Saturday, March 15
Skeeter Shelton’s Spectrum 2
featuring Ali Colding
Doors 7:30 pm |N$10-$20 suggested at entry
We’re excited to present the original version of Skeeter Shelton’s Spectrum 2 duo, featuring percussion great Ali Allan Colding. A veteran of groups with James Blood Ulmer, Kenn Cox, Fred Anderson, Charles Moore, Marcus Belgrave, Noah Howard, Faruq Z Bey and Hakim Jami, Ali often worked with Skeeter in those ensembles, but it’s been about 20 years since they’ve reunited as Spectrum 2. The idiom of wind and drum duos has a long history, and this version of Spectrum 2 is one of few groups here today that has the depth and vitality to be a serious contributor to that cannon.
Saturday, April 12
Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri
Transylvanian Dance (ECM) Release Show
with photos and wax cylinders from the archive of Béla Bartók
Doors 7:30pm | $16 advance or $20 at entry
Purchase tickets now
On their second ECM duo album, Romanian pianist Lucian Ban and US violist Mat Maneri find fresh inspiration as they follow the trail of Béla Bartók, revisiting the folk music that spurred the imagination of the great Hungarian composer who, in the early 20th century, collected and transcribed numerous pieces from Transylvania. For the duo these songs have become “springboards and sources of melodic material” for arrangements “that capture the spirit of the original yet allow us to improvise and bring our own world to them. If you go deeper into the source material, new vistas open up. These folk songs teach us many things.” Recorded live in October 2022 in the context of the Retracing Bartók project in Timișoara, these performances also bear testimony to the finely attuned understanding that Lucian Ban and Mat Maneri have achieved in their long-running musical partnership.
Not only was Béla Bartók one of the greatest composers of the 20th century, but he also was the father of ethnomusicology as a comparative science (along with fellow composer and friend Zoltan Kodály). For this tour, Ban and Maneri are traveling with the original wax cylinder field recordings that Bártok made in Transylvania at the dawn of the recording era in 1909-1917, as well as a player to listen to them with. They will also display photos of the field recording expeditions from Bártok’s personal archive.
Monday, April 14
Brìghde Chaimbeul
Viands
Doors 7:30 pm | $12 in advance or $15 at entry
Purchase tickets now
Brìghde Chaimbeul (Scotland) is a leading purveyor of experimental Celtic music and the Scottish smallpipes; a bellows-powered set of bagpipes with a double-note drone. She has devised a completely unique way of arranging for pipe music that emphasises the rich textural drones of the instrument. The constancy of sound that creates a trance-like atmosphere, played with enticing liquidity. Her most recent album Carry Them With Us features close collaborations with Ann Arbor native and Motreal-based saxophonist Colin Stetson. She also featured on Caroline Polacheck’s 2023 album and soundtracked the 2025 Dior Cruise. New album due on Glitterbeat Records in 2025. [Photo courtesy Jelmer De Haas]
Collaborative synth duo Viands create improvised soundscapes using mostly archaic synths and electronic keyboards. Merging minimalist textures with florid melodies and abstract settings, they evoke classic electronic music of the past, without directly referencing any of it. Patterning tends to be created by the humans and the machines are often left unhinged to a metronome or sequence. Viands has two LPs on the Midwich and Two Rooms labels. This is only their second performance since Covid..
