Live Performance & Public Recording: The Bridge 2.2
November 9, 2019 - Doors at 2 PM, Music at 2:30 PM
$10 Suggested Donation
at Experimental Sound Studio
Experimental Sound Studio is proud to present The Bridge [2.2] for a performance and live recording in the studio as a concluding event in their micro-residency. The 2.2 ensemble features Mai Sugimoto (alto saxophone), Raymond Boni (guitar), Anton Hatwich (double bass) and Paul Rogers (double bass).
The Bridge, squared. This project, is the second group to be borne of the 2nd generation of The Bridge’s French-American collaborative ensembles. Following an intuition initially proposed by French guitarist Raymond Boni, these four musicians will explore the possibilities of an ensemble with a majority of string instruments and no drums, collaboratively piloted by four individuals with radically different artistic personalities. The idea is to create music which will wrestle with the ideas of unfurling and entanglement, of sound as a set of lines and twists. Remote points in space and time can always be connected, even when it’s not necessarily expected : “since improvisation is a fundamental link for beings to coexist, what interests me the most in this French-American encounter is everyone’s singular journey, and the unprecedented quality of this event.”
At fifteen, Raymond Boni was offered a guitar, an instrument that rejected him until he discovered Django Reinhardt with Romani musicians from his neighbourhood. His technique will remain marked by flamenco playing. Playing all the expressive possibilities of the electric guitar, he never ceases to explore the sounds and the range of his instrument, in order to reach those "songs of tenderness" that are born, even in the heart of sound chaos, from the vibration of the strings. A partial list of his collaborators includes André Jaume, Daunik Lazro, Claude Tchamitchian, Violeta Ferrer, Joe McPhee, and Hamid Drake.
Bassist, composer, and improviser Anton Hatwich has lived in Chicago since 2003. He was born and raised in Rockford, IL, growing up in a musical family. In late 2002 Hatwich started spending large amounts of time amongst Chicago's improvised music community, and by spring of 2003 he was playing so much in Chicago that it made sense to move there. Since that time he has played in endlessly varied groups of (mostly) improvising musicians, including Frank Rosaly, Keefe Jackson, Aram Shelton, Nick Mazzarella, Russ Johnson, Tim Daisy, Jason Stein, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Josh Berman, and Paul Giallorenzo.
One of Europe's finest bassists and a busy free improvisation player comparable to John Edwards and Barry Guy, Paul Rogers is mostly known for his long-standing tenure in the free improv quartet Mujician. A player of finesse and feeling, he has appeared on dozens of albums, performing with Paul Dunmall, John Stevens, Daunik Lazro, Michel Doneda, Evan Parker, Ramon Lopez, and Ivo Perelman to name but a few. He released his first solo album in 1995.
Mai Sugimoto is a Japanese born saxophonist and composer living in Chicago, IL. She performs frequently throughout the Chicagoland area and is a member of Hanami, a quartet that features her original work and arrangements of Japanese music. Sugimoto draws inspiration from Lennie Tristano, Ornette Coleman, Japanese folk and popular songs, and classical compositions. She continues to channel these inspirations and others into writing for her new quartet.
About The Bridge:
Jazz – owing to its particular history – has always been an unmatched medium that allowed the sounds and music of different worlds to express themselves with passion and singularity, shaped by a musical art dedicated to collective invention and reinvention. Jazz was the original “world music,” long before this label became widespread.
In the recent years, after a century of stories and legends when every improviser, group, and scene grew ever more specific, many French and American musicians have expressed a renewed interest in experiencing the musical and sociomusical realities of their transatlantic counterparts. To really create mutual knowledge. But often with the regret that these adventures, swift to go “beyond expectations,” do not continue beyond a few concerts, a tour, or a recording, due to the lack of adequate structures.
The Bridge intends to form such a network for exchange, production, and diffusion, to build a transatlantic bridge that will be crossed on a regular basis by French and American musicians as part of collaborative projects. And, in addition to the scheduled projects, encourage meetings and relationships between creative musicians and perpetuate them. In other words: to give them the times and spaces to join and rejoin on both sides of the ocean and to deepen their exchanges.
The Bridge #2.2 –experimental residencies at the University of Chicago and tour has been made possible through the Jazz & New Music, a program of FACE Foundation, in partnership with the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.
