Avant Unguarded

Please join us for an evening of free improvised music featuring:

Erik van Dam – Woodwinds

Erik Van Dam plays flute, baritone, tenor, alto, and soprano saxophones. Having studied with the highly acclaimed Joe Lovano and later Hal Crook, Erik has gone on to draw inspiration from many influences, including Lovano, Sam Rivers, and Eric Dolphy. Erik has crafted a sound of his own. He has also spent time working and performing with Bob Moses, Bill Lowe, Stan Strickland, and Fred Ho’s Monkey Orchestra. Former performance ensembles include Erik’s jazz trio TRIOSOPHY, his all improvisational quartet SRUTI, as well as “The Sonic Construct Funk Project, and a nine piece rock group “Strange Changes. ” Erik has performed internationally in Tokyo, Paris, Jamaica, and Bulgaria. Erik currently performs at many venues in Massachusetts with different small jazz combos. In addition to being a musician, Erik is an avid creative painter and sculptor who teaches art professionally in a local school system.

Eric Dahlman – Trumpet

Eric is a performer, band leader, composer and recording artist with three CD’s. He has performed with free jazz icon Hal Russell & his NRG Ensemble, Aardvark Jazz Orchestra, Travis Chandler Philharmonic, Auddity, Rakalam Bob Moses. Dahlman has appeared on Fugazi drummer Brendan Canty’s Discovery Channel soundtrack “Bridges”. His music appears in the documentary film “The Bear Cult” (2015 Hyperion). Eric studied with Ingrid Monson, Dave Frank, Anthony Davis & John Luther Adams.

Jesse Gallagher – Keys

Jesse is a composer, producer, performer, booking agent as well as a yoga & meditation instructor. Jesse led the Boston based Apollo Sunshine 2001-2010 which recorded three albums and was featured in Rolling Stone, the New York Times, as well as performing on several late night TV spots and having songs featured in shows like “Breaking Bad” . Currently Jesse has a vibrant and growing following on Spotify and Youtube where you can listen to his solo albums “The Inner Sound”, “Sound to See” volumes I and II, single “The Winds Beyond” and more.

John Dalton- Drums

John is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth where he received a diverse musical education, especially in his studies with Chris Poudrier and Jim Robitaille. John developed fluency in a variety of styles as both an improvising musician and composer. He is also a published scholar in journals such as The Peer Review. John has performed or shared the bill with artists such as Jim Robitaille, Jing Wang, Dino Govoni, Amanda Monaco, Barry Altschul, Ricky Ford, Jerome Harris, Stefano Battaglia, Kaya Meller, Kamil Piotrowicz, Anastassiya Petrova, and Royal Hartigan. He was a featured performer at the New Bedford Jazz Festival, and an ensemble member at the Portuguese Music Awards, and has performed at venues such as Fete Music hall, the Zeiterion Theater, Boston University, Wally’s Cafe Jazz Club, and Cafe 939 at Berklee College of Music. John’s modular ensemble “Spheres of Influence” performs original compositions, standards, as well as arrangements of well-known repertoire.

Scott Samenfeld – Bass

Scott is a long-time Boston based musician, composer and band leader. He moved to Boston in 1970 from the New York City area where he studied with guitarist Harry Lahey, pianists Keith McDonald and Gabe Julian and bassist Bill Holliday. He studied at Berklee College of Music and was a member of Razzmatazz a jazz, rock, fusion group and Trillium, an avante guard power trio in the 70s. He taught for many years including 5 years at the Guitar Workshop in Boston, the Open Road School, an alternative high school in Waltham, and the Cambridge School in Weston. He formed his group Muse Stew in 1990 which still performs his original compositions regularly. He has also led the Cal Tjader project featuring the music of the great Latin vibraphist. He has held down the bass chair of the Sounds of Swing big band for almost 40 years.

Isao – Guitar

Isao plays about 200 of his favorite songs on a daily basis (mostly jazz, some classical and a few rock and popular) using a finger-picking style approach to guitar. He has intentionally never learned anyone’s solos or lines and does not practice scales or mimic other musicians. This approach will result in creating a unique musical voice in harmonic progressions and lines when improvising freely.