Electric Umbrella #23

Another edition of one of WORM's most adventurous live music series! Top improvisers meet each other on stage.

Corsano/Pitsiokos/Zimmermann

Chris Corsano, Tizia Zimmermann and Chris Pitsiokos first played together in summer 2023 and quickly found a collective language and love for free jazz, improvised music, drone and noise. Always in the process of discovery, each performance involves further revelations of until-then unimagined musical forms.

Chris Pitsiokos is a New York-born, Berlin-based saxophonist, composer and improviser. As a soloist he has developed a unique voice on the alto saxophone: his expansion of the instrument's vocabulary has served to multiply its emotive and formal possibilities.

Tizia Zimmermann has wanted to be a musician ever since she first held an accordion in her hand. She studied classical music on the accordion at the Bern University of the Arts, where she graduated with honors with a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Performance. In addition to interpreting contemporary classical music, she plays in various formations in which free improvisation plays an important role.

Chris Corsano (b. 1975, USA) is a New York-based drummer who has been active at the intersections of collective improvisation, free jazz, avant-rock, and experimental music since the late 1990's. He's been the rim-batterer of choice for some of the greatest contemporary names in avant-garde music.

Many kindred spirits joined him on stage and on over 180 records, top name a few: Paul Dunmall, Joe McPhee, Okkyung Lee, Bill Orcutt, Mette Rasmussen, John Edwards, Sylvie Courvoisie, Nate Wooley, Jim O'Rourke & Akira Sakata, Merzbow.

Here's a link to them playing as a quartet (with bassist Kyle Motl).

van Bergen / Kimman / Nutters / Prins play Deconstructed Melodies

(They call it contemplative noise-jazz.. // they call it contemplative noise-jazz..)

An exclusive formation of four Dutch musical personalities who have done everything in the field of music together. Improvising, organizing concerts, series and locations, leading bands and ensembles, traveling the world. Coming from different generations and musical approaches, they share their love for melodic improvisation, leaving room to create layers of tempo, punctuation, and lyricism.

They call it contemplative noise jazz.

Besides playing their own compositions, they also perform classical pieces by Dutch colleagues: Mengelberg, Altena, and American originators such as Sun Ra, Carla Bley, Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman.

An all-star band of four Dutch musical personalities who, between them, have done everything imaginable in the field of music. Organizing and improvising inside of every layer of the music business, curating concerts, series and venues, leading bands and ensembles, playing with the greats, traveling the world. Coming from different generations and directions of noisemaking, here, in this quartet setting, they share their love of melodic improvisation in a floaty memory game, deftly moving around each other, leaving space to create, each on their own, layers of tempo, punctuation , melody, and lyricism.