Racer Session #280 | Bristle / Sam Weinberg | July 5, 2015

LISTEN TO THIS SESSION

We’re excited to feature artists from both coasts tonight at Racer Sessions!

Bristle (Nevada City, CA)

Bristle, an avant chamber jazz quartet based in the San Francisco Bay Area, has a mission: to startle, astonish, amaze.  It wants to raise the little hairs on the back of your neck.  Comprised of four crack performers playing a uniquely flexible combination of reeds and strings—composers Randy McKean and Cory Wright on a variety of saxes, clarinets and flutes, wild card Murray Campbell on oboes and violins, and anchor Lisa Mezzacappa on bass, Bristle funnels its love of multiple musical genres into a collective sensibility that thrives on left turns.  Jazz improv, classical composition, pop hooks, country licks, game strategies, all are tools of the trade for these musical Challengers of the Unknown.  Called “charming in a way that is hard to predict” (DMG), Bristle’s latest CD Future(s) Now(s) was also named one of the Top 20 California Jazz Releases of 2014 by KQED Arts.  It and their previous release, Bulletproof, highlight the influence of mentors like Anthony Braxton, Henry Threadgill, and Yusef Lateef, and reflects Bristle’s current work with their peers in the Northern California experimental music scene.  Bristle’s appearance at the Racer Sessions is the fourth stop in their Northwest Summer tour.

Sam Weinberg (Brooklyn, NY)

Sam Weinberg is a tenor saxophonist living in Brooklyn. This show at the Racer Session will showcase a first meeting of me alongside Jacob Zimmerman (alto), Luke Bergman (bass), Evan Woodle (drums). In my projects, I aim to explore a swath of textural and timbral possibilities of the saxophone’s sound world.

In the open session after the quartet, I would love to meet and play with as many members of the Seattle improvised community that I can–not barred by any aesthetic or stylistic constrictions.