2014-2015

Friday, October 31, 2014

EPPS/CHARUEST & BARWIN/LEE

Artword Artbar

 15 Colbourne St., Hamilton, Ontario

8:30 pm, $10-15

Montreal improvisers, perpetual explorers and searchers of the sound, trumpeter Ellwood Epps and saxophonist Yves Charuest are on tour in support of their debut recording “La Passe” and are joined at Hamilton’s Artword Artbar by two of Hamilton’s literary and musical greats; writer, poet, saxophonist, flutist Gary Barwin and writer, double-bassist David Lee for an evening of scary good music and text.

Ellwood Epps (Montreal/New York City) is an improvising trumpet player, and one of the leading lights of Canada’s creative music scene. He has performed with Steve Lacy, William Parker, Josh Zubot, Henry Grimes, Jean Derome, Le Quan Ninh, Joe McPhee, Butch Morris, John Butcher, and Marshall Allen, and appears on more than 50 recordings. He has appeared internationally at the Stone, CBGB’s and The Jazz Gallery (all in New York), the Guelph, Vancouver, Halifax, and Toronto Jazz Festivals, FIMAV, Festival of New Trumpet (NYC), Earshot (Seattle), Suoni Per Il Popolo, and the Off Festival de Jazz (Montreal).  Epps cofounded l’Envers in 2008, through which he has presented over 500 concerts. In the same year he also cofounded the Mardi Spaghetti series at Le Cagibi. He is also the director and principal teacher at the Studio d’Improvisation de Montréal since 2009, presenting an ongoing series of improvised music workshops, including guest teachers like Henry Grimes, Lori Freedman, and Jean Derome.  Ellwood is active with several working groups: the longstanding Pink Saliva (an electric band with Michel F Côté and Alexandre St-Onge), Land of Marigold (with Josh Zubot), the acoustic Ellwood Epps Quartet (with Scott Thomson, Nicolas Caloia, and Ivan Bamford), the Ratchet Orchestra, and in duet with saxophonist Yves Charuest.

Canadian saxophonist Yves Charuest emerged on the jazz and new music scene in the 1980-90s with many Canadian musicians such as Michel Ratté, Jean Beaudet, Guillaume Dostaler, Lisle Ellis and Jean Derome, in different groups and projects: I Like Jazz, Evidence, Duo Charuest-Ratté, Trio Michel Ratté, Wreck’s Progress, among others.  Charuest was also a member of the Peter Kowald Trio (1985-1990) with Louis Moholo, with whom he played extensively in Europe and in the USA. He has also played with William Parker, John Betsch, Mathias Schubert, and Agustí Fernández.  More recently, Charuest has been involved on many projects with the following ensembles: Duo Charuest-Caloia, Murray Street Band, Ratchet Orchestra, The Disguises, Charuest/Shalabi/Caloia and Four-sided Circle, as well as with Nicolas Caloia, Ellwood Epps, Lori Freedman, William Parker, Sam Shalabi, Scott Thomson and Josh Zubot.  Charuest has also presented solo concerts in Montreal, Quebec, Germany, France and the Netherlands, and has collaborated with electroacoustic composers Jean-François Denis, jef chippewa and Jean Piché, and more recently with choreographer Susanna Hood and dancer Alanna Kraaijeveld.

Gary Barwin is a poet, fiction writer, composer, multi-media and visual artist and performer.  His music and writing have been published, performed and broadcast in Canada, the US and elsewhere.He is 2014-15 Writer in Residence at Western University (London, Ontario) and was Young Voices Writer in Residence at Toronto Public Library in Fall 2013.  Barwin currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario with his family where he is being worked over by Yiddish for Pirates, the great Canadian Jewish pirate novel.

David Lee is a writer and double bassist. Originally from BC, he spent years in the Toronto art scene and on BC’s Sunshine Coast, and currently lives in Hamilton, Ontario. Wolsak & Wynn recently published a newly revised edition of David’s critically-acclaimed jazz book The Battle of the Five Spot: Ornette Coleman and the New York Jazz Field, and in spring 2015, if all goes well, they will bring the Cthulhu mythos to the mean streets of modern-day Hamilton with his YA novel The Midnight Games. In 2012 Tightrope Books of Toronto published David’s first novel, Commander Zero.