos with Paal Nilssen-Love and Tim Daisy. More than half of each year is spent touring in Europe, North America, and Japan, and his concerts and numerous recordings have been critically acclaimed both at home and abroad. In addition to the tenor sax, he also plays the bass and Bb clarinet, and baritone saxophone.

Citations of Merit:

  • One of the “Chicagoans of the Year in the Arts, 1994” (Chicago Tribune, January 1, 1995) for his work with the Vandermark Quartet.
  • Selected as one of the “25 For The Future,” the most significant improvising musicians under the age of 40, by Down Beat magazine, June 1998.
  • Selected as a MacArthur Fellow in 1999.
  • In 2004 was named among the “Musicians Of The Year” by All About Jazz, New York.
  • Picked as one of Chicago’s “40 Cultural Heroes” by Time Out magazine in September 2008.
  • Was the first musician to be featured leading his own groups two years in a row at the Newport Jazz Festival (the Vandermark 5 in 2009, Powerhouse Sound in 2010).
  • Selected as “Artist in Residence” for the Chicago Jazz Festival, 2012.

Nate Wooley

http://natewooley.com

Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13.   His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances.

Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes.  He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.

Wooley’s solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet.  Along with Peter Evans and Greg Kelley, Wooley is considered one of the leading lights of the American movement to redefine the physical boundaries of the horn, as well as demolishing the way trumpet is perceived in a historical context still overshadowed by Louis Armstrong.  A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings “exquisitely hostile”.

In the past three years, Wooley has been gathering international acclaim for his idiosyncratic trumpet language.  Time Out New York has called him “an iconoclastic trumpeter”, and Downbeat’s Jazz Musician of the Year, Dave Douglas has said, “Nate Wooley is one of the most interesting and unusual trumpet players living today, and that is without hyperbole”.  His work has been featured at the SWR JazzNow stage at Donaueschingen, the WRO Media Arts Biennial in Poland, Kongsberg, North Sea, Music Unlimited, and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals, and the New York New Darmstadt Festivals.  In 2011 he was an artist in residence at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn, NY and Cafe Oto in London, England. In 2013 he will perform at the Walker Art Center as a featured solo artist.

Nate is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. He also runs Pleasure of the Text which releases music by composers of experimental music at the beginnings of their careers in rough and ready mediums.

ScottClark4tet @ Commercial Taphouse 8/11 9pm

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Join us as we make our return to one of the best spots in rva, the Commercial Taphouse.
It’s been some time since we played at the Taphouse and we’re looking forward to trying out some new music.
(music by  Jean Sibelius, Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker, Eric Dolphy, Charles Mingus…and all the ScottClark4tet standards….)

Also, we’ll be starting the music right at 9pm…..

And if you’ve been waiting for your chance to purchase one of the last few physical copies of our record “A&B”, now’s your chance.  (all major credit cards accepted…..!)

Thank you for all of your support…..

Sunday August 11
9:00pm sharp
Free
11 North Robinson Street
Richmond, VA 23220

ScottClark4tet:
Cameron Ralston-bass
Jason Scott-saxophone
Bob Miller-trumpet
Scott Clark-drums

more soon……….