Brodie West Quintet “Clips” Album Release + Wow And Flutter
The Music Gallery and Musicworks present
The Brodie West Quintet “Clips” album release + Wow And Flutter
Musicworks Magazine is like the Music Gallery’s younger sibling. We share the same DNA and grew up together sharing offices, personnel, and most importantly a similar outlook on contemporary music’’s ongoing evolution. On this night we help them celebrate their 40th anniversary by presenting artists recently featured in their pages.
“Canadian saxophonist Brodie West’s 13th release as a leader, Clips, finds the composer stringing together abstract impressions, each statement seemingly springing spontaneously from the moment before. With stark melodic lines, the sound is innately personal, a kind of sonic solitude emerging from the bandleader’s quintet.” – Downbeat Magazine, August 2018
The main event is the album release for one of Toronto’s most distinctive composers, Brodie West, here with his Quintet. While his most familiar ensemble may be the skronky Ethio-calypso Eucalyptus, his quintet points his undulating rhythms and sweetly bent melodies in a different direction. West’s saxophone always seems like a calm inner voice among fractured bass (Josh Cole) and piano (Tania Gill) lines. The rhythmic heft is ably created by Nick Fraser and Evan Cartwright, who recall Ornette Coleman’s use of Ed Blackwell and Billy Higgins as interpretative percussionists. Read more about Brodie in Musicworks here.
Opening the show is a new configuration of improvisers from contrasting musical backgrounds. Wow & Flutter (Kayla Milmine, Bea Labikova, & Sarah Peebles) are inspired by the unique qualities of their instrumentation, comprising Slovakian fujara, Japanese shō, saxophones, crackle box and home-made amplification. Milmine and Labikova are relatively new to the Toronto improvising scene, but both are extremely active within it. Peebles has contributed to Toronto’s cultural fabric for decades as a musician and broadcaster. This trio draws from the wide range of techniques inherent to their instruments, melding and juxtaposing sound fields in structurally improvised compositions and free improvisations. Musicworks has profiled the ensemble in their latest issue, on newsstands now.
Set 3 – Audiopollination #61 from Arraymusic on Vimeo.
