Jack Wright saxes..........................Ron Stabinsky piano and synth (nord lead 4)
Recorded samples: piano and alto sax and this: synth and soprano sax
Performing with Zach Darrup, guitar, and Patrick Crossland, trombone--Slush Fun and with bassist Ben Wright here.
Their tours have beenin the Southeast, Texas, and the Midwest. For their upcoming tour in Jan. 2024, several events will include others--Knoxville bassist Evan Lipson, Patrick Crossland, bassist David Menestres, dancer Cambria Storms, and electronicist Walter Wright. For that tour check the Schedule.
Jack Wright is a saxophonist in the Philadelphia area, one of the originals of American free improvisation. Now 81, he has lived some diverse lives, as activist and academic, until settling into music full-time in 1979--free playing is all he's done since then. He tours Europe (April 2023) and the US, where he acquired the moniker the "Johnny Appleseed of Free Improvisation" in the 80s. He started out in the free jazz direction, but by the late 90's found that boring and conventional; shifting gears a few times he is now playing sounds that few have heard before--distorted pitches, precise timing, intrusive multiphonics, sudden changes of direction, obscene animalistic sounds, and occasional "real" notes. He partners mostly with Zach Darrup, Ben Bennett, Evan Lipson, and Ron Stabinsky. He published a book in 2017, The Free Musics, sold to most of the free players in the US and many in Europe. He also released a book of mostly political critique, drawing on his background, Shaky Ground. For info on books, sounds, and more bio go to Spring Garden Music.
Of all the wide-ranging music groups in which Ron Stabinsky has participated, probably best known are the notorious band Mostly Other People Do The Killing (now a trio with Moppa Elliott and Kevin Shea) and the reunited rock band Meat Puppets, which he joined in 2018. In 2016 Ron released his first solo album, "Free for One," which received four stars in DownBeat Magazine and tied for number one debut of the year in the 2016 NPR Music Jazz Critics Poll. His appetite for playing diverse forms of music has led him to perform extensively as a classical pianist, a straight-ahead jazz musician, occasionally a rock musician, and as an accomplished free improviser. He is a "born musician," having received his first musical lessons at the age of five from his grandfather, played concerts as a prodigy, and became a professional musician at an early age. His mentors in the art of free improvisation have included Bill Dixon, Joel Futterman, and Jack Wright. In the past few years "keyboard" includes the Nord Lead 4 Synthesizer, and free improvisation extends his range to trumpet, various objects inside the piano, including dental floss and a load of objects that seem to serve no purpose..video of Ron solo with Mostly Other People and with Meat Puppets.
When these two met in 2006 at the now-defunct Goobye Blue Monday bar in Brooklyn, Jack was performing in one of the 15 min. sets for which the venue was famous. They soon played a session, and another, and another. They both have the capacity to shift from near-classical to near-jazz to nearly insane, bringing in bits of melody from virtually anywhere, along with kicking and screaming.
They have
performed often,toured for the first time as duo in Jan. 2020, just
missing covid. They ventured into the South heartland for a barn-storming
two weeks--Roanoke, Columbia SC, Savannah, Jacksonville, Orlando,
St. Pete, Tallahassee, Birmingham, Chattanooga, Knoxville TN, Greensboro
NC, Richmond, and DC. In 2023 they went further west in three weeks,
a large loop that included Texas and the Midwest and ending in Pittsburgh.