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Citadelic festival 2023
MAY 25 - 22 MAIN STAGE
Brandon Seabrook Trio (US)
gutsy improv out of US
Few bands in improvised music seem to generate more palpable sonic friction than Brandon Seabrook’s trio with Cooper-Moore and Gerald Cleaver. The group produces a seriously tactile, almost psychedelic sound: the gut-punch of drums, the rumbling twang of diddley-bow, and the slashing, brittle crunch of electric guitar.
On Exultations, the trio’s 2020 debut album on Astral Spirits, these sounds coalesced into gritty, propulsive improvisations possessed of an almost three-dimensional physicality. Those rhythmic and melodic fragments came together with puzzle-piece logic, like an aural Rubik’s cube, but one that never stopped moving. On the trio’s hotly anticipated follow-up In the Swarm, the group has broadened its timbre with Seabrook’s banjo and Cleaver’s electronics, and they’ve upped the ante with some thrilling post-production maneuvers that either further expand the sonic palette or turn the modus operandi upside down.
They will be presenting “In the Swarm", their new and second recording for Astral Spirits, a fresh instalment by three of the freest creative minds around, this time including banjo in the mix, and with plenty of rhythmic combinations, ululating sounds and a vast musical visionary imaginary.
Brandon Seabrook is a guitarist, banjoist, and composer living in New York City where he has established himself as one of the most potent guitarists of his generation, named Best Guitarist in New York City by the Village Voice 2012. His work focuses on the juxtaposition of hallucinatory soundscapes, jump cuts, angular composition, humor, and a massive dynamic range that can change in a nanosecond. He has released seven albums as a leader covering everything from pulverizing art-metal to chamber music, bridging the realms of extreme rock and the classical avant-garde. Rolling Stone Magazine noted, “The fiercely dexterous musician has launched a number of bands combining serious chops with manic intensity and a left-field compositional vision.” Seabrook honed his guitar skills at the New England Conservatory in Boston. He has since performed extensively in North and South America, Mexico and Europe, as a solo artist, bandleader, and collaborator. He has been called upon by Anthony Braxton, Nels Cline, Cécile McLorin Salvant, Ben Allison, Gerald Cleaver, So Percussion, Frank London, Bill Laswell, Ingrid Laubrock, and Joey Arias for his idiosyncratic physical performance style, hyperreal technique, and impeccable articulation. He has been profiled in the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Premier Guitar, Downbeat Magazine, Rolling Stone, NPR, The Chicago Reader, and The Wire. Seabrook Power Plant, the nuclear trio donned “a manic clusterfuck of merciless banjo torture” by the Village Voice, is Brandon’s brainchild, using the banjo, an instrument associated with bluegrass and country, to channel the brutal energy of punk-rock.
Cooper-Moore (born Gene Y. Ashton; August 31, 1946) is an American jazz pianist, composer and instrument builder/designer based in New York City. At age 12, Cooper-Moore was recruited by community leaders to be the piano player for the town, and soon thereafter performed at church services and community functions. This is also the age when he heard musicians such as Ahmad Jamal and Charles Mingus, and was inspired to pursue jazz. He has cited pianist Jaki Byard’s contributions to Mingus' band as a particular inspiration. He moved to Boston in 1967 to briefly attend Berklee College of Music. In Boston he connected with many musicians, some of whom became longtime collaborators, notably saxophonist David S. Ware, drummer Marc Edwards, Cleve Pozar, and Juma Santos. In 1970, he formed a collective trio, Apogee, with Ware and Edwards. In 1973, the trio of Cooper-Moore, David S. Ware, and Marc Edwards moved to New York City and established a living and performance space at 501 Canal Street, which served as a home base for musicians including Ware, Alan Michael Braufman, Jimmy Hopps, Tom Bruno, and Ellen Christi. Cooper-Moore's first commercial recording appearance was on Braufman's Valley of Search LP, released by India Navigation. Encouraged by Jimmy Hopps, Cooper-Moore began to design and build instruments, beginning with an ashimba, an 11-note xylophone made from discarded wood. In 1975, he returned to Virginia with his family. There he worked with bands from a variety of genres, continued to further develop an array of handmade instruments, and worked as an educator with the Head Start program. Upon his return to New York City in 1985, he changed his name to Cooper-Moore, derived from the surnames of his grandmothers.
