Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to present Jason Stein’s Hearts and Minds, featuring three integral musicians from the Chicago music universe.
Hearts and Minds has been called a “bastard organ trio,” weaving together various influences from jazz, rock, and noise into an intense, singular expression of contemporary composition and improvisation. John Corbett writes in the liner notes of their self-titled debut album, “unusual forces are at play, unique combinatorics, suggesting a confluence of ideas, newly directed teleologies, a turbulent eddy in the natural flow of creative music’s waterway.”...
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Ars Nova Workshop is pleased to present Jason Stein’s Hearts and Minds, featuring three integral musicians from the Chicago music universe.
Hearts and Minds has been called a “bastard organ trio,” weaving together various influences from jazz, rock, and noise into an intense, singular expression of contemporary composition and improvisation. John Corbett writes in the liner notes of their self-titled debut album, “unusual forces are at play, unique combinatorics, suggesting a confluence of ideas, newly directed teleologies, a turbulent eddy in the natural flow of creative music’s waterway.”
Originally from Long Island, Jason Stein is one of the few musicians working today to focus entirely on the bass clarinet as a jazz and improvisational instrument. Howard Reich of the Chicago Tribune wrote, “The bass clarinet does not figure prominently in jazz, but it hasn't had many champions as ardent or accomplished as Stein.”
He studied at Bennington College with Charles Gayle and Milford Graves, and at the University of Michigan with Donald Walden and Ed Sarath. In 2005, Stein relocated to Chicago and has since recorded for such labels as Leo, Delmark, Atavistic, 482 Music and Clean Feed. He has worked with a wide range of creative musicians, including Michael Moore, Jeff Parker, Ken Vandermark, Rob Mazurek, Jeb Bishop, Ingebrigt Håker-Flaten, Michael Zerang, and Peter Brötzmann. He also leads the avant-jazz trio Locksmith Isidore, which continues to perform before arena-sized crowds as the opening act for Stein’s half-sister, comedian Amy Schumer.
Hearts and Minds teams Stein with keyboardist Paul Giallorenzo, a Chicago-based improviser, composer, and producer who uses piano, synthesizer, keyboards, and electronics in a wide variety of groups and contexts, ranging from jazz and improvised music to electro-acoustic noise to sound and video performance; and drummer Chad Taylor, the co-founder of the Chicago Underground ensembles who has worked with the likes of Fred Anderson, Derek Bailey, Pharoah Sanders, Marc Ribot and Peter Brötzmann.
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