ZULA FUNDRAISER

Friday, July 1, 2016, 5-11 pm

Workers Arts & Heritage Centre

51 Stuart St., Hamilton, ON
Admission by donation

Following the 3rd edition of our successful Something Else! Festival, we’ve planned an evening of music, film, food and drink in the Workers Arts & Heritage Centre backyard. The event will consist of 5 or 6 performances in the fabulously oasis-like WAHC backyard on Canada Day, to celebrate our strong community ties and help raise funds to keep Zula in good financial health. The whole evening is by donation. We are most grateful to the Hamilton audiences and all the artists supporting us.

Tatsuya Nakatani

(Osaka/Pennsylvania)

 

Tatsuya Nakatani is a creative artist / percussionist originally from Osaka, Japan who has released over sixty recordings in North America and Europe. Residing in the USA since 1994 he has performed countless solo percussion concerts and has collaborated with hundreds of artists in international music festivals, university concert halls, art museums and galleries. His latest project is the Nakatani Gong Orchestra, which builds community ensembles performing on multiple bowed gongs under his direction, as recently presented at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.. Nakatani’s constant touring fosters the raw and fresh quality in his music, which can only survive through an open willingness to share energy, culture, music and self on a global human scale. His master classes and workshops at schools and universities, emphasize his unique musical approach and philosophy in creating visceral, non-linear music. He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drums, gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, intuitively primitive, expressive music of unusually strong spirit that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised/ experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music.

Convergence Ensemble

(Toronto)

Ken Aldcroft guitar
Karen Ng alto saxophone
Emily Denison trumpet
 Joe Sorbara drums

This usually six, but for this event four-piece group, featuring the instrumentation of a fairly conventional modern jazz ensemble, is the primary conduit for Ken Aldcroft’s compositional and conceptual work. In performance, a set list serves less as a road map for the execution of Ken’s varied and dynamic pieces and more like a menu of possibilities; the group’s members can, individually or collectively, spontaneously arrange any of the available material. Employing a system of aural and gestural cues, the group playfully and creatively reshapes each piece in the spirit of free improvisation, the approach that underpins the ensemble’s composite musical experience.

Convergence is neither a jazz crew playing tunes nor a free-improv unit, slipping from one to another both within and between songs. While I am as addicted as anyone to energy music’s sugar high, Aldcroft’s formula leads to an ultimately more satisfying full-course banquet.
Lawrence Joseph, Cult Montreal 2012

VOC Silent Film Harmonic

(Kitchener)

Neil Ballantyne  keyboards
Ted Harms  bass
Dan Paille  drums
Wade Whittaker  guitar

The VOC Silent Film Harmonic, under the direction of Ted Harms, was formed in the summer of 2007 with the idea of performing live & improvised music to accompany silent films. The group, currently a septet with bass, guitars, brass, percussion & drums, takes its inspiration from how many silent movies were originally presented – taking themes and using them as the basis for improvisation. The overall goal is for the music to reflect, enhance and support the movie, not to overtake or distract. Surrealist classics Un chien andalou & La chute de la maison Usher are the films to which they’ve chosen to perform live this evening.

Hamilton Noise Orchestra

(Hamilton)

Earth, Wind & Choir

(Hamilton)

SARAH GOOD  conductress

Vocalists:
TERESA CATERINI
KARIJN DE JONG
BETH DE JONG
AMY MCINTOSH
KATIE PENROSE
MOLLY MERRIMAN
JESSICA CAREY
BECKY KATZ
JENNY VASQUEZ
ANNIE SHAW
IAN CHALLENGER
ZACK SHAW
JONATHON HORVATH
JON DALTON
ANDREW JOHNSON

HAOLIN MUNK

(Hamilton)

CONNOR BENNETT  tenor & baritone saxophones
CHRIS FERGUSON  alto & tenor saxophones
JOSH WIENER  bass
AARON HUTCHINSON  drums

Haolin Munk have become a favourite with Hamilton audiences thanks to their good humour and wide-ranging repertoire. The quartet with Connor Bennett and Chris Ferguson (saxophones), Josh Wiener (bass) and Aaron Hutchinson (drums) have become an emblem of the fresh wave of youthful creativity for which the Hammer is becoming known. They are part of the proactive HAVN (Hamilton Visual Arts Node) downtown arts community: “a jazz quartet that plays a range of music from Miles Davis to Black Flag. This band will blow your mind with their chops and force you to move your feet with their grooves.”

 

Chris Palmer

(Hamilton)

A truly original improvising guitarist with a keen sense of adventure, humour, fire, curiosity and mischief, New Zealander / Hamiltonian CHRIS PALMER can easily rock a house party or stun a literary audience, hypnotizing them with his charm and chops.

Jazz standards and music of Monk, Mingus, Coltrane, Miles, Shorter, Jobim, Porter and more… by enthusiastic Hamilton unit.