Ombak

Just in time for Halloween, Snow Panda’s frighteningly super-bad mixes are now available for download and streaming right here on this site. Head over to the SOUNDS page and click the player for streaming and the links for downloads. Many thanks for our friends over at RVAnews and RVAjazz for hosting the project last week. Catch up on the origin story and track descriptions here.

If you’ve been checking out the Ombak: Snow Panda Mixes all week, you know that there’s been some serious sonic alchemy going on. Tonight you can check out this combustible collaboration live at Cous Cous. All alliteration aside, this should be a great gig.

Snow Panda joins Ombak on electronics, didgeridoo and other mystery instruments!

Cous Cous
Wednesday 10/28
9:30pm
FREE

churray:sounds
hooten:trombone
pollard:guitar
ralston:bass
jones:drums

I’m excited to announce the debut of our latest project. Local keyboard and electronics wizard Snow Panda has done some new mash-up style mixes of Framing the Void and live recordings. Head over to RVAjazz for the fascinating results. A new track will be posted there each weekday until October 28, at which time all the tracks will be available for download right here.

By Bryan Hooten

The following is part I of a reflection on music, dance and improvisation, growing out of my work and friendship with modern dancer, Madeleine Reber. I took a trip down to Greensboro, NC to give a performance with her earlier this year and this is the story.

Some of the best advice I have ever received as been to “play music with your friends.” Luckily, everyone I play music with in Richmond falls into that category. At the Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts and Humanities, a summer program for gifted high school students where I teach, I get to play music, meditate, act, improvise, and philosophize with a whole other set of friends. One of those friends is Madeleine Reber, a modern dancer from Ohio who served on the faculty during my first year teaching in the program. During each installment of the program, the faculty put on a variety show, a forum for serious performances and hysterical spoofs. Without even knowing each other that well, Madeleine, percussionist Andy Brockmann and I decided to create a solo trombone, percussion and dance collaborative improvisation. The performance was a hit, both with us and with the students and we re-imagined it two years later when Madeleine returned to the faculty.

Keep reading →

Ombak drummer and fearless leader of his own groups Brian Jones has been named in Style Weekly’s annual Richmond Top 40 under 40 feature. This is a well deserved honor for a musician and all-around nice guy who’s been fanning the flame of Richmond music for a long time despite being, you know, under 40. Read about it here.

Cameron is back from NYC and I’m back from Greensboro (details to follow) so I suppose Ombak should play its gig this Wednesday. We’ll be doing some new and very recent tunes as well as the platinum hits. Here’s a link to the facebook event. You can also follow us on twitter.

Wednesday, September 30
Cous Cous
900 W. Franklin St.  Richmond, VA
9:30pm
FREE

In response to Terry Teachout’s proclamation that jazz is dying because young audiences don’t dig it, Patrick over at NPR’s A Blog Supreme called out to a handful of jazz bloggers with this directive:

Name five albums you would recommend to somebody looking to get into modern jazz — within the last 10 or so years, with an emphasis on the present moment (considered broadly).

Dean Christesen, founder of RVAjazz, chimed in and included Ombak on his list. We are honored to be mentioned as part of this fascinating project, called Jazz Now. Dean writes of Ombak:

Beats — soft, loud, fast, slow — will draw curious listeners in. Mesmerizing textures, melodies and collaborative creations will hold them there. Of course, the guitar shredding and epic drum solos tend to have the same effect.

More Jazz Now lists will be revealed in the coming days so make sure to stay tuned and check out some great new music!

Drummer Brian Jones, of Ombak and a plethora of his own projects, is celebrating the release of his new Guitar Quartet album tonight at The Camel in Richmond, VA. The album features Ombak members Trey Pollard on guitar and Cameron Ralston on bass as well as Charles Arthur on guitar. Dean, over at RVAjazz did a great interview about this gig and what’s up next for Brian. Check out the interview here.

Brian Jones Guitar Quartet CD Release
The Camel
1621 W. Broad St.
Richmond, VA 23220
8:00pm-11:30pm
$5

I’m excited to announce my faculty jazz trombone recital for Tuesday, September 8^th 2009 at 8pm in the Sonia Vlahcevic Concert Hall inside the Singleton Center for the Performing Arts at 922 Park Avenue in Richmond, VA. The recital will feature the music of Verbatim, an experimental duo comprised of myself and drummer Dean Christesen. Here’s a facebook link to the event.

Verbatim’s music combines the sounds of jazz, math-rock, punk, salsa, Tuvan throat-singing, New Orleans street beat and the avant-garde to create an original synthesis of composition and improvisation. Verbatim grew organically out of conversations and jam sessions between Hooten and Christesen in 2008. After playing on a few one-off gigs and a steady opening slot in front of Alan Parker’s Connect Four, the duo began planning a summer tour during a post-gig hang at The Camel in Richmond, VA.

In June of 2009, Verbatim recorded its debut self-titled album in Richmond composer/guitarist and Fight the Big Bull leader Matthew White’s sweltering attic, otherwise known as Spacebomb Studios. Recorded in only a few hours, the album consists of all first takes of original compositions that were mixed in one pass while using no overdubs or splices, fully capturing the group’s dynamic live-performance energy. In support of the album, the duo embarked on an east-coast tour earlier this year, hitting experimental music hotspots in Washington DC, Brooklyn, NY and Philadelphia, PA before returning home for a CD release party at The Camel in Richmond, VA. The album is available at all Verbatim gigs.

You can read more about me here.

Dean Christesen is a Richmond-based drummer, writer and creator of RVAjazz.com, a portal for Richmond’s jazz, experimental, and improvised music scene. He is currently studying jazz performance at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is a member of Mason Brothers, Verbatim, and various local jazz and free-jazz concoctions.

www.mypace.com/verbatimrva