Category Archives: Performers

Featured Artists, Performers, Signature Artists

Karl Berger (Vibraphone)—Featured Signature Artist

KarlBergerKarl Berger is a six time winner of the Downbeat Critics Poll as a jazz soloist, recipient of numerous Composition Awards ( commissions by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Rockefeller Foundation, European Radio and Television: WDR, NDR, SWF, Radio France, Rai Italy. SWF-Prize 1994 ). He became noted for his innovative arrangements for recordings by Jeff Buckley (“Grace”), Natalie Merchant (“Ophelia”), Better Than Ezra, Buckethead, Bootsie Collins, and for his collaborations with producer Bill Laswell.

He recorded and performed with Don Cherry, Lee Konitz, John McLaughlin, Gunther Schuller, the Mingus Epitaph Orchestra, Dave Brubeck, Ingrid Sertso, Dave Holland, Ed Blackwell, Ray Anderson, Carlos Ward, Pharoah Sanders, Blood Ulmer, Hozan Yamamoto and many others at festivals and concerts in the US, Canada, Europe, Africa, India, Phillippines, Japan, Mexico, Brazil.

Founder and director of the Creative Music Foundation, Inc., dba The Creative Music Studio, a not-for-profit corporation, dedicated to the research of the power of music and sound and the elements common to all of the world’s music forms; and to educational presentations through workshops, concerts, recordings, with a growing network of artists and CMS members worldwide.

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Play the Karl Berger Mix on Weblogmusic

Performers

Angela Morris (Saxophone)

angela-bwAngela Morris is saxophonist-composer rapidly making her presence felt in the Brooklyn avant-jazz community. Originally from Toronto, she has performed across the US, Canada, Mexico and Europe. 

Her band Rallidae will release their new album, “Turned, and Was,” in November 2016, following their debut “Paper Birds” which AllAboutJazz called “an exceptional debut by and exciting and innovative new band.” Some other projects include TMT Trio, Angela Morris Quartet, and composing and conducting for an 18-piece big band co-lead with fellow tenor saxophonist Anna Webber. 

Morris is an alumna of the BMI Jazz Composer’s Workshop lead by Jim McNeely, and received her Masters degree in jazz composition from the City University of New York where she studied with Darcy James Argue. She has been awarded the Marvin Hamlisch award for Jazz Composition and is a Canada Council for the Arts grant recipient.

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Featured Artists, Performers, Signature Artists

Myra Melford (Piano)—Featured Signature Artist

MyraMelford

Originally from Chicago and classically trained, Myra Melford is a composer with a singular, kinetic, and lyrical voice in piano improvisation. Chicago blues, architecture, jazz, and experimental music inspire her work. She has released over 40 recordings, including 20 as a leader or co-leader, and maintains three bands: the celebrated quintet Snowy Egret, the collective Trio M, and the duo Dialogue with clarinetist Ben Goldberg. She is a Guggenheim Fellow for “Language of Dreams,” (2013), a Doris Duke Performing Artist (2013) an Alpert Award in the Arts recipient (2012), and has been honored numerous times in Down Beat Critic’s polls. She was the Artistic Director and Co-curator for the 2015 New Frequencies Fest: Jazz@YBCA in San Francisco, and has been a professor at UC Berkeley since 2004, teaching classes in improvisational practices and composition.

Recent projects include Snowy Egret (Enja/Yellowbird), her latest quintet recording released in spring 2015 and Life Carries Me This Way (Firehouse 12, 2013), a solo piano recording featuring original compositions based on the drawings of Don Reich. She presented a 25-year retrospective of her work at The Stone, in New York City, in March 2015.

New and upcoming recordings include a duet with Ben Goldberg (released in January 2016), a duet with Allison Miller due out in fall of 2016, a trio with Miya Masaoka and Zeena Parkins, and a trio with Nicole Mitchell and Joelle Leandre.

In March 2016, she will present Snowy Egret for a week at the Village Vanguard in New York City. In May/June 2016, she will be in residence at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, developing “Dissonant Futures,” a piece for piano, prepared piano, electronics and video with Ian Winters.

