5th Annual
SOMETHING ELSE!
Festival of Creative Music
June 13 – 17, 2018
126 JAMES
126 James St. N.
Hamilton, Ontario
Regular Admission: $35 door or $28 advance
Students, Seniors, Under-waged Admission: $28 door or advance
Passes: $125 regular (up to $225 value) / $100 students, seniors, under-waged for all 7 ticketed events
Friday, June 15
(7 pm — $35/28)
MIKE HANSEN
record player
Canada has a tradition of creative visual artists who are also musicians – specifically, drummers: Montreal’s John Heward, Vancouver’s Gregg Simpson, Toronto’s Gordon Rayner, and now in Hamilton, Mike Hansen, a recent Toronto expatriate. A full-time artist since 1993, Hansen’s music revolves around the notion that noise can be a social tool that brings together both art and its participants, breaking the art world’s traditionally rigid boundaries. He points out: “As George Gershwin said, ‘I frequently hear music in the heart of noise.’ It can be an improviser’s delight, the sounds that surround us disintegrating all a priori coding of our existence.” Hansen is known as an experimental turntablist, and an electronic creator and sound sampler. Two of his latest projects are Strum, a participatory sound installation that examines music improvisation through the idea of a self-playing guitar, and ConFab, a six-channel video/sound installation that allows the viewer to see the drum solo from the drummer’s perspective.
EUGENE CHADBOURNE
guitar, banjo, vocals
Born in Mount Vernon, New York, Eugene Chadbourne grew up in boulder Colorado, but it was during a stint in Calgary that he began his musical career, inspired by the far-ranging music of Anthony Braxton and Derek Bailey. Returning to the USA, he began creating his own unique blend of folk guitar musics and free improvisation, founding the band Shockabilly and collaborating with such musicians as Henry Kaiser, John Zorn, Frank Lowe, Jimmy Carl Black, Han Bennink, Fred Frith, Elliott Sharp, Leo Smith, and many others. As Robert Palmer wrote in the New York Times, “Chadbourne plays in a wild, teetering style that approaches anarchy and sometimes takes the plunge.” Since then, he has appeared on over 100 recordings, toured Europe, Asia, and Australia, and currently performs in a quintet with Jeb Bishop trombone, Jorrit Dykstra saxophone, Nate McBride bass and Curt Newton, drums. Eugene Chadbourne is the inventor of the unique performing instrument, the electric rake.
JOE MCPHEE
reeds, pocket trumpet
A legendary figure in contemporary improvisation, Joe McPhee was born in Miami in 1939. Originally a trumpet player, he took up the saxophone in his late twenties, inspired by the music of Albert Ayler. Since his first record as a leader appeared in 1969, Joe McPhee has toured and recorded relentlessly – while avoiding the jazz mainstream (and finding, like so many innovators, that the jazz mainstream avoided him), his name and reputation have grown steadily so that, for anyone with a serious interest in contemporary music, improvisation, or the jazz tradition, a solo performance by Joe McPhee is not an event to be missed. “His magical take on avant-garde sax,” writes Time Out New York, “remains one of the wonders of the scene. He still has one of the most beautiful tones on the planet, even when he’s reaching for jazz’s outer limits.”
CLUTTERTONES
LINA ALLEMANO trumpet
TIM POSGATE banjo, guitar
ROB CLUTTON double bass
RYAN DRIVER analogue synthesizer
Bassist Rob Clutton has been a generous and inspiring contributor to Toronto creative music for decades. Cluttertones is a chamber jazz quartet that exquisitely synthesizes his diverse interests – song, long-form composition, lyricism, extended improvisation, extreme textures, and more – through his seasoned bandmates, Lina Allemano (trumpet), Ryan Driver (analogue synthesizer, piano, voice), and Tim Posgate (guitar, banjo). Cluttertones music reveals itself slowly, making countless subtle, mysterious insinuations in place of bold declarations. Disarmingly gorgeous melodies emerge from the fog of thorny group playing, often evoking the simplicity of folk music.
“Clutton composes pieces that begin with the improbable and sometimes approach the uncanny, strange states of musical mind in which the heterodox elements seem to tune calmly to a new standard.”
– Stuart Broomer, Whole Note
“The Cluttertones trade in a sort of weirdness and beauty you’re very unlikely to have encountered before” – Nick Storring, Musicworks
MCPHEE / CALOIA / STEWART
JOE MCPHEE reeds, trumpet
NICOLAS CALOIA double bass
JESSE STEWART drums
A power trio that rarely plays together, this unit is even bigger than the sum of its parts. Saxophonist Joe McPhee is a treasure, free jazz royalty, one of the torchbearers for the art form for over 50 years! Bassist Nicolas Caloia represents the best of what Montreal has to offer, as a player and an organizer of the grand Ratchet Orchestra, In The Sea and many more. Jesse Stewart represents the best of Ottawa; as a very active teacher, instrument-maker, artist and improviser… not to mention a deep drummer!
Regular Admission: $35 door or $28 advance
Students, Seniors, Under-waged Admission: $28 door or advance
Passes: $125 regular (up to $225 value) / $100 students, seniors, under-waged for all 7 ticketed events
ZULA Presents 