Nate Wooley – trumpet
Ron Miles – cornet
Jozef Dumoulin – Fender Rhodes piano and electronics
Cory Smythe – piano
Devin Gray – drums
Rudy Royston – drums
The story of Jason and the Argonauts, the search for the golden fleece, begins with a collection of warriors, with different talents, different viewpoints, different temperaments; all coming together to create a mosaic that is imperfect but suited to their task. Nate Wooley’s Argonautica takes the same stance as he gathers players from different aesthetics to tell a grand abstract musical story.
A double trio featuring Wooley and underheard trumpet great Ron Miles on brass, Jozef Dumoulin and Cory Smythe playing electronics, keyboards, and piano, and Devin Gray and Rudy Royston providing the percussive propulsion, Argonautica premiered at Roulette in 2014 and immediately recorded Wooley’s evening length work that veers between the shattered dissonance of dodecaphony, a dream-like ambient music presence, and the insistent ecstatic quality of 70s minimalism. The result is a piece of music that reads like a story, unfolding section by section and page by page.