Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Performance 8pm / Doors 7pm
What: Jazz-based quartet Shipp/Lowe/Cleaver/Ray bring their unique and exciting chemistry to Roulette.
When: Tuesday, March 5, 2019
Where: Roulette, 509 Atlantic Ave Brooklyn, 2/3/4/5/A/C/G/D/M/N/R/B/Q trains & the LIRR
Cost: $18 presale, $25 Doors
Info: www.roulette.org / (917) 267-0368
Tickets: https://roulette.org/event/shipp-lowe-cleaver-ray-2/
Brooklyn, NY – Roulette is pleased to present the unique and exciting chemistry of the jazz-based quartet Shipp/Lowe/Cleaver/Ray. A cooperative group of established musicians, the quartet incorporates the uniquely recognizable pianist Matthew Shipp, masterful alto saxophonist Allen Lowe, legendary percussionist Gerald Cleaver, and acclaimed bassist Kevin Ray. Specializing in free improv, a recent concert was called “a remarkable outing,” and “a testament to their understanding of subtleties and their overall musical experience” in All About Jazz.
Pianist Matthew Shipp has worked and recorded vigorously from the late 1980s onward, creating music in which free jazz and modern classical intertwined. He first became well known in the early 1990s as the pianist in the David S. Ware Quartet, and soon began leading his own dates—most often including Ware bandmate and leading bassist William Parker—and recording a number of duets with a variety of musicians, from the legendary Roscoe Mitchell to violinist Mat Maneri. Through his range of live and recorded performances and unswerving individual development, Shipp has come to be regarded as a prolific and respected voice in creative music into the new millennium.
Allen Lowe is a saxophonist, guitarist, mastering engineer and music historian. He has performed and recorded as a leader with David Murray, Doc Cheatham, Marc Ribot, Matthew Shipp, Don Byron, Julius Hemphill, Nels Cline, Ken Peplowski, Nels Cline, JD Allen, Kalaparusha, Ursula Oppens, Roswell Rudd, James Brandon Lewis, Frank Lacy, and Jimmy Knepper. He has released at least 15 albums under his own name and has five new works coming out in 2018. There are entries about him in the New Grove Dictionary of Jazz and The Penguin Guide to Jazz. There is a chapter on him in the book Bebop and Nothingness by Francis Davis (Schirmer Books: 1996).
Raised in Detroit, Gerald Cleaver is a product of the city’s rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, drummer John Cleaver, he began playing the drums at an early age, in addition to violin and trumpet. A graduate of the University of Michigan, Cleaver has been an assistant professor in the Jazz Studies at the University of Michigan, and in 1998 also joined the jazz faculty at Michigan State University. He moved to New York in 2002. He has performed or recorded with Franck Amsallem, Henry Threadgill, Roscoe Mitchell, Lotte Anker, Reggie Workman, Marilyn Crispell, Matt Shipp, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Kevin Mahogany, Charles Gayle, Mario Pavone, Ralph Alessi, Jacky Terrasson, Jimmy Scott, Muhal Richard Abrams, Dave Douglas, Tim Berne, Jeremy Pelt, Ellery Eskelin, David Torn and Miroslav Vitous, among others.
As a young man casting about for direction, critically acclaimed bassist Kevin Ray drifted into the New School jazz program, where he became a protege of Reggie Workman. Under Workmans’s tutelage, he developed an affinity for adventurous artists such as The Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, The World Saxophone Quartet, Andrew Cyrille, and others. Supporting himself in the early 1990s managing a division at Forbes Publishing, Ray continued to study and play. Toward the end of the decade, he came into contact with one of his spiritual mentors, Andrew Hill and became a full-time musician. For ten years he played regularly with Hill and continued to expand his horizons by performing and recording with artists such as John Hicks, Bobby Zankel, Oliver Lake, Greg Osby, John Stubblefield, Ray Anderson, Kelvyn Bell, Elliott Sharp, Hamiet Bluiett, Nels Cline, Ursula Oppens, Ken Peplowski, J.D. Allen, and Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre.
