improvisation
photo by charles gillett
i have been playing free improvisation since about
1994
i play a lot of different percussion, whatever makes interesting sounds, let's
play! vocals also play a strong role in my free improvisation as i extensively
explore my voice's possibilities
my first exposure to free improvisation was through
the canadian percussion group "nexus." hearing them play live completely
changed my perspective of music
early days of free improvisation were with my friend greg stuart and other
percussionists. we called it "jamming" and it was usually in the
drum room when we were supposed to be playing at the high school football
game. greg and i went on to northwestern university to study percussion and
we formed the free percussion quartet called quadrivium
with don nichols and merritt lyon. quadrivium was the playing which strongly
formed my free improvisation basis. my writings on improvisation with quadrivium
are found here
since 2000, i have been active in the minneapolis free improvisation community playing solo and with fantastic improvisers. early on, through davu seru, i met the brown rainbow crew, which ignited and fueled the tuesday night series for free improvisation and experimentation, the core of free improvisation in minneapolis, and has been running for over ten years in various formats and locations (at acadia theatre, art of this gallery, madame, white page) and has been the second major crafting force on my improvised music. i have traveled the usa performing improvisational music and i was invited and played at the kraak festival in belgium after they saw a video of me playing online. i have collaborated with many improvisational musicians and continue to play and record with friends all over the map.
my solo percussion and voice record seizing fate by the throat was pressed to vinyl in 2010
a list of my archived performances [ most of which are improvised ] can be found here
