Experimental Sound Studio partners with Patron Gallery to co-present the powerhouse trio of Fred Moten, Brandon López, and Gerald Cleaver. This performance and interview is presented at Patron Gallery, and will be premiered online on ESS's YouTube.
The OPTION series is curated by Tomeka Reid, Ken Vandermark, and Andrew Clinkman.
All 2022 performances are FREE and will be presented in-person throughout Chicago and as videos on ESS’s YouTube.
This event is rain or shine. Walk-ups welcome, reservations recommended.
About the Artists
Fred Moten is involved with social movement, aesthetic experiment and black study and has worked on several projects that try to approach these matters. His latest projects are an album called Fred Moten/Brandon López/Gerald Cleaver (Reading Group Records, 2022) and a book called All Incomplete (Minor Compositions, 2021), co-authored with Stefano Harney. In addition to his collaborations with Harney, and with López and Cleaver, Moten has worked with many other artists, artist collectives, scholars, and study groups, including the Anti-Colonial Machine, the Center for Convivial Research and Autonomy, Renee Gladman, the Institute for Physical Sociality, the Jazz Study Group, Jennie C. Jones, Le Mardi Gras Listening Collective, Moved by the Motion, William Parker, and the Harris-Moten Quartet. Moten lives in New York and teaches performance studies and comparative literature at New York University.
Brandon Lopez is a New York-based composer and bassist working at the fringes of jazz, free improvisation, noise and new music. The work has been described as “brutal”, "relentless" and "breathlessly complex" by publications like the New York Times and Pitchfork. He's one part of the critically acclaimed trio with Fred Moten and Gerald Cleaver. He's been the recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, and has been a featured soloist with the New York Philharmonic.
Drummer Gerald Cleaver, born May 4, 1963 and raised in Detroit, 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. He gained early invaluable experience 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 toured and/or recorded with Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Lotte Anker, Matt Shipp, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Kevin Mahogany, Charles Gayle, Mario Pavone, Ralph Alessi, Jacky Terrasson, Muhal Richard Abrams, Tim Berne, Jeremy Pelt, Ellery Eskelin, David Torn, Miroslav Vitous, Terje Rypdal, Michael Formanek, Charles Lloyd, Bill Frisell, Benny Golson and Tomasz Stanko, among others.
About OPTION
OPTION is an ongoing music salon curated by Chicago musicians Andrew Clinkman, Tomeka Reid, and Ken Vandermark and presented by Experimental Sound Studio. Its programming explores contemporary perspectives on improvisation and composition in a 'salon' format, enabling local, national, and international artists to publicly discuss their practice and ideas as well as perform.