Quartet Concert in Chicago 9/19

[damonsmith]

Saturday, September 19, 2009 at 10:00pm

Heaven Gallery 1550 North Milwaukee, 2nd floor Chicago Illinois 60622

1550 North Milwaukee Ave
Chicago, IL


Metastablesound, in conjunction with Balance Point Acoustics records, is excited to announce a Chicago performance of the Chicago/Bay Area collaboration ‘Ausfegen’ that reunites the quartet of Paul Hartsaw (saxophones) and Jerome Bryerton (percussion) from Chicago, and Kristian Aspelin (ele guitar) and Damon Smith (double bass) from the Bay Area.

This is the first Chicago performance for this quartet since the 2007 release of their CD, Ausfegen: Dedicated to Joseph Beuys.

"“Here's an example of highly experimental jazz that is executed in a way that avoids being overly daunting or completely inaccessible. While many of the most experimental jazz albums today incorporate elevated Ayler-esque raucousness or spacey minimalism, "Ausfegen" manages to be both quiet and highly interactive..."

- Mike Szajewski, WNUR Jazz

"...this music, its methods, structures and materials are connected with the world-at-large, interacting with it in myriad ways.”

-Stuart Broomer, pointofdeparture.org

Ausfegen at Emusic:
http://www.emusic.com/album/Kristian.../11076247.html

Itunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/M...53030&s=143441

[Eric Hochberg]

Wish I could make it, Damon, but I'm working late and far from the city.

[Marc Piane]

Bummer. I've got an out of town thing too. I enjoyed hearing you last time you were through and Paul's a killer. Next time. Have a great show.

[damonsmith]

Bummer, it would have been great to see you two. We did get a little press in the Reader:

http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/Event?oid=1194633
"For the 2007 release Ausfegen (Balance Point Acoustics), this transcontinental quartet—bassist Damon Smith and guitarist Kristian Aspelin from the Bay Area and saxophonist Paul Hartsaw and drummer Jerome Bryerton from Chicago—set out to pay homage to German conceptual artist Joseph Beuys. But as Smith explains in the liner notes, they weren’t sure it was worthwhile to simply claim they were inspired by Beuys, so they decided to make the connection more explicit. For the art piece he called Ausfegen, Beuys swept Berlin’s Marx-Engels-Platz, then encased the broom and all the detritus he’d collected in a vitrine. On the album Ausfegen, the cuts have titles like “Garbage,” “Sand,” and “Paper,” and for one track Aspelin laid his guitar flat and played it with a broom. Of course that’s not to say the listener needs to know any of this to appreciate the group’s tensile and tactile free improvisation. The clanging and clattering commotion is daubed with terse, fluid phrases—a postbop gesture by Hartsaw, a rumbling arco flurry by Smith—and each player manipulates fast-flying extended technique in carefully calibrated communication. —Peter Margasak"

[Eric Hochberg]

Damon, let us know if you're in town on Friday, maybe we could touch base.