-Information-
Dismal Niche Arts
-Extended Play-
UPCOMING EVENTS:
w/ Holofoil
Sept. 26th at Cafe Berlin
7pm Doors / 8pm Show
Founded in Baltimore in 2010, Horse Lords operate at the intersection of minimalism, experimental rock, and contemporary composition. The quartet Sam Haberman (drums), Owen Gardner (guitar), Max Eilbacher (bass), and Andrew Bernstein (alto saxophone) build tightly interlocking rhythmic systems informed by just intonation, process music, and global rhythmic traditions.
Across 16 years of frequent touring and recording, the group has developed a distinctive sound rooted in repetition, tuning systems, and gradually shifting patterns. Their work draws connections between the structural traditions of composers such as La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros, Fluxus-era experimentalism, and rhythmic sources ranging from James Brown to Gulf-region sawt music.
Holofoil is the STL punk supergroup of Curtis Tinsley (guitar), Mabel Suen (bass) and Joe Hess (drums). Blending sharply finger-picked guitar work, with searing bass riffs, hyperactive polyrhythms and sweet vocal harmonies, the band’s debut release surfs seamlessly between jangly indie rock, melodic post-punk and deep grooves.
Presented by the Left Field Series w/ the
“We Always Swing” Jazz Series
Oct. 16th at Whitmore Recital Hall
6pm Doors / 7pm Show
Flutist and composer Fred Tompkins began his musical studies in 1964 at the St. Louis Institute of music, but early on, his equal interest in both classical composition and jazz led him ultimately to move to New York City and work in a “Third Stream” style, which would involve the musicianship of such top players as Elvin Jones, Joe Farrell, Richard Davis and many other greats.
The Fred Tompkins Trio specializes in the art of free improvisation. However, being keenly aware of overall form, this group makes a conscious effort, from one improv to another, to vary its formats, moods and tempos. When the mood of the moment demands a shift in direction, however, they will be more than ready to take off and create a new form.
20 Years in the Crypt:
Embedded on Tour with Dead Moon Film Screening
Friday, Oct. 30th at Cafe Berlin, 6pm
Live music following screening TBA
In 2001 filmmakers Jason Axel Summers and Kate Fix teamed up with legendary Portland rock band Dead Moon to film the documentary Unknown Passage: The Dead Moon Story. The filmmakers were welcomed into the world of the band as if members of their family. They soon found that unlike many artists, with Dead Moon there is no curtain to pull back and peer behind – they always were and are the face they presented as artists to the world. Their earnestness was undeniable, and their electrifying performances and connection with audiences over nineteen years made them rock and roll legends. Jason and Kate shot 180 hours of film & video, all but what was used for the Unknown Passage documentary remaining “in the can” (or CRYPT!)...until now!
This new film revisits the performances that Jason & Kate captured on tour with Dead Moon, most of it never presented to the world. We also see fun and interesting footage of a less formal nature, just hanging out and traveling with the band. This film is meant to be a window back in time for fans of Dead Moon, new and old.
Presented by the “We Always Swing” Jazz Series in collaboration with the Extended Play Fall Festival
Nov. 12th at Whitmore Recital Hall
6pm Doors / 7pm Show
From his beginnings as one of Chicago’s most thrilling young trumpeters, to his current status as an internationally renowned musician, composer and bandleader, Marquis Hill has worked tirelessly to break down the barriers that divide musical genres. Contemporary and classic jazz, hip-hop, R&B, Chicago house, neo-soul—to Hill, they’re all essential elements of the profound African-American creative heritage he’s a part of. “It all comes from the same tree,” he says. “They simply blossomed from different branches.”
Opener TBA
Nov. 13th at Crow Hall
7pm doors / 7:30 show
Tyondai Braxton is a composer, producer and professor who has been writing and performing music since the mid-1990s. Formerly the front man of experimental rock band Battles, Braxton’s solo work since 2010 has incorporated elements of electronic, electro-acoustic and orchestral composition across a range of contexts from intimate solo albums and large-scale symphonic works, to collaborations with legendary modern composers like Phillip Glass.
This concert will serve as one of the first performances of work from Braxto’s new solo album Splayed Werks. Years in the works, it is an album that reflects the embrace of radical hybrids in modern music — at once club sound system-ready, art-installation-leaning and music-school-mediated while carefully hand-crafted and deeply intuitive.
Opener TBA
Nov. 13th at Crow Hall
7pm doors / 7:30 show
Shabazz Palaces is the cosmic hip-hop universe of the creative enigma lshmael Butler (aka Butterfly of seminal 90’s group Digable Planets) and his team of collaborators. Heirs to the astral imagination of Sun Ra and George Clinton, Octavia Butler and Alice Coltrane, Shabazz Palaces blend a heady mix of avant-garde jazz, funk, and dub to cerebral effect with Butler’s science fiction concepts and earthling observations matching profundity and sly humor with powerful command of the mic. The first hip-hop artist signed to the pioneering Sub-Pop label, they claim Seattle as their terrestrial residence, though their sound emanates much closer to Alpha Centauri than Alki Beach.
