Ombak

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

Ombak returns to Cous Cous on Wednesday, September 2nd at 9:30pm. We will be playing a bunch of new music, including tunes by Radiohead and  Ornette Coleman as well as members of Ombak. Our debut album, Framing the Void, will be on sale for $10 as well.

As some of you may know, I (Bryan) have the distinct honor of playing trombone in Richmond’s Manliest Band, NO BS! Brass. A couple of weeks ago, we embarked on a busking tour of the eastern US. If you didn’t already know, busking is just another term for playing on the street. We had a blast and picked up some new fans along the way. Dean over at RVAjazz has been hosting my reflections on the tour and Day 1 and Day 2 are up now. Day 3 is on the way. Enjoy!

Ombak has been taking a bit of a break over the summer but its members have been hard at work on some other projects. Trey has been making hits at Songwire Studios, Cameron’s been on the road with Fight the Big Bull and Ilad and Brian has been scheming on a return to regular gigs with his own groups.

I’m excited to announce the east coast tour for my newest group, Verbtim. Verbatim is a duo consisting of myself on trombone and Richmond drummer and www.rvajazz.com helmer Dean Christesen. We’ve been playing around Richmond for a few months and just recently cut an album in Fight the Big Bull guitarist/composer Matt White’s attic, AKA Spacebomb Studios. The album consists of all first takes, no overdubs, no splices and was mixed in one pass. We’ll be hitting the road in about a week to play some east-coast dates. Expect this to be one of the most heavily tweeted, blogged and facebooked avant-garde jazz duo tours of recent memory. Here are the dates. Check out the myspace for more info

Monday, August 10
Charlottesville, VA
12th Street Tap House
w/ Gerrit Rößler’s melamine
8pm, price TBA
1202 W. Main Street
(434) 202-0764

Tuesday, August 11
Richmond, VA
Ghost Print Gallery
W/ J.C. and Mike Kuhl
8pm, $5
220 W. Broad St.
(804) 344-1557

Wednesday, August 12
Washington, DC
Bossa Bistro & Lounge
w/ High Life
7pm, $7
2463 18th St. NW
(202) 667-0088

Friday, August 14
Brooklyn, NY
Snow’s Basement
w/ Sweet Banditry, Aaron Ali Shaikh, & Adam Caine Trio
8pm, price TBA
796 Grand St. #1

Sunday, August 16
Philadelphia, PA
Gojjo
w/ Sonic Liberation Front & Mike Lorenz Quartet
8pm
4540 Baltimore Ave.
(215) 386-1444

Tuesday, August 18
Richmond, VA
The Camel
w/ R2Dtoo and Gull
8pm, $5
1621 W. Broad St.
(804) 353-4901

Thanks to .:.impossible design‘s Cary Ralston (who also did the cover art for the album) for hipping me to the latest review of Ombak’s Framing the Void. The review comes by way of Clifford Allen at the wonderful new-music (and lots more) blog, Bagatellen.

From the starting gate, it’s clear that Ombak are an extraordinarily unique group, a swaggering quartet that chomps and bellows like Albert Mangelsdorff fronting prog-rock.

Slushy tailgate, trombone multiphonics, damaged-blues fretwork and limber percussion stand well on their own, but Ombak are a collective venture whose parallel roads all lead to the same end, however upturned it might seem.

Read more here

This Friday, Ombak will perform at Christopher Newport University‘s Ferguson Center for the Arts as  part of the Virginia Governor’s School for the Humanities and Visual and Performing Arts. Governor’s School is a month-long summer program for gifted VA high school students that includes classes on music, dance, theater, visual arts, foreign policy, body modalities, yoga, meditation, and even a course on “Cool.” I (Bryan) have taught in the program since 2007 and  am always moved by the experience. Ombak will play for the approximately 400-strong student body as well as the faculty and support staff. Last year, Fight the Big Bull delivered a rousing concert to an equally energized crowd. Please see the LIVE page on this blog for more info.

Here’s a photo of my brass studio dishing out a No BS! Brass style Iron Palm.

Bryan Hooten’s Framing the Void series of articles for RVAnews describes music and its relationship with negative space. Part IV, published today, explores musical line, where the time and space dimensions of music intersect most thoroughly.

We seem to have an intuitive sense of the void, a void that our minds constantly and compulsively divide, rearrange, and reassemble. Like the human experience, all music, including the tune you just sang, plays with these dimensions. When listening to or playing music, we constantly experience sound and silence, space and time in combination, and nowhere is this play more apparent than in a musical line.