March 5, 2009
Contact: Sara R. Leonard
Concert and Production Manager
413/542-2195


AMHERST, Mass.— The yearlong Amherst College Music festival Faultlines: Mapping Jazz in the 21st Century will host a multi-site, networked concert on Friday, April 3, at 8 p.m. in Buckley Recital Hall featuring saxophonist Adnan Marquez playing from Stanford University’s Center for Computer Research in Acoustics and Music (CCRMA) in Palo Alto, Calif.; trombonist Michael Dessen performing at the University of California, Irvine’s Realtime Experimental Audio Laboratory (REALab), in Irvine, Calif.; and saxophonist and Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Jason Robinson. Coordinated by Robinson, the concert will use high-speed Internet connections to network the performers in real time, creating a long distance ensemble. All three performance locations will feature live audiences and are free of charge and open to the public. 

Mexican saxophonist, improviser, computer musician, and composer Marquez is active in both the state of California and Baja California, Mexico. He received his Master’s degree in Music, Science and Technology from Stanford University and focuses on improvisation and the electronic manipulation of sounds in real-time. Influenced by Jazz, Western concert music, free improvisation, electronic music and ethnic music, his improvisations and compositions attempt to synthesize all of these elements into a very personal style. He has participated in numerous projects with the Trummerflora Collective and the Spectrum Saxophone Quartet, and is part of the electroacoustic duo Birthdays and Funerals, the wind duo Viento Reciclado and several other independent projects. He is a founding member of the Mexican improvisation collective Generación Espontanea and is currently an adjunct instructor of Musical Acoustics in Cogswell Polytechnical College in Sunnyvale, California. His debut recording, The Paradox of Continuity, was released in early 2007.

Dessen is a composer-improviser who performs on the slide trombone and computer. His recent recordings include a trio release on the Portuguese label Clean Feed Records titled Between Shadow and Space featuring drummer Tyshawn Sorey and bassist Christopher Tordini, and a recording titled Lineal featuring acclaimed bassist Mark Dresser, drummer Susie Ibarra, pianist Vijay Iyer, violinist Terry Jenoure and others. Dessen is also a member of Cosmologic, a longstanding collective quartet whose fourth album of original music was recently released by Cuneiform Records. Since the mid-1990s, Dessen has collaborated regularly on projects exploring interactive technology and, more recently, telematic (distance/internet) performance. A published author whose scholarship focuses on the role of African American traditions within late-twentieth century experimental music worlds, he teaches at the University of California, Irvine, where he is on the core faculty of an innovative new graduate music program in Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology.

American saxophonist and scholar Jason Robinson performs regularly as a soloist (acoustically and with electronics), with groups he co-leads (Cosmologic and the Cross Border Trio), as a leader of varying ensembles performing his original music, and in a variety of collaborative contexts. His latest albums include his third release as a leader—Fingerprint (2008/Circumvention)—and the fourth release by Cosmologic, Eyes in the Back of My Head (2008/Cuneiform). He has played at festivals and prominent venues in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe, and performed or recorded with Peter Kowald, George Lewis, Anthony Davis, Eugene Chadbourne, Earl Howard, the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra (at Pearl’s, San Francisco), the La Jolla Symphony and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, among others. He is also a published author.

The Faultlines festival includes concerts, performance workshops, talks and roundtable discussions, all free and open to the public, and all guaranteed to generate passionate debate about the nature of jazz and its relationship to American cultural identity. The festival is made possible through the generous support of the Amherst College Arts Series Fund, Amherst College Departments of Music, English, and American Studies, the Amherst College Mead Art Museum, the UMass-Amherst Fine Arts Center’s Solos and Duos Concert Series and Magic Triangle Concert Series, and the Northampton Center for the Arts’ A World of Piano Concert Series.

For more information about the concert, or any events associated with Faultlines: Mapping Jazz in the 21st Century, visit the festival website at www.amherst.edu/faultlines or call 413/542-2195.

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