JWords (Jennifer Hernandez) is a Brooklyn-based producer, educator, and synth builder. She is also one half of the critically acclaimed hip-hop duo, H31R, where she’s known for mixing dance music and hip-hop production. Growing up Dominican-American in Union City, New Jersey, JWords was a sonic omnivore, devouring the hip-hop and R&B she heard on BET’s Rap City, the Jersey Club that took over the neighborhood, and the Latin music she heard at home. JWords’ new album, Sound Therapy, is the follow-up to her 2022 debut solo LP, Self-Connection.
Dec. 13th at Elevation Ballroom at The Broadway Hotel
6pm Doors / 7pm Show
Special Event: Left Field Series Fundraiser
Matt Wilson: Drums
Jeff Lederer: Saxophone
Paul Sikivie: Bass
The band's artifice may be a bit hokey, but its musicianship isn't. There's a deep grounding in jazz for this — for taking threadbare or overplayed melodies and transforming them into creative art of the highest order — as well as long-standing precedents of outgoing, personable showmen. Matt Wilson's Christmas Tree-O is an inspired and creative effort that balances a cheerful, festive vibe with progressive, avant-garde flair. For collectors searching for holiday albums that are left of center and for hardcore jazz aficionados, Matt Wilson's Christmas Tree-O is a welcome stocking stuffer.
Presented by the Left Field Series w/ the
“We Always Swing” Jazz Series
Jan. 22nd at Cafe Berlin
7pm Doors + DJ / 8pm Show
Artist Bio Blacks’ Myths is a duo from Washington DC, based in New York City, featuring Luke Stewart on bass and Warren G. “Trae” Crudup III on drums. Their unique sound is one of avant-garde intensity, poetic lyricism, and cataclysmic noise. At the intersection of cosmic jazz and DC punk, Blacks’ Myths construct monumental and hypnotic rhythmic structures drawing from Black American history, memory, and lived experience to tell stories and create new mythologies in sound.
Presented by the Left Field Series w/ the
“We Always Swing” Jazz Series
Feb. 12th at The Blue Note
7pm Doors / 8pm Show
Mary Halvorson - guitar, composer
Dave Adewumi - trumpet
Henry Fraser - bass
Tomas Fujiwara - drums
Mary Halvorson is a Brooklyn-based guitarist, composer and recording artist for Nonesuch Records. Her distinctive sound and innovative approach to her instrument have earned her widespread recognition over the past two decades, including numerous best-of-the-year lists, a 2019 MacArthur Foundation fellowship and Guitarist of the Year honors in the DownBeat Critics Poll for the past nine years. When not leading her own award-winning bands, she can be heard in a wide variety of creative partnerships and on more than 70 releases as a co-leader or sidewoman.
This year she'll be focusing on her newest group, Canis Major, featuring Dave Adewumi (trumpet), Henry Fraser (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). After playing a handful of select dates around New York over the past several months, the quartet will be touring for the first time across the U.S. and in Europe beginning in the Spring. "Canis Major feels like the start of something very special," she explains. "The music has been growing exponentially each time we play. It's been many years since I've led a smaller band, and I've really been enjoying the depth, interplay and intensity that this configuration brings to my music."
Presented by the Left Field Series w/ the
April 9th at Whitmore Recital Hall
Phillip Golub and Lesley Mok are brilliant improvisers who have, as individuals, created their own highly developed languages and approaches to their respective instruments, and possess a depth of knowledge and experience that defies their years. In dialogue, they find synergetic meeting points, rhythmic synchronicities and counterpoint, one filling gaps left by the other, one supporting the other. Each musician is porous, enveloping and absorbing the other, listening more than they play, demonstrating great patience, restraint, quietude, reflection, and stillness.
On the self-titled debut the duo break away from the rigorously composed constructions of their recent individual projects to allow their voices as improvisers and instrumentalists to speak for themselves. The music that results from this process is at once tightly constructed, deliberate, and careful, but also playful, dynamic, and spontaneous. With both a subtly of touch and grandness of gesture, Mok and Golub create a color palette as rich as that of a full orchestra with their duo. Their music seizes the singularity of the moment as a site of expression. With economy and brevity, their real-time compositions show how a moment can have luster—as in a dream.
May 8th at Firestone Baars Chapel (Stephens College)
A South Florida native, born to Ecuadorian immigrants and based in Brooklyn, his upbringing provides essential elements to his songwriting, including his consistently bilingual lyrics in English and Spanish. Exploring the expressivity within intense states of being, Latinx identity, and pluralistic sensibilities, his music can be characterized as lyrically personal and political avant pop music.