Tierra Mestiza: Omar Tamez & Angelica Sanchez
The music of Tierra Mestiza is haunting, dream-like, floating, unsettling yet somewhat calm. This duo work well together, slowly weaving their lines into an unpredictable tapestry.
ANGÉLICA SÁNCHEZ (USA)
“Sanchez’s provocative writing – full of evocative harmonies and open-ended forms showcases her flair for counterpoint and marks her as a formidable talent…” Pianist/Composer Angelica Sanchez moved to New York in 1994. Since moving to the East Coast has played with: Wadada Leo Smith, Paul Motian, Ralph Alessi, Susie Ibarra, Tim Berne, Mario Pavone, Trevor Dunn, Mark Dresser, Ed Schuller, Judy Silvano, Reggie Nicholson, Ben Monder and many more. Sanchez leads many groups including her own quintet featuring Marc Ducret, Tony Malaby, Drew Gress, and Tom Rainey. Her music has been recognized in international publications like, ” Jazz Times Magazine”, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, and many more. She was also the 2008 recipient of the French/American Chamber Music America grant and the 2011 Rockefellers Brothers Pocan,co ar,st residency. Her CD “Life Between” was chosen as one of years best recording 2009 in “All About Jazz/NY”. Her debut solo CD “A Liile House” was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edi,on in May 2011. Her latest CD “Wires & Moss” featuring her Quintet was chosen as one of best Releases of 2012 in “All About Jazz/NYC”. Her Duo CD “Twine Forest” with Wadada Leo Smith received Honor Men,on as a best release in 2013 in The NYC Jazz Record.
OMAR TAMEZ (México)
“Omar is an incredibly powerful performer with uniquely charming stage presence……” Omar Tamez studied composition with Nicandro Tamez, a composer and educator who worked through several universities as well as founding his own Escuela Formativa por las Artes. He also studied privately through workshops and seminars with Andre Richard, Daniel Catan, Mario Lavista, Manuel de Elias, Helmut Lachmann, Pierre Boulez and Karl – Heinz Stockhausen. Mr. Tamez received a Masters degree in composition and philosophy from Universidad Regiomontana, Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, Mexico. He is the founder and leader of Non-Jazz, his group of twenty-one years. He is also the founder, producer and artistic director of the “International Musicians Meeting”. He is currently preparing for the twelve edition that will occur 2016. Omar has played / and or recorded with Ramón López, Agustí Fernandez, Gebhard Ullmann, Karl Berger, Conny Bauer, Reggie Workman, Rashied Ali, Sonny Fortune, Andrew Cyrille, Sam Rivers, Joe Fonda, Lou Grassi, Harvey Sorgen, Herb Robertson, Steve Swell, Jonathan Golove, Vincent Chancey, Wadada Leo Smith, George Schuller, Ratzo B. Harris and many others. One of his recent projects was with Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet/Double Quartet in Buffalo, NY. For Omar the main aspect of improvised music is being in the field and becoming part of the space, he believes that traveling the world is a way to make this path real.
Andrew Weathers (b.1988) is a young American composer and improviser originally from Chapel Hill, NC currently based in Oakland, CA. His music exists in a space between improvisation and composition—equally influenced by the 20th century American minimalists and underground noise. He has a BM in Music Composition from the University of North Carolina—Greensboro and an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College.
Andrew performs rigorously in a variety of contexts, both composed and improvised. In addition to solo performances, he heads up the Andrew Weathers Ensemble. He also performs and records regularly with Kirtan Choir, Weathers/Glover, Tethers, and Parties. In the past, he has performed with Acid of All Ruins, Bicameral Mind, Northern Valentine, Tatsuya Nakatani, Laurent Estoppey, and Hal McGee, among others. In addition to his busy performing schedule, Weathers helps run Full Spectrum Records.
Andrew Weathers Ensemble is a group of flexible membership that performs re-workings of American folk and blues music. Since the release of the Ensemble’s first album, We’re Not Cautious in 2011, the band has toured across the country & recorded 3 more albums, most recently Fuck Everybody, You Can Do Anything released in June 2015. At NMASS, Weathers will be joined by Henna Chou, Marcus Rubio, and Evan Kaspar.
Man Forever is an exploratory percussion project helmed by John Colpitts (aka Kid Millions), one of New York’s most versitile and critically lauded collaborators and a founding member of Oneida. Colpitts is known for his energetic and precise style, which Boredoms drummer Yoshimi P-We describes as, “a very special way of playing drums, as if he were guzzling something very tasty.” Colpitts was one of the 77 percussionists to play in the Boredoms 2007, 77BOARDRUM performance and has also played with the likes of: Brian Chase (Yeah, Yeah, Yeahs), James McNew (Yo La Tengo), Richard Hoffman (Sightings), Sarah Richardson (Creeping Nobodies), Ryan Sawyer (Stars Like Fleas), Greg Fox (Liturgy, Guardian Alien), the So Percussion ensemble and J. Spaceman (Spiritualized, Spaceman 3).
For this set in NMASS 2015 Man Forever will consist of John Colpitts and University of Texas alumni percussionists, Sean Harvey and David Saad. Special thanks to Astral Spirits for making this set possible.
From the frozen wastes of New England comes Snowbeasts – aka Raab Codec, Component Recordings label head honcho with contributing vocals from Elizabeth Virosa of Pattern Behavior – with a sound like dire warnings from the future or a strange memory from the past. Snowbeasts music is haunting, charting soundscapes vague and unfamiliar while hinting at buried dreams frozen in time. Drawing on a variety of sources, Snowbeasts excels at creating enigmatic portraits of unknown regions and forgotten worlds. Anything is fair game and nothing is forbidden. Forget chopped and screwed: Snowbeasts songs are chipped, sawn and shattered apart into new sonic shapes. Single instruments are torn from their normal uses, modified and rebuilt into orchestras of sonic depth. Found sounds undergo transformation until their origins are forever obscured, their new forms revealing alien timbres. Vocal textures supplied by Ms. Virosa morph from choral chants into haunting drones and eerie sound forms. Textures are warped in the bowels of digital forges to become newly born, hammered from raw ones and zeros into weapons of sound. Modular and analog synthesis reveal the sweet meaty texture of tones before metamorphosing into warped forms barely reminiscent of their former selves.