Bobby Previte Rhapsody (Terminals Part II: In Transit)
Zeena Parkins—harp John Medeski—piano Nels Cline—guitars Greg Osby—alto saxophone Jen Shyu—voice, er hu, percussion, piano Bobby Previte—trap drums, guitar, autoharp, harmonica Rhapsody is the second part in a three-part series exploring the experience of travel. The first part, Terminals Part I: Departures, is a set of five concertos written for the visionary percussion group SO Percussion and five improvisers. This piece premiered at Merkin Hall in New York City and the recording was released on Cantaloupe Music in 2014.
In 2015, I received the Greenfield Prize for a new work and I decided to create Part II of the set, 'In Transit.' For this piece I had the thought to take the improvisers from Part I, each of whom I had selected based on their ability to carry a fifteen-minute concerto by themselves, and throw them all together into one ensemble.
Beginning from the point of view of a traveler sitting comfortably in an airplane, Rhapsody twists and turns, until the traveler finally arrives at a strange shore - on a raft.
What is the experience of being in transit? Separated from your home but not yet at your destination, you are neither here nor there, confined with strangers in an intimate environment for a predetermined amount of time. Uncomfortable, yet somehow free. To travel is to be bound with these strangers by faith—faith in the vessel which carries you, faith in the people who operate it, and ultimately, faith in the strangers waiting at your destination.
band photos: Nancy Nassiff - Previte headshot: Kate Previte BIOGRAPHIES: Nels Cline is a New York-based guitarist and composer. Born in Los Angeles CA in 1956, he grew up with his twin brother Alex as a rock ‘n roll obsessive before becoming immersed in the world of so-called jazz and improvised music after hearing the music of John Coltrane. He has played on over 200 recordings and performed and recorded with a wide variety of artists such as Charlie Haden, Julius Hemphill, Tim Berne, Yoko Ono, Thurston Moore, Mike Watt, Mark Isham, Ricki Lee Jones, Lee Ranaldo, Joan Osborne, Phil Lesh, Jim Black, Elliott Sharp, Anthony Braxton, and Julian Lage, to name but a few. He has released dozens of recordings as a leader since the 1980s. He has led his band The Nels Cline Singers since 2001, generating several recordings and performing worldwide, and collaborates with improvisers in projects too numerous to mention here. Nels has also composed larger commissioned works such as “Dirty Baby”, which combined his compositions for two large ensembles with the paintings of Edward Ruscha and the poetry of David Breskin. He is probably best known as the lead guitarist for the Chicago-based rock band Wilco, which he joined in 2004 and with which he continues to record and perform.
Famed keyboardist John Medeski is not easily contained to a single project or genre; he is credited on over 300 works to date, most notably as one third of the groundbreaking trio, Medeski Martin & Wood. Equally comfortable behind a Steinway grand piano, Hammond organ or any number of vintage keyboards, Medeski is a highly sought after improviser and band leader whose projects range from work with The Word (Robert Randolph, North Mississippi Allstars), Phil Lesh, Don Was, John Scofield, Coheed &Cambria, Susana Baca, Sean Lennon, Marc Ribot, Irma Thomas, Blind Boys of Alabama, Dirty Dozen Brass Band and many more. Classically trained, Medeski grew up in Ft. Lauderdale, FL where as a teenager he played with Jaco Pastorius before heading north to attend the New England Conservatory. He released his first solo piano record, A Different Time, on Sony’s Okeh Records in 2013, and current projects include a new album in the works with his band Mad Skillet (Terrence Higgins, Kirk Joseph, Will Bernard), and HUDSON (a collaboration with Jack DeJohnette, John Scofield and Larry Grenadier), plus a documentary on Medeski Martin & Wood.
Saxophonist, composer, producer and educator Greg Osby has made an indelible mark in contemporary improvised music circles as a leader of his own ensembles and as a guest artist with other acclaimed jazz groups for the past 30 years. Notable for his insightful and innovative methods and approach, Osby is a shining beacon among the current generation of jazz musicians. He has earned numerous awards and critical acclaim for his recorded works and passionate live performances. Born and raised in St. Louis, Greg Osby began his professional music career in 1975, after three years of private studies on clarinet, flute and alto saxophone. In 1978 Osby furthered his musical education at Howard University where he majored in Jazz Studies. He continued his studies at the Berklee College of Music from 1980 to 1982 Upon relocating to New York, Osby quickly established himself as a notable and in demand sideman for artists as varied as Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, Jack DeJohnette, Andrew Hill, Freddie Hubbard, Jim Hall and The Grateful Dead as well as with many ethnic and new music ensembles in the New York area. Mr.Osby is a PEW Fellow, a multi winner of the prestigious Jazz Journalists Award, Down Beat polls, and is a recent recipient of the Doris Duke Foundation award for composers. Currently recording for the Inner Circle Music label, Osby was a Blue Note records recording artist from 1990 to 2006. In addition to his performance schedule, Osby devotes a generous amount of his time towards mentorship and educational activities. He has served as a faculty member in the jazz program at The Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, MD, The University of the Arts in Philadelphia, The New School in New York, Berklee College of Music in Boston and has hosted workshops and lectures at some of the most prestigious music conservatories in the world. Osby continues to tour with his primary groups “The Greg Osby 4” and “Symbols of Light”, an eight piece string and jazz ensemble. Now, an Inner Circle Music recording artist, he has earned numerous awards, and critical acclaim for his recorded works and engaging live performances.
