Five performance this final month of 2015! A great privilege to have shared the stage with so many awesomely creative, smart and generous people. Let’s get to the hat-tips…
Okay, start with a thanks to my co-conspirators, Dominic Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh, who consistently created fascinating, difficult, infuriating, confounding and beautiful spaces for interaction. Listening to the music play out in real-time, all I could think was that it sounds great whenever the guitarist shuts-up. (As Josh Sinton pointed out later, that’s really a wonderful position to be in; not knowing how to contribute to—to add to—an already perfect ensemble at play.)
Thanks to Ingrid Laubrock for the play—it was great to come-off a… logistically challenging set of gigs into a relaxed performance where, well, anything might happen… and we ended up in some interesting and unexpected places. (Felt very good about this one.)
To Josh Sinton and Nick Didkovsky, well… That. Was. A. Blast. …Thanks, Josh, Nick, for the Loud Jazz (best possible sense!).
Big thanks to all the venues and promoters, DIYers and supporters: to the indefatigable Andrew Woodhead at Fizzle; to Seth Cooke and everyone at Bang the Bore for an awesome event; to Fielding Hope, Oli Barrett and everyone at Cafe OTO for their support, and for their patience with all the ups’n’downs; to Josh and everyone at 65Fen Music Series; and to Cisco Bradley for inviting me to perform at New Revolution Arts (a beautiful space—socially, musically).
Thanks to Tom Durham the gentleman who lent me his amplifier in Birmingham (sorry, can’t remember your name!), and to Andrew Drury and Chris Welcome who did the same in Brooklyn—y’all made my travels so much more pleasant!
The tour by my ensemble with Dom, Mark and Caroline was made possible with funding from Culture Ireland, and I am extremely grateful for their support.
I am also grateful to Franziska Schroeder, Elspeth Murray, Helen Petts, ODD7’s Towards the Margins, London Korea Links, and Alma Ní Choigligh of Embassy of Ireland (London) who all helped to spread the word of the performances. A special thanks to Cath Roberts of LUME, Avant Music News, and George Haslam of SLAM Productions for their continued support. Similarly, thanks to Editor Laurence Donohue-Greene for tying-in a review in The New York City Jazz Record to coincide with my Brooklyn performances.
Thanks to Dom Lash and Kate Hendry, and to Josh Sinton and family, for offering a place for this itinerant musician to crash a night (or three). Kudos to Nasc Ireland for helping me navigate some border… technicalities 😉
And a very special thanks to the Best Sound Engineer in the Known Universe, Alex Fiennes, for taking time to make the music sound great in London.
Finally, as always, thanks, thanks, thanks, everyone, for listening.
Next up…
Performing again with Dom Lash, Mark Sanders and Caroline Pugh, this time in Cork, January 2016. See the performance diary for up-to-date info.
Birmingham, Bristol and London performances presented with funding from Culture Ireland, and support from SLAM Productions.
updates
12–20-15: add Tom Durham’s name (thanks, Andy).