Website

 Play the Myra Melford Mix on Weblogmusic

Performers

Susanna Hood (Voice, Dance)

Tiohtià:ke/Montreal-based performer, maker and teacher in both dance and music, Susanna Hood has devoted her career to synthesizing voice and movement within her dynamic practice, creating intimate, sensual and raw performances both in dance-theatre contexts as well as in the context of improvised music. Founder and former artistic director of interdisciplinary performance company hum dansoundart (2000–2013) her work has been marked by significant collaborations with musical artists Nilan Perera (improvisational duo dialogues; and choreographic musical works still, She’s gone away, Shudder), John Oswald (Spinvolver), and Scott Thomson (as band member of The Rent (repertoire by Steve Lacy) and The Disguises; and as co-creator/performer of The Muted Note – songs and dances setting the poetry of P.K. Page). Her most recent creations (Music Is, 2016, and Impossibly Happy, 2019) have been driven by her own musical compositions arranging voices, instruments and movement. She developed a duo recording project with turntablist, Martin Tétreault,  Tortues Vapeur, mixing turntables, electronics, synthesizers, vocals and objects. They released their first disc on DAME’s Mikroclimat label in 2019 and a second in 2022. Susanna was the first dancer to join Weblogmusic!

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Performers

Terri Lindbloom (Visual Artist)

LindbloomTerri Lindbloom is Head of Sculpture at the Florida State University.  She has shown work in Art Basel Miami Beach, New American Painting, and the International Symposium on  Electronic Art. Her work explores the relationship dynamics between defined architectural space and simple human interactions—those unprovoked or unpremeditated intimate acts that inform and influence more than the person or thing for which that action was intended. This juxtaposition of space, form and image creates a degree of awareness within the viewer of her/his presence and resulting effect. Terri was the first visual artist to contribute to Weblogmusic!

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Performers

Ben Zucker (Trumpet, Voice)

BenZuckerRecent phrases Ben Zucker has begun using in describing his work include “object relations”, “situation creation”, and “human algorithms”. Said work includes concert music, improvisation, electronica, installations, and performance art, which has been premiered all over the world, including the Berlin Audio Branding Academy, New York Fringe Festival, Northwestern University, and the Banff Centre. Ben performs as a percussionist, pianist, singer, and brass player, including as a founding member of the world-groove band Don Froot, the Improvers’ Choir in London, and the Apres-Garde Ensemble in New Haven, Connecticut. He has also collaborated with numerous individuals in over a dozen films, plays, and dances (including The Last Days Of The Old Wild Boy with Rinde Eckert). Ben is a recent graduate of Wesleyan University, where he studied composition with Anthony Braxton, David Behrman, and Neely Bruce; currently, he resides in London, and studies with Jennifer Walshe and Christopher Fox at Brunel University.

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Performers

Elisabeth Blair (Voice)

ElisabethBlairElisabeth Blair is a vocalist and composer currently working on an MM in Music Composition at Western Michigan University. She earned her BA in photography at a small university in London in 2004, then spent several years performing on the folk singer/songwriter circuit in Chicago while also collaborating frequently with performance and conceptual artists. She particularly enjoys vocal improvisation and writing for strings, and is passionate about raising awareness of classical and new music written by women. She runs a webpage showcasing these works, and is in the process of producing a podcast series based on interviews with female composers. 

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Performers

Edward Ratliff (Accordion, Trumpet)

EdwardRatliffEdward Ratliff is a New York City-based composer, bandleader and multi-instrumentalist (brass and accordion) who has been called “a wonderfully spunky and imperturbable trumpet player” (The New York Times) and “a fine musician who possesses a clever and crafty compositional pen” (AllAboutJazz.com).  Edward has led his bands at festivals and clubs in Europe and Asia and throughout New York City. His music is also heard in shows on HBO, Nickelodeon, the Discovery Channel, ABC Family, MTV, VH1 and more — everything from a biography of Dostoyevsky to “Real Sex Xtra” and “Girls Gone Wild.” Edward is also a filmmaker and is on the faculty of the International Center of Photography in New York, co-teaching (with photographer Anja Hitzenberger) a class called “Let Movies Inspire Your Photography.”

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Performers

Hudson Lanier (guitar)

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is an avid teacher, arranger, and performer of solo and chamber music. As a faculty member at Arizona State University, he taught Rock Guitar I and II as well as Funk Ensemble from 2011–­2013. He currently teaches classical guitar in the  Austin, TX area and via the internet at HudsonLanier.com.

Highlights of Dr. Lanier’s solo classical guitar career include performances on the guest artist recital series at  Syracuse University and also Cornell University. He gave his debut as a concerto soloist in 2012 with the Rochester Symphony Orchestra, performing the Concerto de Aranjuez under the baton of Maestro Jere Lantz. Dr. Lanier is a member of Duo Brucoco, a classical guitar and bassoon duo with Laura McIntyre. The duo specializes in new music as well as outreach. Duo Brucoco’s highlights include performing at the 2013 International Double Reed Society Conference and also receiving a recognition for “outstanding and dedicated service and support to the youth of the Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections” in 2012. Dr. Lanier studied at the Oberlin Conservatory, Eastman School of Music, and Arizona State University.

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