November 14th 8pm
Subculture
45 Bleecker St., NY, NY
http://subculturenewyork.com/event/darcyjamesarguessecretsociety/
I’m really excited to be opening for Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society on this show. I’ve been part of his group for many years, an experience that I’ve treasured, and we’ve also been label-mates on New Amsterdam Records, who is helping produce this show for us.
It’s going to be double duty for me, especially since Darcy’s group will do the NYC premiere of his extended piece Tensile Curves, which we previously performed at the Newport Jazz Festival earlier this year, and features clarinet prominently.
And Follow the Stick just recorded in the beginning of October, so we’re sounding pretty good these days, and I’m really thrilled that both Bobby Avey and Jordan Perlson will be around for this one.
Here’s some info about Darcy.
“For a wholly original take on big band’s past, present and future, look to Darcy James Argue” — so says Newsweek’s Seth Colter Walls. The Vancouver-born, Brooklyn-based composer and bandleader has toured nationally and internationally with his 18-piece ensemble, Secret Society, garnering countless awards and nominations and reimagining what a 21st-century big band can sound like. “It’s maximalist music of impressive complexity and immense entertainment value, in your face and then in your head” writes Richard Gehr in the Village Voice. Stereophile’s Fred Kaplan adds “Argue is tying together the disparate strands of music that have shaped his life and his rambling era.”
Argue made his mark with his critically acclaimed 2009 debut Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam Records). 2013 saw the release of Brooklyn Babylon (also from New Amsterdam), which, like Infernal Machines before it, earned the group nominations for both GRAMMY and JUNO Awards. Brooklyn Babylon continued to net accolades for Argue and Secret Society, including top spots for Arranger and Big Band in the 2013 DownBeat Critics Poll.
Proclaimed the “Best Album of 2013… almost crazily ambitious music about ambition itself,” by The New Republic’s David Hadju,Brooklyn Babylon tells the tale of Lev Bezdomni, a carpenter in a future Brooklyn, who is tasked with building the carousel that will crown the tallest tower in the world — it’s an urban fable about an artist torn between his ambition and his connection to the people in his neighborhood. The album grew out of a multimedia work Argue co-created with graphic novelist and illustrator Danijel Zezelj for the 2011 BAM Next Wave Festival. Live music, live painting, and projected animation combined to create a uniquely immersive experience that Studio 360’s David Krasnow called “a masterpiece… a new work of originality, power, and beauty.” The multimedia performance was next staged at the 2013 Holland Festival, a production Eye Magazine’s John L. Walters called “a triumph… a multimedia magnum opus.”
