$10 Cover @ the Door / Start 7:30pm / Doors 7pm / Seated Show
Steve Lantner
Pianist Steve Lantner brings the disparate natures of a wide range of musical styles - free improvisation, jazz, and contemporary chamber - together to create an all-encompassing voice that is uniquely his. He is known for his originality, virtuosity, versatility and a style that places melody and harmony back on the improviser's palette alongside texture, velocity and abstraction. Part of his pursuit is to find a new language that embraces the deep traditions of Jazz without picking one side or the other in its dichotomy - to establish a style that embraces the breadth of all the developments at our disposal.
He has performed/recorded with Fred Anderson, Ken Vandermark, Joe McPhee, Joe Morris, Rashid Bakr, Sabir Mateen, Roy Campbell Jr., Dave Rempis, Kent Kessler, Michael Zerang, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Allan Chase, Joe Giardullo, Laurence Cook, Joe Maneri, Mat Maneri, Taylor Ho Bynum, Nate McBride, Bill Lowe, and many others. Venues in which he has performed include Münster Jazz Festival (Germany), Peripheries Festival (Spain), The Vision Festival (NYC), The Knitting Factory (NYC), Tonic (NYC), CBGB's Gallery (NYC), The Empty Bottle (Chicago), The Hungry Brain (Chicago), and 3030 (Chicago).
The Quartet’s CD Given – Live in Münster (Hatology 663) received overwhelming praise from critics. He has released numerous recordings under his own name, all critically acclaimed. His four previous releases received "Best of the year" awards. He has recorded for Hatology, Skycap, Leo and Riti Records.
Allan Chase is a jazz saxophonist, composer, and college teacher. He has performed jazz and improvised music since 1974 with his own groups and with the Lewis Nash-Allan Chase Duo (1979-80), Your Neighborhood Saxophone Quartet (1981- present), Prima Materia with Rashied Ali (1992- 2000), the Steve Lantner Quartet with Joe Morris and Luther Gray (2002- present), and many other groups in a wide range of styles. He appears as a soloist on over fifty jazz recordings.
From 2008 to 2021, Chase chaired the Ear Training department at Berklee College of Music, where he continues to teach Ear Training and work with the students of the Global Jazz Institute. He has taught courses in jazz history, transcription and analysis, ear training, harmony, counterpoint, music theory, ensembles, and private lessons in saxophone and improvisation. He began his teaching career at Berklee in 1981, and has taught at Tufts University (1993-7) and New England Conservatory (1994-2012), where he served as chair of jazz studies, chair of contemporary improvisation, and dean of faculty.
Joe Morris
Joe Morris has performed on bass or guitar with many of the most important contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, Tomeka Reid, Fay Victor, Tim Berne, William Parker, Sylvie Courvoisier, Agusti Fernandez, Peter Evans, David S. Ware, Joe Maneri, Dewey Redman, Sunny Murray, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Lawrence D. “Butch” Morris, Marshall Allen, Barre Phillips, Barry Guy, Matthew Shipp, Sunny Murray, and many others.
Morris is featured as leader, co-leader, or sideman on more than 190 commercially released recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil , Korea and Japan.
He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation in the US, Canada, and Europe including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, Bard College, University of Illinois, University of Alberta, and University of Guelph. He was the recipient of the 2016 Killam Visiting Scholar Award at University of Calgary. He has been on the faculty at Tufts University, Southern Connecticut State University, Longy School of Music of Bard College, and New School. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).
Luther Gray
Luther Gray, since moving to Boston in 2000,has become one of the most in demand drummers on the scene, playing Avant Garde, Free Jazz, and Modern Jazz. He worked extensively performing locally, touring and recording in Free Jazz bands with Joe Morris, Taylor Ho Bynum, Steve Lantner, Jim Hobbs, and Raquib Hassan, among others. Luther then began combining the Punk/Indy rock music and Free Jazz in various projects including his critically acclaimed band, Lawnmower. He also began playing with Modern Jazz innovators like Jerry Bergonzi, Phil Grenadier, and George Garzone, with whom he continues to play weekly engagements Monday nights at the Cambridge club, The Lilypad.
Along with the aforementioned musicians, Luther has also performed with Anthony Braxton, Joe Lovano, Ken Vandermark, Henry Grimes, Nate Wooley,
Cameron Brown, William Parker, Mat Maneri, Joseph Daly, Bill Pierce, Ben Monder, Tony Malaby, and countless others over the past 25 years. He has played festivals and concerts all over the world, and recorded for the record labels, AUM Fidelity, ESP, HatHUT, NotTwo, Clean Feed, Rogue Art, Atavistic, Simple Machines, Touch n Go, and many others.
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