Improvisations Now at Real Art Ways

Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!

May 4 Performance:

Larry Ochs-tenor, soprano saxophone

Larry Ochs works on and breathes music. He composes. He plays saxophone. He looks for adventurous ideas to take on and for other artists – musicians and friends in other art mediums – to take them on with him.

Ochs is primarily found in the worlds of “avant-garde” or “improvised music.” That means that he composes music for “structured improvisation” in general, and in particular for musicians steeped in the art of improvisation, an art form that has really only come into its own in Western music in the past 50 years, primarily thanks to the development of jazz as influenced by the blues and then by Western art music, as well as to the increased exposure of Western musicians to the music of Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe.

But any artists in the visual arts or other performance-based arts that have an interest in taking chances are welcomed in. Thus, for example, he has worked with Shinichi Iova Koga and his dance group inkBoat; he and Rova have collaborated with We Players, a very cool theater company in the Bay Area, and has toured and recorded with Korean performance artist and vocalist Dohee Lee.

Learn more about Larry here.

 

Michael Wimberly-drums

Wimberly was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio during the civil rights era surrounded by the toxic fumes of steel mills buoyed by a sea of blue-collar workers. This is where Wimberly’s early beginnings in soul, funk, rock, jazz, and classical music began. Beating rhythms on the hoods of cars and boxes while dancing to the pulsating music of James Brown, Sly Stone, Funkadelic, and Aretha Franklin…the spirit of revolution was in the air.

It was during Wimberly’s undergraduate years at Baldwin Wallace University that the rhythms from the streets connected him to the rhythms of West Africa and 20th century contemporary music. During his graduate years at Manhattan School of Music, Wimberly broadened his musical palette studying electronic and improvised music. Music of the African Diaspora and improvisation has become key components of Wimberly’s musical excavations and explorations. These explorations connected him with master musicians from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America and Europe. He’s performed with funk legends George Clinton and the Parliament Funkedelic; The Boys Choir of Harlem; Paul Winter Consort; rock icons: Vernon Reid, Henry Rollins, and Blondie; R&B royalty: Dionne Warwick, Valerie Simpson, D’Angelo, Angie Stone and Alyson Williams. Wimberly has been a featured artist with Berlin’s Rundfunk Symphony, Vienna’s Tonkuntsler Symphony, Leipzig Symphony, and International Region Symphony Orchestra performing compositions of Daniel Schnyder, as well as his own orchestral compositions performed by Yakima Symphony Orchestra, and Sage City Symphony of Vermont.

As a composer and sound designer, Wimberly’s compositions have been performed by dance companies Urban Bush Women, Joffrey Ballet II, Alvin Ailey, Ailey II, Philadanco, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, Joan Millers Dance Players, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Noir, Alpha Omega, Purelements, and The National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique. Film scores include As An Act of Protest by Dennis Leroy Moore, and Atlantic City Lights by Brent Owens for HBO. Sound design for theatre includes Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Classical Theatre of Harlem, Saint Lucy’s Eyes by Bridgette Wimberly for the Women’s Project & Cherry Lane Theatre, and Iced Out, Shackled and Chained for the National Black Theatre for which Wimberly received two Audelco nominations.

Wimberly’s percussion instruction book/DVD “Getting Started on Djembe” and “Getting Started on Cajon” have received outstanding reviews and is available from Hudson Music/Hal Leonard publications. His latest album, “Afrofuturism” on the Temple Mountain Record label (TMR) distributed on Warner Music Group/Level, can be accessed on all major streaming sources. Wimberly joined the Bennington faculty in Fall 2012, where the revolutionary spirit continues in his courses on black music by Sun Ra, Bill Dixon, and Milford Graves, and regenerates through courses on Funk, Improvisation, Composition for Dance, and global rhythms.

Learn more about Michael here.

 

Joe Morris-bass

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.