Zeena Parkins is an electro-acoustic composer, improviser and pioneer of contemporary harp practice and performance. Parkins re-imagines both the acoustic harp and an evolution of her original electric ones, through the use of expanded playing techniques, preparations, and custom designed processing. Within a shifting constellation of improvised/composed/gesture/ touch/ space/sound/noise/music, Parkins is engaged in translations of sonicity often within multi- channel environments: architectural, emotional, topographical, and social. Commissions include: Whitney Museum, Tate Modern, Sharjah Art Foundation, NeXtWorks Ensemble, Either/ Or Ensemble/Ensemble Son, Donaueschinger Musiktage, Sudwestrundfunk, Bang on a Can Spit Orchestra, and Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Awards include: Doris Duke Artist Award, 3 Bessies for her groundbreaking work with dance, DAAD Fellowship, Shifting Fellowship, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, NYFA Fellowship, Prix Ars Electronica Honorary Mention. Residencies include: Atlantic Center for the Arts Master Artist-in-Residence, Herb Alpert/Ucross Prize, Rauschenberg Residency, Civitella Ranieri/Umbertide, Montalvo, Oxford University/The Ruskin School. Performances/recordings include: Bjork, Ikue Mori, Fred Frith, Christian Marclay, Butch Morris, Elliott Sharp, William Winant, Nate Wooley, Nels Cline, Mary Halvorson, Leila Bourdreuil, Yuka C. Honda, Okkyung Lee, Matmos, Yoko Ono, Yasunao Tone, Pauline Oliveros, Kim Gordon, Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Myra Melford, and Miya Masaoka. Parkins is Distinguished Visiting Artist at Mills College in Oakland, California.
Jen Shyu is a groundbreaking, multilingual vocalist, composer, producer, multi- instrumentalist, dancer and 2016 Doris Duke Artist. Born in Peoria, Illinois, to Taiwanese and East Timorese immigrant parents, Shyu is widely regarded for her virtuosic singing and riveting stage presence, carving out her own beyond-category space in the art world. She has performed with saxophonist and 2014 MacArthur Fellow Steve Coleman since 2003 and has collaborated with such musical innovators as Anthony Braxton, Vijay Iyer, Bobby Previte, Chris Potter, Michael Formanek and David Binney. Shyu has performed her own music on prestigious world stages such as Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rubin Museum of Art, Ringling International Arts Festival, Asia Society, Roulette, Blue Note, Bimhuis, Salihara Theater, National Gugak Center, National Theater of Korea and at festivals worldwide. Shyu has produced six albums as a leader, including the first female-led and vocalist-led album Pi Recordings has released, Synastry (Pi 2011), with co-bandleader and bassist Mark Dresser. Her acclaimed CD Sounds and Cries of the World (Pi 2015) landed on many best- of-2015 lists, including those of The New York Times and The Nation. Currently based in New York City, Shyu will premiere her next solo work at National Sawdust June 29, 2017, and release her next album Song of Silver Geese on Pi October 2017, kicking off a 50- state U.S. tour of “Songs of Our World Now / Songs Everyone Writes Now (SOWN/ SEWN),” planting seeds of creativity and threading communities together through art. Bobby Previte is a composer and performer whose work explores the nexus between notated and improvised music. One of the seminal figures of the 1980s New York ‘Downtown’ scene, Previte is the recipient of the 2015 Greenfield Prize for music and was a Guggenheim Foundation Fellow in 2012. He has received multiple awards for composition from the NEA, NYFA, NYSCA, NY State Music Fund, and the American Music Center. Mr. Previte has been an artist-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, Civitella Ranieri, The Montalvo Arts Center, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, and nine times at the MacDowell Colony. His original compositions have been recorded and released on Sony, Elektra, Rykodisc, Palmetto, New World, Ropeadope, Tzadik, Thirsty Ear, and Cantaloupe. Leading a plethora of diverse ensembles from his instrument, the drums, he has collaborated with many of the leading lights in and beyond the world of music – master composer John Adams, rock icon Tom Waits, legendary filmmaker Robert Altman, and most recently, Iggy Pop. His music has been labeled as ‘utterly original,’ by the New York Times, while The New Yorker said his ensembles ‘speak in visionary tongues.’ Previte has given master classes at Eastman, The New School, Bard, Princeton, and at universities around the world. His work TERMINALS, five concertos for percussion ensemble and soloists, was released October 28th, 2014 by Cantaloupe Music. His new working band, Bobby Previte & the Visitors, released their first record, GONE, in summer of 2016 on the forTune label. TERMINALS QUARTETS, his Percussion only version of Terminals, was released in fall 2016 by Canteloupe. MASS, in nine parts for choir, pipe organ, and metal trio, was released by Rarenoise Records in April 2017. His newest work, RHAPSODY, a song cycle on the subject of travel and migration, premiered April 21, 2017 at New College in Sarasota Florida, and featured Zeena Parkins, John Medeski, Nels Cline, Greg Osby, and Jen Shyu. RHAPSODY will be released in January 2018 on Rarenoise.