18th SEATTLE IMPROVISED MUSIC FESTIVAL
Gust Burns, Greg Campbell & Gregory Reynolds
Friday, February 21 · Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA)
1420 11th Avenue (Directions) · 8 PM · $5-15 sliding scale suggested donation
Pianist, improvisor, and composer Gust Burns was born in 1978 in Tacoma, Washington. He began piano lessons in the fourth grade and studied jazz with Tacoma/Seattle pianist Craig Hoyer in high school. After high school Gust attended the University of Washington, where he studied jazz piano with Marc Seales, and then transferred to Western Washington University in Bellingham. While at WWU, Gust spent two years studying improvisation and composition with Canadian virtuoso pianist Paul Plimley, in addition to receiving his B.A. in Philosophy, focusing on Heidegger, metaphysics, and Existentialism. In December 2000, after a six-month stay in the Bay Area, where he collaborated with bassist Damon Smith, Gust returned to the Northwest. He now lives and works in the Seattle area.
Gust Plays improvised/composed new music from a perspective influenced by both jazz and “classical”/avant-garde traditions. He also sees the rap and hip-hop music he grew up with as having an influence on his musical sensibility.The pool of musicians and artists with whom Gust works is ever growing and expanding; he has worked with improvisers such as Jack Wright, Damon Smith, Wally Shoup, Mike Bisio, Jacob Lindsay, Greg Campbell, Reuben Radding, Travis Baker, Garth Powell, Bob Marsh, Ilyas Ahmed, and many others, as well as dancer/choreographer Heather Gibbons. An organizer as well as an artist, Gust is constantly attempting to stimulate the Seattle improvised/new music community with new venues, series, and festivals. He is co-organizer, with reed player Adam Diller, of the “After Ears” festival, which ran for the first time during November 2002, parallel to the Earshot Jazz festival. He is also active on the board of the Seattle Improvised Music Festival. Gust is a pianist, improviser, and composer who makes music that serves both as an opening up of the world, and as a positive opposition to uninspired cultural and social trends.
Greg Campbell plays drum set, vibraphone, percussion, and French horn. He has studied with Dave Holland, Cecil McBee, George Russell, and UW percussionist Tom Collier, and has performed with Muhal Richard Abrams, Wayne Horvitz, Stuart Dempster, Bill Smith, and François Houle, among others. He has also been a member of Seattle Experimental Opera and the Seattle-based groups Brainstun (led by Christian Asplund), Project W, Ota Prota, and Jessica Lurie's Motorbison. He is currently completing a doctorate in percussion performance at the University of Washington.
Saxophonist Gregory Reynolds, in his own words:
“As a composer and improviser, I am interested in exploring the historical relationship between people and sounds and working out a musical identity that makes sense in the context of 21st century urban life in America. The presence of increasing globalization, the availability of vast amounts of information, and the monolithic influence of the music “industry” are some factors influencing our identity that demand constant investigation. Especially in an urban environment where information in the forms of media, ambient noise, and human interaction are most dense, people often react with desensitization and the muting of the senses. Recently, I have been working to reorient myself to sound through the pursuit of improvisation-based musics that work with sound as narrative vibrational architecture capable of reflecting and communicating a sublime space. A loose but encompassing focus that continues in a constant state of waking, always one foot in the spirit world, allowing sound to become song.”
18th Seattle Improvised Music Festival