Spring Garden Music

 		

Wrest

 

jack wright....evan lipson....ben bennett

saxophones........double bass...........percussion

 

 

 

Wrest can be heard on their new CD Yaw

These three musicians live in Easton PA, Knoxville TN and Philadelphia respectively, and come together several times a year for touring, sometimes including guitarist Zach Darrup (Phila.) as RAWL. They began as a collaboration in Chicago in 2012 and played several shows on their way east. Most recent tours:

March 2023: Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Muskegon MI, Chicago, Springfield IL, St. Louis, Carbondale (the Out of the Box Festival), Memphis, Knoxville, and Roanoke.

Southeast tour of July 2022: Roanoke, Chattanooga, Nashville, Memphis, Jackson MS, New Orleans, Eutaw AL, Panama City FL, Gainesville FL, Tallahassee, Atlanta, and Knoxville.:

The handful of people who know this kind of music call it free improvisation; others might say "experimental jazz," or even noise. This group played on tour for several years, mainly in the Midwest and Southeast, and after seven years has the chance to do it again. Wrest is restless, using all their imagination each show to do something stranger than we did the night before.

"Wrest-ing never does serious bodily harm but might scare your aunties and inlaws out of the room real quick. Sound and magic tricks on sax, floor percussion, bass. What happened? We don't know what we're doing until we're doing it."

Yaw and Ingress

In Jan. 2023 Ben and Jack released a CD Augur; their earlier CD was in 2014, Tangle on Public Eyesore, including reviews, a clip of recording is here. They are touring Europe in April 2023

In Feb. 2023 Evan Lipson released a solo, Echo Chamber

A video of Wrest in a quiet concert space: Columbia SC, and accompanied by lively bar regulars in Nashville

Here's Wrest's music put to video of a bike trip in columbus

Jack Wright is a veteran saxophone improviser based mainly in Philadelphia. Since the early 1980s he has been touring through the US and Europe, finding interesting partners and playing situations. Touring throughout the country in the 80s got him called the "Johnny Appleseed of free improvisation.". Now 81, he is still touring widely, engaged with players outside music school careerdom and unknown to the music press. In recent years his influence has grown through his writings, The Free Musics (2017), and recently Shaky Ground (2022), dealing mainly with the current political crisis. As for his playing, he has one of the widest vocabularies of any saxophonist, an expert at leaping pitches, punchy, precise timing, sharp and intrusive multiphonics, surprising gaps of silence, and sounds often animalistic and obscene. A reviewer for the Washington Post said, "In the rarefied, underground world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king." For more info go to springgarden music

 

Evan Lipson (b. 1981) has lived with the incurable disease of music since early adolescence, seeking the liminal realms in which intellect and instinct, history and myth, and creative and destructive force intersect. Drawn towards aberrant perspectives at an early age, his formative experiences were primarily rooted in extreme and discordant forms stemming from various traditions of “underground” and ancient musics. He may or may not have some degree of affiliation with Rev. Fred Lane and an organization known as MEINSCHAFT. Other active outfits at present include RAWL, SONS, Wrest, Roughhousing, Virtual Balboa, and a variety of collaborations with David Greenberger (Duplex Planet). Past units include Normal Love and Satanized.

“Lipson easily stands among the best bassists I’ve heard lately, his terrifically strapping tone epitomizing the decision to really learn how an instrument works.”------Massimo Ricci (Touching Extremes)

Ben Bennett is a Philadelphia-based percussionist. He usually plays a compact pile of self-made drums, stretched membranes, and other objects which are continually rearranged in the course of playing, and sounded with techniques of the hit, rub, and blow varieties. A branching path of musical de-materialization has led to other forms of performance, including self-vitiating monologues, and the long and repetitive YouTube series, Sitting and Smiling and Walking and Talking. His work tends toward themes of pointlessness, paradox, and stupidity.

“The enigmatic musician and artist Ben Bennett has a mind-bogglingly wide variety of fascinating work that covers both poles of extremes. As a percussionist, his improvised performances are wild, exciting and constantly changing, using an arsenal of drums, cymbals, homemade instruments and found objects that are struck, rubbed or vibrated using air from his lungs, unlocking hidden universes of unfamiliar sounds.” -Ernie Paik

Ben Bennett recordings

 

For booking
email Jack Wright

 





 

back...