Timucua Arts Foundation and The Civic Minded 5 present
Billy Martin DISAPPEARING solo percussion plus Karl Berger And Friends with Ingrid Sertso, Doug Mathews and Billy Martin
Timucua Arts
2000 South Summerlin St, Orlando, FL 32806
7:00 pm doors, 7:30 pm concert
Medeski, Martin And Wood drummer Billy Martin is the new Executive Director of the Woodstock, N.Y.’s Creative Music Studio, the music education non-profit founded by Karl Berger, Ingrid Sertso and Ornette Coleman in 1971. Karl, Ingrid and Billy come back to Orlando to teach and play during this February visit, joined by longtime Sam Rivers bassist Doug Mathews. Berger and Sertso make their third cm5 appearance, springing from their 2015 Master Artist In Residence at Atlantic Center For The Arts in New Smyrna Beach.
The Creative Music Studio had a fervent start including a board consisting of composers John Cage, George Russell, Gil Evans, Gunther Schuller and super-genius writer Buckminster Fuller. The Creative Music Studio (CMS) serves as a worldwide training institute for World Jazz, incorporating stalwarts such as Anthony Braxton, Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell, Cecil Taylor, Sam Rivers, Jack DeJohnette, Dave Holland and Lee Konitz with Brazil’s Naná Vasconcelos, Senegal’s Aiyb Dieng, Japan’s Zen Watazumi-doso, and India’s G.S. Zachdev. A well-known Creative Music Studio-influenced outcome is Codona, the ECM Records act featuring Don Cherry, Naná Vasconcelos and Oregon’s Colin Walcott.
New CMS Executive Director Billy Martin came to international prominence as the drummer/percussionist in Medeski, Martin and Wood. MMW started as a get-in-the-van roaddog trio bolting the NYC Downtown new music scene to the burgeoning Rare Groove/Acid Jazz revival. Improvisation and danceable moments resonated with college radio, DJ culture and the emerging Jam Rock concert circuit, allowing the trio to become a international festival level attraction. MMW’s fluency and audibility has led to collaborations with contemporary classical ensemble Alarm Will Sound, Iggy Pop, John Zorn, John Scofield and Natalie Merchant, among others. Martin continues to expand his musical scope as composer, as an author of three books, a record label owner, teaching and continuing the quest as a student, too.
Karl Berger moved into his current mode of operations after internalizing the 1961 Ornette Coleman Quartet opus This Is Our Music. The stylized album cover effectively doubled as a band portrait – one used to reveal Coleman trumpeter Don Cherry in Paris jazz club in 1966. The result was pivotal. Berger – a pianist and mallet percussionist approached Cherry with the idea of playing music. Cherry stated that rehearsals started the next day. That Don Cherry Quintet is heard on the ESP-Disk releases Live at Café Montmartre Vol. 1 and 2. A moderately expanded, yet super-powered septet pairing the quintet’s Gato Barbieri with Pharoah Sanders recorded one of Blue Note Records’ classic “Inside/Outside” discs; Symphony For Improvisers at the now legendary Van Gelder Studios in Engelwood Cliffs, New Jersey. Berger used that opportunity to stay, geographically, in the U.S. underground. Cherry’s musicians were exploring a variation of the Pan-African ecstatic music that John Coltrane was also recording. Equally notable, Blue Note’s Symphony For Improvisers served as an auspice that Karl Berger, Pharoah Sanders and Gato Barbieri would follow in their later work.
Vocalist and poet Ingrid Sertso became a steady U.S. resident by 1972, recording with Karl Berger and performing with Don Cherry, Sam Rivers, Jimmy Giuffre, Ed Blackwell, Lee Konitz, and others. She became a faculty member at the literary icon Naropa Institute in Boulder, Co., then the Banff Center for Fine Arts, and ultimately Creative Music Studio.
Take part in the Timucua instant arts community created at each event by appearing willing – described by composer Anthony Braxton as the “friendly experiencer.” Timucua encourages a small plate dish and a bottle of wine for community distribution. We’ll see you there.
TheCM5. Creative Music concerts. Orlando. 