Electric Circus remixes classic soul and rock for the 21st century with sampled grooves, improvised sonic exploration, light projections and reinventions of mid 20th century psychedelia. Featuring 14 of Portland’s finest musicians (a veritable who’s who of jazz masters) and led by Seattle’s great Wayne Horvitz (conduction, sampling, keys) this show has special written all over it .
2400 SE Holgate Blvd, Portland, OR 97202
902 SE Sherman St. Portland, OR 97214
Max Jaffe expands the boundaries of possibility for composition and collaboration through the drum set. His music draws from many different genres and seeks to break down the boundaries between them. He is part of a cutting edge of drummers that have embraced SUNHOUSE and their Sensory Percussion technology that has shifted the paradigm of the instrument. His powerful solo performances exploit the physicality of the drums to create narrative through movement, defying visual expectations and logic for what a “drum solo” can express.
As a collaborator, he is a longtime member of experimental rock collective JOBS and was a founding member of Amirtha Kidambi’s Elder Ones, Leverage Models, and several other groups. He has toured with EDEN, Chrome Sparks, Steph Richards, Peter Evans, Rubblebucket, Delicate Steve, Cass McCombs, Oberhofer, Ava Mendoza, and many others. He has performed at a diverse range of festivals including Moers Festival, Big Ears, Panorama NYC, Berlin Jazz Festival, Movement Detroit, Vision Fest, and more. He holds an MFA from California Institute of the Arts and was a 2021 Pioneer Works Music Resident.
In February 2023, the day after saxophonist Zoh Amba and drummer Chris Corsano finished up a duo tour of the west coast they entered the studio with guitarist Bill Orcutt. From this session came an album released summer 2023 called The Flower School. Chris and Bill are decades long collaborators perpetually adapting, adjusting, and challenging one another so that every performance by their duo seems to spring from a different inspirational source, but this was the first time Orcutt and Amba had ever played together. Through the recording session it is obvious that the level of communication and rapport between the trio feels eternal.
This performance will be the West coast premiere of the trio of Zoh Amba, Chris Corsano and Bill Orcutt performing music from their new LP “The Flower School.”
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One of experimental music’s most influential guitarists, Bill Orcutt weaves looping melodic lines and angular attack into a dense, fissured landscape of American primitivism, outsider jazz, and a stripped-down re-envisioning of the possibilities of the guitar. Whether he’s playing his decrepit Kay acoustic or gutted electric Telecaster (both stripped of two of their strings, as has been Orcutt’s custom since 1985), Orcutt’s jagged sound is utterly unique and instantly recognizable, and is compared with equal frequency to avant-garde composers and rural bluesmen. The New York Times has called him a “powerful musician… a go-for-broke guitar improviser,” and described his sound as “articulated sprays of arpeggiated chords and dissonance.”
Zoh Amba is a composer and instrumentalist from Tennessee residing in New York. Her music blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns. Before studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, New England Conservatory and studying with David Murray in New York, she spent most of her time writing and practicing saxophone in a remote forest near her home alone where she started to develop her distinct sound and approach. Today, her powerfully unique avant-garde music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, and repeated incantations. Amba released her first two records in 2022. Her debut record O, Sun which was produced by John Zorn and released on his prestigious label Tzadik. Zoh Amba’s second record, Bhakti features Micah Thomas, Tyshawn Sorey, and Matt Hollenberg. Bhakti has become the moniker for Amba’s ongoing live and recording ensemble project with ever changing members, Amba also has a regular band with musicians Shahzad Ishmaily, Jim White (Dirty Three), and Steve Gunn.
Chris Corsano is a drummer who has been working at the intersections of free improvisation, avant-rock, and experimental music since the late ’90s. He’s a rim-batterer of choice for some of the greatest contemporary purveyors of “jazz” (Joe McPhee, Paul Flaherty, Mette Rasmussen) and “rock” (Sir Richard Bishop, Bill Orcutt, Jim O’Rourke), as well as artists beyond categorization (Björk for her Volta album and world tour, Michael Flower, Okkyung Lee). Appearing on over 150 albums and touring in an ultra-wide array of collaborations, Corsano has developed a highly personal musical language through ecstatic free improvisation, extended percussion techniques, and an innovative approach to the drum kit that includes resonating drum heads with bowed strings and circular-breathed reeds. He’s been called “one of the world’s great drummers” by The Guardian, “a peripatetic ace of the avant-garde” by The New York Times, and “arguably the most riotously energetic and creative drummer in contemporary free jazz” by Wire Magazine.
TWANS
Welded from the fruits of their own labors, TWANS set out to dispel current myths, question ideologies and sardonically allude to artistic nuances one would commonly dismiss. Between the three entities that are Mike Lockwood (drums), Andrew Jones (bass), and Mike Gamble (gtr) there exists an unyielding desire to connect in another dimension and utilize that interplay to heighten the worth of their songs.
120 SW Harvey Milk St
