update - 11 July 2011

Hello everyone,

It has been an extremely busy time for me during the interval since my last update. I toured the US West Coast with John Hollenbeck's Large Ensemble in early March, continental Europe in early April with Mr. Hollenbeck's Claudia Quintet + 1, and Australia in May and June, first with Quinsin Nachoff's Forward Motion and then with Tim Berne's Los Totopos. To top it all off, I just returned from a very fun tour of jazz festivals in Canada and Europe with Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green's Apex.

While my musical activity for the next couple months will be mainly NYC-centric, there still will be a lot going on:

- This Friday, July 15, I'm returning to Cornelia St. Cafe with my sextet, Central Chain. We packed the house back in February and of course hope to do so once again! This time we'll play two sets, at 9 and 10:30 pm.

from the Cornelia St website: http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/list2010c.asp?sdate=7/15/2011&from_cal=0
Critic's Pick in Time Out New York: http://newyork.timeout.com/music-nightlife/music/1625907/matt-mitchells-central-chain

- The next day I play at Barbes with Matt Bauder's Day in Pictures: http://www.mattbauder.net/calendar.html

- On July 22 I play again with Darius Jones's quartet, at IBeam: http://ibeambrooklyn.com/calendar/

- I will be playing two sets at Cornelia once again on the 30th of July in a trio with Tim Berne and Dan Weiss:

http://www.corneliastreetcafe.com/downstairs/list2010c.asp?sdate=7/27/2011&from_cal=0

To top it all off, I will once again be a core faculty member at SIM [www.schoolforimprov.org]. I will be teaching with my friends Ralph Alessi, Chris Lightcap, and Tom Rainey at the Brooklyn branch of Long Island University from July 25 through 29, with a faculty concert at the Jazz Gallery on July 27.

There are a few exciting things in August as well.

first up in the month I will be playing again with Rudresh Mahanthappa and Bunky Green's Apex at the Newport Jazz Festival. It could without saying that I'm excited for this, though it seems that I've said just that: http://www.newportjazzfest.net/index.php?pID=321&artist=192

On August 14, I play in Lisbon, Portugal, with the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble as part of Jazz Em Agosto: http://www.kadmusarts.com/festivals/2032.html

Finally, on August 17 at 8 pm I will play at Barbes again, this time as part of a new duo with Dave King, drummer of the Bad Plus, Happy Apple, Dave King Trucking Co., etc.! We will be playing primarily music from Dave's frighteningly cool 'solo' CD Indelicate, on which he plays drums AND piano. I will be playing Dave's insane piano parts, hopefully with an appropriate level of sanity intact.

and that's all for now! thanks so much for reading. One of these days before too long I'll actually 'blog' about 'something' other than 'gigs'.

peace,

-mm