Larry Ochs Trio with Joe Morris and Michael Wimberly

The legendary founder of the Rova Saxophone Quartet makes a rare east coast appearance in trio formation with guitarist-bassist Joe Morris and drummer Michael Wimberly. 

Saxophonist Larry Ochs is primarily found in the worlds of “avant-garde jazz” or “improvised music,” composing music for bands such as Rova Sax Quartet (since 1978), Figure Eight, The Fictive Five, Kihnoua (with vocalist Dohee Lee and Scott Amendola) Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core (with Satoko Fujii, Natsuki Tamura, Amendola and Don Robinson on drums), and more. He also loves playing in bands that exclusively work on collectively created music, including musicians such as Nels Cline and Gerald Cleaver (Every Winter Trio); Mark Dresser and Vladimir Tarasov (Jones Jones); Dave Rempis and Darren Johnston (Spectral); Fred Frith and Miya Masaoka (Maybe Monday), and now this relatively new trio with Joe Morris and Michael Wimberly.

Joe Morris has performed and/or recorded with many of the most impactful contemporary artists in improvised music including Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Barry Guy, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, William Parker, Dewey Redman, Marshall Allen, Matthew Shipp, Tomeka Reid, Ikue Mori, John Butcher, Agusti Fernandez, David S.Ware, Peter Evans, Joe Maneri, Joe McPhee, Joelle Leandre, Nicolle Mitchell, and more.

He is featured leading his own groups as a sideman or collaborator on more than 170 recordings on such labels as ECM, ESP-Disk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, and Riti. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe, as well as in Brazil, Korea, and Japan. He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation throughout the U.S, including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College and Harvard University as well as in Canada, Korea, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Belgium and Ireland. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Musical Arts Department at New England Conservatory of Music. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).

Percussionist Michael Wimberly was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio during the civil rights era surrounded by the toxic fumes of steel mills buoyed by a sea of blue-collar workers. This is where Wimberly’s early beginnings in soul, funk, rock, jazz, and classical music began. Beating rhythms on the hoods of cars and boxes while dancing to the pulsating music of James Brown, Sly Stone, Funkadelic, and Aretha Franklin…the spirit of revolution was in the air.  It was during Wimberly’s undergraduate years at Baldwin Wallace University that the rhythms from the streets connected him to the rhythms of West Africa and 20th century contemporary music. During his graduate years at Manhattan School of Music, Wimberly broadened his musical palette studying electronic and improvised music. Music of the African Diaspora and improvisation have become key components of Wimberly’s musical excavations and explorations. These explorations connected him with master musicians from Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, South America and Europe. He’s performed with funk legends George Clinton and the Parliament Funkedelic; The Boys Choir of Harlem; Paul Winter Consort; rock icons: Vernon Reid, Henry Rollins, and Blondie; R&B royalty: Dionne Warwick, Valerie Simpson, D’Angelo, Angie Stone and Alyson Williams. Wimberly has been a featured artist with Berlin’s Rundfunk Symphony, Vienna’s Tonkuntsler Symphony, Leipzig Symphony, and International Region Symphony Orchestra, performing compositions of Daniel Schnyder, as well as his own orchestral compositions performed by Yakima Symphony Orchestra, and Sage City Symphony of Vermont. 

As a composer and sound designer, Wimberly’s compositions have been performed by dance companies Urban Bush Women, Joffrey Ballet II, Alvin Ailey, Ailey II, Philadanco, Forces of Nature Dance Theatre, Joan Millers Dance Players, Complexions Contemporary Ballet, Ballet Noir, Alpha Omega, Purelements, and The National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique. Film scores include As An Act of Protest by Dennis Leroy Moore, and Atlantic City Lights by Brent Owens for HBO. Sound design for theatre includes Shakespeare’s Midsummer Night’s Dream for the Classical Theatre of Harlem, Saint Lucy’s Eyes by Bridgette Wimberly for the Women’s Project & Cherry Lane Theatre, and Iced Out, Shackled and Chained for the National Black Theatre for which Wimberly received two Audelco nominations.  Wimberly joined the Bennington faculty in Fall 2012, where the revolutionary spirit continues in his courses on black music by Sun Ra, Bill Dixon, and Milford Graves, and regenerates through courses on Funk, Improvisation, Composition for Dance, and global rhythms.

co-presented by Portland Conservatory of Music’s Dimensions in Jazz