Friday, January 18 at 8pm

Out There: Radical Musical Cultures

THE NETHERLANDS/USA

Misha Mengelberg Quartet
with Misha Mengelberg, piano; Dave Douglas, trumpet; Brad Jones, double-bass; Han Bennink, drums

Dutch jazz pianist and composer Misha Mengelberg (b. 1935), son of the conductor Karel Mengelberg, studied music at the Royal Conservatory in The Hague where he won first prize at a jazz festival in Loosdrecht and became associated with the Fluxus movement. His early influences included Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington and John Cage. His first appearance on record was Eric Dolphy's last album, Last Date (1964), which also featured Dutch drummer Han Bennink. These two, with pianist Willem Breuker, founded the Instant Composers Pool, the nonprofit collective of Dutch composer-improvisers-instrumentalist in 1967. Understood as one of the consistently best creative jazz orchestras in the world, the ICP Orchestra has toured regularly for over 30 years. Over the decades, Mengelberg has also collaborated with many of the best-known players in European avant-garde and American free jazz including Cecil Taylor, Ken Vandermark, and Dave Douglas and Anthony Braxton.

Han Bennink (b. 1942) began playing drums while in his teens under the influence of his father, a classical percussionist. Between 1962 and 1969, Bennink backed local American jazz greats like Dexter Gordon, Sonny Rollins, and Eric Dolphy on their visits to Holland. In 1963, he formed a quartet that included pianist Misha Mengelberg, which played the 1966 Newport Jazz Festival. Around that same period, Bennink began continuing associations with the saxophonist Peter Brotzmann, guitarist Derek Bailey, trombonist Alex Schlippenbach, trumpeter Don Cherry, and the Globe Unity Orchestra. In the '70s and '80s, Bennink led and played as sideman on a number of sessions on the FMP, Incus, and Soul Note labels; he made a notable contribution to Steve Lacy's Herbie Nichols tribute album, Regeneration, with Mengelberg, bassist Kent Carter, and trombonist Roswell Rudd. In the late '80s, Bennink started, with cellist Ernst Reijseger and saxophonist Michael Moore, the Clusone Trio.  At his best, with colleagues who share his all-encompassing stylistic embrace, Bennink plays the continuum of jazz as an instrument unto itself.

Two-time Grammy-nominated trumpeter Dave Douglas is arguably the most original trumpeter/composer of his generation. From his New York base, where he has lived since the mid 1980s, he has earned lavish national and international critical acclaim, including trumpeter, composer, and jazz "Artist of the Year" by such organizations as the New York Jazz Awards, Down Beat , Jazz Times , Jazziz , and the Italian Jazz Critics' Society. His solo recording career began in 1993 with Parallel World on the Soul Note label and he has since released twenty-two CDs. In 2005, after seven critically acclaimed albums for the Bluebird/RCA label, he launched his own label, Greenleaf Music. He was also honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship that same year. His current release, Meaning and Mystery, features his working quintet of Uri Caine, James Genus, Clarence Penn and Donny McCaslin.

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