RTV talks with Nate Wooley about his performance with his project Argonautica that combines elements of aleatoric and minimalist compositional aesthetics and forces them the prism of early fusion (when jazz/rock was dirty).
Wooley discusses his new project Argonautica, his collaboration with Ron Miles, and the importance of keeping jazz fusion bloody. Argonautica is a new project that combines elements of aleatoric and minimalist compositional aesthetics and forces them the prism of early fusion (when jazz/rock was dirty). Designed as an homage to Wooley’s early trumpet hero, Ron Miles, Argonautica seeks to find a new way to tell a story begun on the latter’s “My Cruel Heart” from the early 90s. The compositions, written especially for this concert, set up swirling asymmetrical hockets and soundspaces that give flexibility to the musical personalities of each member of the band. It is an organism, moving in part or in toto, sometimes in two directions at once, but always with purpose
Nate Wooley: trumpet
Ron Miles: cornet
Cory Smythe: piano
Joe Malone: Fender Rhodes and electronics
Rudy Royston: drums
Devin Gray: drums
Performance date: 06/26/2014
Episode release date: 07/11/2014
Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13. His time in Oregon, a place of relative quiet and slow time reference, instilled in Nate a musical aesthetic that has informed all of his music making for the past 20 years, but in no situation more than his solo trumpet performances. Nate moved to New York in 2001, and has since become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Eliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson.