Melford/Johnston/Atwal Trio
This will be a concert of improvisations by three of the Bay Area's most creative and versatile musicians. Internationally celebrated Myra Melford on the piano, Darren Johnston on the trumpet, and Hamir Atwal on the drums, will begin from scratch, and follow the music wherever it takes them. This is sure to be a dynamic and exciting musical adventure.
Melford/Johnston/Atwal Trio at the Maybeck
Saturday, November 21, 2015, 3:00pm
This concert is $20/$10 Students (suggested donation).
Seating is limited. Get your required online reservation here.
Darren Johnston
Since settling in San Francisco in 1997, Canada-born trumpeter/composer/songwriter Darren Johnston has collaborated and recorded with an extremely diverse cross-section of artists. His interests rotate around composing instrumental music, writing songs, and performing all styles of jazz, experimental and purely improvised music, as well as traditional music of the Balkans, Greece, Macedonia, Turkey, and the Arab world. These interests have coalesced into his primary ensemble of late, Darren Johnston’s Broken Shadows. He has performed and/or recorded with luminaries such as Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, Fred Frith, Meklit Hadero, ROVA Sax Quartet, Ben Goldberg, Matt Wilson, Mark Dresser, Marshall Allen, Dave Rempis, Larry Ochs, Marcus Shelby, and others.
Myra Melford
For pianist, composer and Guggenheim fellow Myra Melford, the personal and the poetic have always been intimately and deeply connected. Raised outside Chicago in a house designed by the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Melford grew up literally surrounded by art. Where most of us find the beauty in our childhood homes through the memories and associations we make within its four walls, Melford saw early on that aesthetic expression could both be built from and be a structure for profound emotions.
Over the course of a career spanning more than two decades, Melford has taken that lesson to heart, crafting a singular sound world that harmonizes the intricate and the expressive, the meditative and the assertive, the cerebral and the playful. Drawing inspiration from a vast spectrum of cultural and spiritual traditions and artistic disciplines, she has found a “spark of recognition” in sources as diverse as the writings of the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi and the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano; the wisdom of Zen Buddhism and the Huichol Indians of Mexico; and the music of mentors like Jaki Byard, Don Pullen, and Henry Threadgill.
Hamir Atwal
Drummer/Percussionist Hamir Atwal is a Berklee College of Music graduate who has taught at Music Academy International, Stanford University, the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the JazzSchool, CSU-Stanislaus, and Santa Rosa Junior College. Hamir is an active endorser of DREAM Cymbals.
He has performed with such acts as the Glimpse Trio, tUneyArDs, Michael Coleman, the Ben Goldberg School, and was a part of his own percussion group entitled CavityFang. He has played in such notable venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, the Village Vanguard, Nancy Jazz Pulsations, and the Monterey Jazz Festival. He can regularly be heard throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.
Saturday, November 21, 2015, 3:00pm
This concert is $20/$10 Students (suggested donation).
Seating is limited. Get your required online reservation here.
Darren Johnston
Since settling in San Francisco in 1997, Canada-born trumpeter/composer/songwriter Darren Johnston has collaborated and recorded with an extremely diverse cross-section of artists. His interests rotate around composing instrumental music, writing songs, and performing all styles of jazz, experimental and purely improvised music, as well as traditional music of the Balkans, Greece, Macedonia, Turkey, and the Arab world. These interests have coalesced into his primary ensemble of late, Darren Johnston’s Broken Shadows. He has performed and/or recorded with luminaries such as Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, Fred Frith, Meklit Hadero, ROVA Sax Quartet, Ben Goldberg, Matt Wilson, Mark Dresser, Marshall Allen, Dave Rempis, Larry Ochs, Marcus Shelby, and others.
Myra Melford
For pianist, composer and Guggenheim fellow Myra Melford, the personal and the poetic have always been intimately and deeply connected. Raised outside Chicago in a house designed by the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Melford grew up literally surrounded by art. Where most of us find the beauty in our childhood homes through the memories and associations we make within its four walls, Melford saw early on that aesthetic expression could both be built from and be a structure for profound emotions.
Over the course of a career spanning more than two decades, Melford has taken that lesson to heart, crafting a singular sound world that harmonizes the intricate and the expressive, the meditative and the assertive, the cerebral and the playful. Drawing inspiration from a vast spectrum of cultural and spiritual traditions and artistic disciplines, she has found a “spark of recognition” in sources as diverse as the writings of the 13th-century Persian poet Rumi and the Uruguayan journalist Eduardo Galeano; the wisdom of Zen Buddhism and the Huichol Indians of Mexico; and the music of mentors like Jaki Byard, Don Pullen, and Henry Threadgill.
Hamir Atwal
Drummer/Percussionist Hamir Atwal is a Berklee College of Music graduate who has taught at Music Academy International, Stanford University, the Stanford Jazz Workshop, the JazzSchool, CSU-Stanislaus, and Santa Rosa Junior College. Hamir is an active endorser of DREAM Cymbals.
He has performed with such acts as the Glimpse Trio, tUneyArDs, Michael Coleman, the Ben Goldberg School, and was a part of his own percussion group entitled CavityFang. He has played in such notable venues such as the Hollywood Bowl, the Village Vanguard, Nancy Jazz Pulsations, and the Monterey Jazz Festival. He can regularly be heard throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.