This happened....rocking with Togetherness Ensemble at Gray Area Mission SF
My plan was to have had this post up before this happened, but it was a crazy week. So it’s in past tense. On 10-26 I performed with the Togetherness Ensemble as part of an emergent composition in four movements. the first three movements featured eight different musicians and we all got together for the fourth. You had to be there. I met a lot of really wonderful people, most of whom for the very first time. It feels good to be part of a musical community again.
The Togetherness Ensemble is convened on occasion by Zekarias Musele Thompson to hold space for communal resonance through collective improvisation. Prompted by the historical and contemporary creative sensibilities of African and African diasporic peoples, and the possibilities of emergent composition as the scaffolding for recognizing ourselves as free.
The Togetherness Ensemble made its debut interpreting James Weldon Johnson’s Lift Every Voice and Sing, during closing performance of Possible Dialogues: Vol 1 in July 2023 at the BAMPFA.
For this fifth iteration we will explore Togetherness in three parts with a new composition titled RE-EDUCATION. Inspired by the current moment, the ecstatic motions of Alice Coltrane’s 1972 epic Lord of Lords, as well as Floating Points' and Pharoah Sanders' 2021 collaboration, Promises.
RE-EDUCATION
Movement 1: A Curiosity
Movement 2: A Recognition
Movement 3: A Promise
with: Salimatu Amabebe, Matt Brownell, Gabriele Christian, Roco Córdova, B Dukes, Christopher Robin Duncan, Mary Graham, Cat Lauigan, Phillip Laurent, Amina Malika, Micah Morris, Maya Nixon, Jasmine Nyende, Martin Perna, Justin (Hongry) Robinson, Benjamin Rodgers, Joel St. Julien, Zekarias Musele Thompson, David Wilson, Josh Wismans, and Gaia WXYZ.
NEW ALBUM: Martez "DRONE POEMS" out 2/17/23
The Drone Poems series represents meditations, feelings and moods expressed through expansive breathy textures. These pieces reflect a radical aesthetic departure from the Lamentos series, which primarily features wind instruments (flutes, saxophones) as the primary engines of sound.
I composed and recorded Behind the Veil and the other pieces on Drone Poems over the summer of 2022 and early 2023 in Oakland and Berkeley, California during what we now call fire season, when a barbecue spark, a misguided bottle rocket, or a random lightning strike can set off a chain of ignitions to poison every breath with smoky air for days on end. Fortunately last year wasn’t that bad, but each day nonetheless began with the anxiety and dread and the question: “Is today gonna be the day?”
The daily news: Russia brutalizing Ukraine, government fuckery, ongoing plagues, colonization of space, schools shot up, cops gone wild, catastrophic storms and everyone stressing about money.
Drone Poems is the effort to bear witness to the world while remaining connected to the eternal.
Collab: Sopera de Yemaya with Courtney Desiree Morris
Three short films (and counting) with my favorite person on the planet, Courtney Desiree Morris. I do music and sound design (among other duties) on her ongoing series “Sopera de Yemaya” for the Gallery TBA21 in Madrid. Click the image below to view the series .
