Closing Night Gala: Corredor Hamid Drake, David Mott, Alexandra Gelis
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LIVE IMAGES: MUSIC ' VIDEO Closing Night Gala: Corredor Hamid Drake, David Mott, Alexandra Gelis Clockwise from left: Corredor, Corredor, Hamid Drake, David Mott Flowing across boundaries, breaching borders and synthesizing different Gelis’ Corredor, which can be translated as corridor or passageway, points of view… For our #$%" Closing Night Gala, the Images Festival explores the layers of signifi cance embedded in Latin American land- has invited Chicago-based drummer Hamid Drake and local baritone scapes, and the economic, social and political forces hidden beneath saxophonist David Mott to provide musical elucidation for the images their surfaces. Her evocative images trace both natural and artifi cial of local artist Alexandra Gelis. boundaries used to defi ne and control populations, deftly document- A linchpin of the Chicago free jazz scene alongside Ken Vandermark, ing the banal and the beautiful, the threatening and the benign. Matana Roberts and the late Fred Anderson, Hamid Drake is a power- Through the use of words and images, politics and poetry, Corredor house drummer whose propulsive fl ow absorbs infl uences across various surveys confl icted and conquered places while refl ecting on the political traditions, from African to Afro-Cuban to Indian. Drake has been known implications of the post-colonial landscape. In particular, it investigates to incorporate global percussion into his practice, in addition to locking various aspects surrounding the Panama Canal, and the control exercised it down on the trap set. His legion of collaborators includes Don Cherry, by the United States on the landscape and the psyche of the Panama- Pharoah Sanders, William Parker, Peter Brötzmann and George Lewis. nian population. Touching on the role of the notorious former School Toronto’s own David Mott similarly stretches across boundaries, from of the Americas in Panama, a US military academy also known as the free jazz to classical, improvised to interpretive, solo baritone sax to School for Dictators, as well as describing the strategic use of paja full-on orchestral. His incorporation of extended techniques such as canalera, a thorny, prickly and invasive imported plant that was used by circular breathing, multiphonics and modulation anticipated the methods the US army to separate the Panama Canal Zone from the rest of the recently popularized by Montreal’s Colin Stetson, creating a mesmerizing, Panamanian population, Gelis’ images encourage the viewer to refl ect minimal/maximal stream of sound. Mott has collaborated with the likes on borders real, imagined, contested, resented or forgotten and ignored. of Mark Dresser, Jerry Granelli, Leo Wadada Smith and Roswell Rudd. CLOSING NIGHT PARTY Join us after the show next door at Workman Arts Theatre! Saturday April !" Admission: St. Anne’s Church # PM $#$ general #&$ Gladstone Avenue $%$ members, (north of Dundas) students, seniors Images !".