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August 28, 2024

Dear Friends,

In this intense and often unsettling time with multiple challenges facing all of us, I’m so grateful to be able to participate in moments of joy, shared common focus, and the freedom of expression that improvisational music offers. The past few months I’ve been expanding ongoing projects and venturing in new directions, all the while working with some of the most creative and amazing musicians on the planet. Here are a few highlights from a very full summer of concerts, projects, and travel.

Diving Deeper into the mysterious, inspiring, and energizing world of Cy Twombly’s artwork
Splash, my new trio featuring bassist Michael Formanek and drummer/percussionist Ches Smith, performed a new installment and set of music as part of my ongoing project responding to the work of Cy Twombly. While on tour, we performed at the Nicola Del Roscio Foundation in Rome as part of Un/veiled 2. Inside the Creative Process of Cy Twombly in late May. Excerpts of our show, an interview with my brilliant colleague, scholar of contemporary music, Delia Casadei, and a documentary film will be shown on the Cy Twombly Foundation website in September. Bassist Neil Charles, from London, stepped in for this tour and did a fantastic job. (photo from vortex?) We then went into the studio in Zurich later in July with Michael Formanek to record with Intakt Records for a spring 2025 release.

In July I toured with my amazing quintet Fire and Water, featuring saxophonist Ingrid Laubrock, guitarist Mary Halvorson, cellist Tomeka Reid, and drummer Lesley Mok. I feel so fortunate to share the stage with these super creative improvisers and great human beings, all of whom are accomplished composers and bandleaders. For the Love of Fire and Water and Hear the Light Singing are the first and second installments of my Twombly project recorded for RogueArt. While together, we performed this music at festivals in Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Vitoria, Pori, and Gmund in Corinthia, adding some newer compositions into the mix. European summer jazz festivals range from the very intimate, one-night, single small stage in the community-based Jazz-Festival auf der Alten Burg Gmünd, to the multi-night, multiple stages in a convention center at the North Sea Festival in Rotterdam. All have their plus sides and lots of great music to listen to while not performing. Musicians from around the world and a multiplicity of musical styles is again another reminder of the power of music to bring people together.

Branching out with new projects and in new venues
I spent most of June working on a new project surrounded by the natural beauty and light in Trondheim, Norway with composer/performers Heather Frasch and Evelyn Ficarra (who joined us virtually from Brighton). We’ve been co-composing and performing as a trio called Concrete Sun. Recently, we were awarded funding from the Peder Sather Foundation to begin work on our project, "Fragile Environments” through which we hope to harness creative interventions in sound composition and music technologies to encourage imaginative listening and increased agency in facing the climate emergency. We connected with two inspiring women scientists doing research on the effects of climate change in the Trondheim Fjord with whom we plan to collaborate in the coming months. The next phase will see us working in Berkeley and environs in January 2025. Stay tuned for presentations of the project in the Bay Area and Trondheim.

In late July, I spent a few days in a small village outside of Pesaro, Italy working on a new collaborative composition for improvising pianist and orchestra with my colleague from UC Berkeley, Carmine Cella, a fantastic composer, creator of software for assisted composition, and pilot. In addition to making good progress on our piece, I got to see the most incredible shades of blue while flying above the coast of the Adriatic Sea.

I did a two-night residency at Café Oto in London, performing solo, in trio with UK based bassist John Edwards and drummer Mark Sanders, and in quartet with trumpeter Chris Batchelor. It was thrilling to play with these energetic and empathetic improvisers in such a wonderful atmosphere with attentive audiences. (photo by Dawid Laskowski)

I got to perform twice at the iconic Novara Jazz Festival in early June, a solo piano set and in a quintet with clarinetist/composer Francois Houle’s Secret Lives of Colors with bassist Joelle Leandre, drummer Gerry Hemingway and guitarist and oud player Gordon Grdina. It’s such a welcoming festival in cool venues around the medieval part of the city with amazing presenters, audiences, and musicians. While there I got to watch my dear friend and colleague Joelle Leandre receive a golden key to the city of Novara, hear a great new project of Alexander Hawkins - his Dialect Quintet, and a stellar solo set by saxophonist Rodrigo Amado.

Extending Common Ground
On August 9, the new Lux Quartet cd, Tomorrowland, came out on Enja/Yellowbird. This is a super-group coming together from many different approaches to jazz that the extraordinary drummer and composer, Allison Miller and I co-lead with saxophonist Dayna Stephens and bassist Scott Colley celebrating the life-giving power of light.

After an energizing and inspiring summer, there’s much to look forward to. Here are some places where you can find me this fall.

• Sep 10 – Murmur Garden, a new collectively-led quartet with Ben Goldberg, Ben Davis, and Jordan Glenn will perform in the Redwood Grove at the Botanical Garden in Berkeley.
• Sep 20 – 27, I’ll be performing solo concerts, and duo shows with pianist Satoko Fujii in Europe.
• Oct 10-12 – Trio M, with Mark Dresser and Matt Wilson, reunites to perform at the University of Illinois Krannert Center, followed by a show at Constellation in Chicago.
• Oct 19 – Fire and Water plays at Edgefest, one of my favorite festivals, in Ann Arbor.
• Oct 27 - Nov 2, Fire & Water will tour the west coast with dates in Seattle, Sacramento, Albuquerque and Basalt, CO.

See my upcoming events page for more details on these dates and a full listing.

Wishing you all a productive and peaceful fall (or spring, as the case may be), and the preservation of democracy and this beautiful planet,

Myra