$15 General Admission
$10 Members/Students/Seniors
On November 1st, All Saints’ Day, The Day of the Dead – ancient holidays in honor of the saints, known or unknown; deceased friends and family – Ben Gerstein brings together for the first time a unique ensemble of enormous acoustic, experiential intensity to celebrate the powers of improvisation on this earth. FREEDOM CHOIR! A congregation for cathartic improvisational service. Inspired by the micro and macrocosms of nature, ecstatic spiritual and athletic experiences, dream, destiny, ritual, prayer, ancestry, and visions throughout Art and beyond… Dance floor, prairie, pow-wow, synagogue, church, mountain top, ocean, forest, desert, track and field, fighting ring, mosh pit “¦ Ferocious love! An historic event for expansive sound and emotion; unnamable sound, unnamable emotion. We are the world! Communion between us all”¦
“A single life-principle is divided amongst all irrational creatures, and a single mind-principle distributed among the rational; just as this one earth gives form to all things earthy, and just as all of us who have sight and breath see by the self-same light and breath of the self-same air.” – Marcus Aurelius (AD 121-180)
Ben Gerstein – trombone
Tony Malaby – C melody saxophone
Chris Speed, Jonathan Moritz, Andrew Bishop, Ohad Talmor – tenor saxophone
Michael Attias, Tim Berne, Darius Jones, Loren Stillman – alto saxophone
Dan Weiss, Randy Peterson, Ches Smith, Mike Pride – drums
Born and raised in Santa Barbara, California, trombonist Ben Gerstein has lived in New York City since 1995, a jazz graduate from the Manhattan School of Music in 1999. His music has come to focus primarily on free-improvisation as its means of composition, energy and exploration to liberate influences seeking integration with visual art, subconscious drama and fantasy, history, culture, nature and the outdoors. Over the years he has collaborated fanatically, leading many different groups and projects, as well as recording works on trombone by composers such as Conlon Nancarrow, Elliott Carter, Igor Stravinsky, Olivier Messiaen, Erik Satie, J.S. Bach and Carlo Gesualdo. He is also increasingly active as a video artist and photographer.
www.bengerstein.com
