Event
Improvisations Now
Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!
March 16 Performance:
DoYeon Kim-gayageum
DoYeon Kim is a traditionally trained Korean artist who plays the gayageum, a traditional Korean string instrument, and has developed a uniquely broad approach to music, incorporating Korean music, jazz, and improvisation, among other influences. Notably, she introduced the gayageum into the improvisational music scene worldwide. Her recent collaborative projects have broadened to include dancers, actors, and visual artists.
During her traditional Korean training, she won numerous international competitions for her gayageum performances, including the Dong-A Ilbo Traditional Music Competition (Gold Prize, 2009), and the On-Nala Korean Music Competition (Gold Prize, 2011). DoYeon is also a graduate of the Contemporary Improvisation Department at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she was the first student ever admitted to the school playing any kind of Korean traditional instrument. She joined the faculty at her alma mater (2022). She also holds graduate degrees from Berklee’s Global Jazz Institute.
She has worked with numerous composers, performing several world premieres, and has been an invited guest lecturer for gayageum and Asian music at Franz Liszt Academy of Music, Universidad Nacional De Colombia, Dartmouth College, and many other universities. The Gyeonggi Sinawi Orchestra, a traditional music orchestra in Korea, has invited her as a music director (2021), and improvisation conductor (2023). DoYeon makes an effort to share a new and broader approach to music, drawing from Korean traditional music, improvisation, and development of original playing techniques.
DoYeon has performed throughout the world leading the Kim Do Yeon Band, and alongside many improvisers, including Tyshawn Sorey, Joe Morris, Agusti Fernandez, Tony Malaby and Anthony Coleman. Her first album, GaPi (2017), intimately combined traditional Korean music and jazz, and was nominated for a 2018 Korean Grammy Award in the crossover album category. The same year, DoYeon released the free improvisation album Macrocosm with Joe Morris, and performed on Jim Snidero’s Korean themed jazz album Project-K (2020), alongside Dave Douglas, Orrin Evans, Linda Oh and Rudy Royston. DoYeon Kim was recognized by Grammy.com as one of 7 Musicians Pushing Ancient Asian Instruments Into The Future (2021), and is performing projects at Roulette as a Van Lier Fellow (2023).
Learn more about DoYeon here.
Dan O’Brien-tenor, soprano, alto, baritone saxophone, clarinet, flute
Dan O’Brien is a woodwind player (alto sax, flute, clarinet) who was quite active in the early Contemporary period prior to the pandemic. He performed with Leap of Faith, The Leap of Faith Orchestra & Sub-Units project at Third Life Studios in Somerville, 3 of the 6 Graphic Scores for the full Leap of Faith Orchestra, Mekaniks, and Turbulence. He came to our scene along with Zach Bartolomei, also a reed player, and they performed together on most of the sets.
Learn more about Dan here.
Brad Barret-bass
“A true virtuoso of the double bass with unlimited abilities. The possibilities of Free Music afford him the challenge to operate on the frontier of music, while his great technique grounds him with precision and musicality.” – Joe Morris
Brad Barrett is a bassist, improviser, and educator. His practice engages the tools of improvisation and southern musical traditions to interrogate the complex interplay between freedom and structure. The Jazz Times has described Barrett’s style as “diced bits of Derek Bailey skronk” infused with “Delta blues twang,” and the Free Music Collective has lauded his playing as “singularly rhythmically genius.” In 2019, his first album, Cowboy Transfiguration—featuring Joe Morris on guitar and MacArthur Fellow Tyshawn Sorey on percussion—garnered critical acclaim for its distinctive sonic landscapes and virtuosity. Unlike conventional approaches to composition that place decision-making authority in the hands of a single composer, the compositional frameworks in Cowboy Transfiguration challenge players to maximize their creative freedom while adhering to rules for shared leadership. Over the past decade, Barrett has worked as an in-demand freelance musician; has performed with jazz luminaries such as Jason Moran, Sheila Jordan, Julian Lage, Evan Parker, Jerry Bergonzi, George Garzone, Taylor Ho Bynum and Rakalam Bob Moses; and has appeared on several noteworthy albums. In addition, Barrett is an award-winning educator whose innovative teaching practice has been consistently supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Barrett holds a DMA in Contemporary Improvisation and a MM in Jazz Performance from the New England Conservatory.
Learn more about Brad here.
Joe Morris-percussion, electronics
Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”
He is originally from New Haven, Connecticut. At the age of 12 he took lessons on the trumpet for one year. He started on guitar in 1969 at the age of 14. He played his first professional gig later that year. With the exception of a few lessons he is self-taught. The influence of Jimi Hendrix and other guitarists of that period led him to concentrate on learning to play the blues. Soon thereafter his sister gave him a copy of John Coltrane’s OM, which inspired him to learn about Jazz and New Music. From age 15 to 17 he attended The Unschool, a student-run alternative high school near the campus of Yale University in downtown New Haven. Taking advantage of the open learning style of the school he spent much of his time playing music with other students, listening to ethnic folk, blues, jazz, and classical music on record at the public library and attending the various concerts and recitals on the Yale campus, including performances by Wadada Leo Smith. He worked to establish his own voice on guitar in a free jazz context from the age of 17, drawing on the influence of Coltrane, Miles Davis, Cecil Taylor,Thelonius Monk, Ornette Coleman as well as the AACM, BAG, and the many European improvisers of the ’70s. Later he would draw influence from traditional West African string music, Messian, Ives, Eric Dolphy, Jimmy Lyons, Leroy Jenkins, Steve McCall and Fred Hopkins. After high school he performed in rock bands, rehearsed in jazz bands and played totally improvised music with friends until 1975 when he moved to Boston.
Learn more about Joe here.
