Holocene and Creative Music Guild present: Bill Orcutt / Zoh Amba / Chris Corsano Trio – w/ TWANS – 21+

In February 2023, the day after saxophonist Zoh Amba and drummer Chris Corsano finished up a duo tour of the west coast they entered the studio with guitarist Bill Orcutt. From this session came an album released summer 2023 called The Flower School. Chris and Bill are decades long collaborators perpetually adapting, adjusting, and challenging one another so that every performance by their duo seems to spring from a different inspirational source, but this was the first time Orcutt and Amba had ever played together. Through the recording session it is obvious that the level of communication and rapport between the trio feels eternal. 

This performance will be the West coast premiere of the trio of Zoh Amba, Chris Corsano and Bill Orcutt performing music from their new LP “The Flower School.”

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One of experimental music’s most influential guitarists, Bill Orcutt weaves looping melodic lines and angular attack into a dense, fissured landscape of American primitivism, outsider jazz, and a stripped-down re-envisioning of the possibilities of the guitar. Whether he’s playing his decrepit Kay acoustic or gutted electric Telecaster (both stripped of two of their strings, as has been Orcutt’s custom since 1985), Orcutt’s jagged sound is utterly unique and instantly recognizable, and is compared with equal frequency to avant-garde composers and rural bluesmen. The New York Times has called him a “powerful musician… a go-for-broke guitar improviser,” and described his sound as “articulated sprays of arpeggiated chords and dissonance.”

Zoh Amba is a composer and instrumentalist from Tennessee residing in New York. Her music blends avant-garde, noise, and devotional hymns.  Before studying music at the San Francisco Conservatory Of Music, New England Conservatory and studying with David Murray in New York, she spent most of her time writing and practicing saxophone in a remote forest near her home alone where she started to develop her distinct sound and approach. Today, her powerfully unique avant-garde music is full of folk melodies, mesmerizing refrains, and repeated incantations. Amba released her first two records in 2022. Her debut record O, Sun which was produced by John Zorn and released on his prestigious label Tzadik. Zoh Amba’s second record, Bhakti features Micah Thomas, Tyshawn Sorey, and Matt Hollenberg. Bhakti has become the moniker for Amba’s ongoing live and recording ensemble project with ever changing members, Amba also has a regular band with musicians Shahzad Ishmaily, Jim White (Dirty Three), and Steve Gunn.

Chris Corsano is a drummer who has been working at the intersections of free improvisation, avant-rock, and experimental music since the late ’90s. He’s a rim-batterer of choice for some of the greatest contemporary purveyors of “jazz” (Joe McPhee, Paul Flaherty, Mette Rasmussen) and “rock” (Sir Richard Bishop, Bill Orcutt, Jim O’Rourke), as well as artists beyond categorization (Björk for her Volta album and world tour, Michael Flower, Okkyung Lee). Appearing on over 150 albums and touring in an ultra-wide array of collaborations, Corsano has developed a highly personal musical language through ecstatic free improvisation, extended percussion techniques, and an innovative approach to the drum kit that includes resonating drum heads with bowed strings and circular-breathed reeds. He’s been called “one of the world’s great drummers” by The Guardian, “a peripatetic ace of the avant-garde” by The New York Times, and “arguably the most riotously energetic and creative drummer in contemporary free jazz” by Wire Magazine.