Upcoming Philadelphia Shows

Source: Philadelphia’s Ars Nova Workshop.

Friday, September 2, 8pm
ICEPICK
with Nate Wooley, trumpet; Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten, bass; and Chris Corsano, drums

Philadelphia Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th Street
$15 General Admission

Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to present the Philadelphia debut of Icepick, the new trio featuring prolific improvisers Nate Wooley, Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten and Chris Corsano.

Bringing together three of the most venturesome and imaginative musicians in modern creative music, Icepick crafts epic-scale, wide-ranging improvisations that draw on its members’ extensive experience across the gamut of styles and approaches. The two pieces on the group’s debut cassette release, Hexane (Astral Spirits), veer between Ayler-esque free jazz combustion and richly detailed textural constructions, while their follow-up, Amaranth, builds on that foundation, with the trio sculpting pointed and succinct songs out of free jazz improvisations.

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Friday, September 9, 7-10pm
JACE CLAYTON’S ROOM 21
Philadelphia Fringe Festival Opening Night

The Barnes Foundation, 2025 Benjamin Franklin Parkway
$10 General Admission

Program
7–8­­pm gallery access
8–9:30pm performance

The Barnes Foundation is pleased to present Room 21, a new musical performance piece by composer Jace Clayton, also known as DJ /rupture, on the Opening Night of the Philadelphia Fringe Festival. The project is curated by Lee Tusman, in association with Ars Nova Workshop. The site-specific hour-long composition is written and choreographed by Clayton in response to the art and objects included in the Barnes collection as well as Dr. Albert C. Barnes’s own vinyl record collection. Clayton was drawn in particular to room 21 of the Barnes collection, which contains an eclectic mix of works including Pennsylvania German furniture, Amedeo Modigliani’s painting Reclining Nude from the Back, African masks, religious works, and paintings by Barnes students. The composition includes select melodies and themes from Barnes’s extensive vinyl record collection, which features a variety of spirituals and classical music.

Room 21 will be performed in the Barnes Foundation’s Annenberg Court by an ensemble consisting of more than a dozen musicians, including the Prometheus Chamber Orchestra, banjoist Ben Lee, Ethiopian Musician Gezachew Habtemariam and Pianist Emily Manzo, all wearing custom costumes handcrafted by fashion designer Rocio Salceda of Prellezo. Based in New York City, Jace Clayton uses an interdisciplinary approach to focus on how sound, memory, and public space interact, with an emphasis on low-income communities and the global South. Bob Hammond of New York Magazine called him “a one-man musical Venn diagram, linking up genres, people, styles, and beats.”

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Sunday, September 11, 8pm
PATRICK ZIMMERLI QUARTET
with Patrick Zimmerli, tenor saxophone; Ethan Iverson, piano; Chris Tordini, bass; and John Hollenbeck, drums

Philadelphia Art Alliance, 251 S. 18th Street
$20 General Admission

Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to present the Patrick Zimmerli Quartet, performing the Philadelphia premiere of a new work for the saxophonist/composer with pianist Ethan Iverson, bassist Chris Tordini, and drummer John Hollenbeck.

Based in both New York City and Paris, saxophonist and composer Patrick Zimmerli bridges jazz and contemporary classical music. His newest piece, “Clockworks,” was supported by a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works grant and assembles a quartet of musicians who are each genre-blurring composers in their own right. Zimmerli describes the piece as being “about scales of time: time within a beat, within a phrase, a movement, a piece, and within an oeuvre, over a span of decades… More generally, the piece is about what it has been like to live in a changing society from the late eighties through the present.” The program will also feature a selection of early work by Zimmerli, whose Aspects of Darkness and Light, an evening-length suite for saxophonist Joshua Redman, bassist Scott Colley, percussionist Satoshi Takeishi, and the Brooklyn Rider string quartet, will be released by Nonesuch in early 2017.