Two Outdoor Concerts: Wrest and Fully Celebrated Orchestra

WHERE: Jamaica Plain (JP), SW Corridor

Park, down Hall St off of South St., near the Orange Line Forest Hills Sta.

INTENSE….INTRICATE….FUN!

June 4th                                              June 5th

Wrest:                                                  FULLY CELEBRATED ORCHESTRA:

Ben Bennett (drums),                         Jim Hobbs (alto saxophone)

Evan Lipson (bass),                             Taylor Ho Bynum (cornet, horns)

Jack Wright (multi-saxophones)          Luther Gray (drums)

                                                                           Timo Shanko (bass)

Saturday 6/4

Wrest: \\\”These musicians go at it in this session as if they are talking to each other, in moods that go from meditative to excited. Most of the time they are both talking at the same time, but their individual voices are clear and varied; it is a delight to be present.\\\”

These three constitute a Philadelphia-centered collective that has for the past several years been touring across North America and Europe in various configurations and monikers: The three are drawn together by an approach to playing characterized by a wildly unpredictable flux of bizarre sounds and morphing relationships, where exuberance, terror, gravity and comedy are twisted together in a bewildering manifold of perspectives.

Consisting of Jack Wright (saxophones), Evan Lipson (double bass), and Ben Bennett (percussion), they have been playing and touring actively together for the last decade, in Wrest as well as in other groupings with shared membership: Roughhousing (Wright/Lipson/Zach Darrup), Never (Wright/Darrup/Bennett), Virtual Balboa (Darrup/Lipson/Bennett), Durian Brow (Darrup/Bennett), RAWL (Wright/Darrup/Lipson/Bennett). They are drawn together by an approach to playing characterized by a twisted flux of bizarre sounds and morphing relationships, where exuberance, terror, gravity and comedy collide in a bewildering manifold of perspectives

A reviewer for the Washington Post newspaper said, \\\”In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king\\\”.

He is an original and virtuosic saxophonist, a recognized improviser who is deeply lyrical, despite his wide distance from the mainstream, and has been dubbed the “Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music” by the legendary guitarist Davey Williams. He is among the few true believers in absolutely free, unrestrained, unstructured, unselfconscious improvisation, played at soberingly high levels of musicianship.

Jack Wright is still touring widely, engaged with players outside music school careerdom and mostly unknown to the music press. His influence has extended through writings, most recently The Free Musics, published in 2017. As for his playing, he possibly has the widest vocabulary of any saxophonist, an expert at leaping pitches, punchy, precise timing, sharp and intrusive multiphonics, surprising gaps of silence, and sounds often animalistic and obscene.

Massimo Ricci, of Touching Extremes writes, (bassist) \\\”Lipson easily stands among the best bassists I\\\’ve heard lately, his terrifically strapping tone epitomizing the decision to really learn how an instrument works.\\\”

Living with the incurable disease of music since early adolescence, bassist Evan Lipson seeks the liminal realms in which intellect and instinct, history and myth, and creative and destructive force intersect.

Ben Bennett is a Philadelphia-based improvising percussionist. He plays a compact, multi-functional assortment of drumheads, stretched membranes, and other objects which are sounded with a wide variety of techniques and continually rearranged in the course of playing. His path of musical de-materialization has led to other forms of performance, including the durational YouTube series, Sitting and Smiling and Walking and Talking. His work tends toward themes of emptiness, paradox, and stupidity.

\\\”Channeling influences from the realms of maximalist free jazz, minimalist free-improv, Paul McCarthy-esque performance art, and primitive technology, Bennett explores an untamed land of sound and action with a shocking degree of candor and sensitivity.\\\” -Don Forks

\\\”Ben Bennett sounds like a zoo of nonexistant animals, and behaves like the sufferer of a nonexistant mental disorder.\\\” -Peter Neckerson..

Sunday 6/5:

Fully Celebrated Orchestra is a completely-dedicated hardcore Freedom Jazz ensemble from Boston, Mass. This is fiercely-played jazz, not for the weak of heart. It is smart music with a sly sense of humor, played with a passion that is rarely seen in this modern age. One of the leaders of the new school of jazz iconoclasts that are as comfortable in rock clubs as they are playing with jazz legends.

The Orchestra combines vast musical prowess and playful, irreverent intelligence on Lapis Exilis. No one today is playing the alto better than Hobbs—the vast range of tones he summons from the small horn is altogether remarkable—and Orchestra members cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, bassist Timo Shanko, and drummer Django Carranza (now Luther Gray) display a comparable mastery of their respective axes. Carranza and Shanko are a devastating rhythm section (Carranza\\\’s got the shifting time of jazz down, of course, but there\\\’s also a sprinkling of rock feel in his playing and he hits that snare hard). Bynum and Hobbs play together as empathetically as, say, Ornette Coleman and Don Cherry once did. Indeed, while this band is obviously affectionate towards a variety of artists and genres, the greatest influence here is Ornette\\\’s classic quartet of Cherry, Charlie Haden, and—pick your favorite—Ed Blackwell or Billy Higgins…. Lapis Exilis is a great CD from a powerhouse group.  All About Jazz

Jim Hobbs

“Principal composer Jim Hobbs is an un-touchably gifted master of the alto saxophone; he impeccably produces a wholly cogent array of sounds from the horn, often times of which the instrument was not originally designed to manifest”.  AUM Fidelity

“Taylor Ho Bynum is a composer, performer, interdisciplinary collaborator, producer, organizer, teacher, and writer. His expressionistic playing on cornet and expansive vision as a composer have garnered him critical attention on over twenty recordings as a bandleader and dozens more as a sideman”.  BOMBYX

Luther Gray

“Mr. Gray is a thinking drummer with an expansive kindliness about him that shifts to striking capacities of concentration when he engages his kit”. All About Jazz

Timo Shanko

“Shanko’s influences are myriad; he seems to have ingested every bit of good music recorded over the last half century. Yet the music featured here is original in that word’s