Cooper-Moore has performed and recorded with William Parker’s In Order to Survive and Little Huey Creative Music Orchestra and Bill Cole's Untempered Ensemble. He established, recorded, and toured with Triptych Myth, a piano trio with Tom Abbs and Chad Taylor. He has recorded and toured extensively with Digital Primitives, a trio with Chad Taylor and Assif Tsahar. He has also collaborated with Daniel Carter in Parker's Organic Trio. He performs solo on piano and handcrafted instruments, with the Cooper-Moore Trio with Brian Price and Pascal Niggenkemper, and in Gerald Cleaver’s Black Host. He has performed at the Withney Museum of American Art, in a piano duo with John Blum in 1996, and a solo performance in conjunction with the Blues for Smoke exhibit in 2013. Outside of the jazz world, he has composed music for theater, including Rita Dove’s "The Darker Side of the Earth" at the Guthrie Theater, "Feathers at the Flame" by Laurie Carlos at The Kitchen, and "A Still Life" by Emily Mann. He has worked with dance troupes such as the Joan Miller Dance Players, Rod Rogers Dance Company, Marlies Yearby's Movin' Spirits Dance Theater, Koo Dance, and Judith Jackson. He has scored and composed music for movies, including Central Park: The People's Place and Fireflies in the Abyss. He has worked with lyricists such as Laurie Carlos, Fred L. Price, Carl Hancock Rux, and Arthur T. Wilson. In the 1990s he was the resident storyteller at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. He has toured extensively in Europe as well as the United States. Among the many instruments Cooper-Moore has built are a diddley-bow, a three-string fretless banjo, and a mouth bow. Cooper-Moore received the Lifetime Achievement award at the 2017 Vision Festival in New York City. Cooper-Moore has said, "I have taken stuff out a dumpster to make an instrument which I have used at gigs. If you put me somewhere, and I had to play and didn't have an instrument, I'd get everything I needed and make an instrument within a few hours."
Born May 4, 1963 and raised in Detroit, Gerald Cleaver is a product of the city’s rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, drummer John Cleaver, he began playing the drums at an early age. He also played violin in elementary school, and trumpet in junior high school and high school. As a teenager he gained invaluable experience playing with Detroit jazz masters Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper, and Pancho Hagood.
While attending the University of Michigan as a music education major, he was awarded a Jazz Study Grant, from the National Endowment for the Arts, to study with drummer Victor Lewis. He graduated in 1992 and began teaching in Detroit where he worked with Rodney Whitaker, A. Spencer Barefield, Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, Wendell Harrison, and with visiting musicians Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Barry Harris, Kenny Burrell, Frank Foster, Cecil Bridgewater, Ray Bryant, Eddie Harris, Dennis Rowland, Howard Johnson, Diana Krall and Don Byron. In 1995 he accepted an appointment as assistant professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Michigan, and in 1998 also joined the jazz faculty at Michigan State University. He moved to New York in 2002.
He has performed or recorded with Franck Amsallem, Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Lotte Anker, Reggie Workman, Marilyn Crispell, Matt Shipp, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Kevin Mahogany, Charles Gayle, Mario Pavone, Ralph Alessi, Jacky Terrasson, Jimmy Scott, Muhal Richard Abrams, Dave Douglas, Tim Berne, Jeremy Pelt, Ellery Eskelin, David Torn and Miroslav Vitous, among others. Cleaver has released two recordings as a leader. His 2001 recording Adjust (Fresh Sound New Talent) was nominated in the Best Debut Recording category by the Jazz Journalists Association. His release, Gerald Cleaver’s Detroit (FSNT), is an homage to his hometown and to the late, great Detroit drummers Roy Brooks, Lawrence Williams, George Goldsmith and Richard “Pistol” Allen. Cleaver leads the bands Violet Hour, NiMbNl and Uncle June.
OTHER CONCERTS MAY 25
photograph Beren Gieren © Alexander Popelier
with the marvelous support of De Vlaamse Gemeenschap and de Stad Gent
website © lepetitchevalier 2023