Press - 2005-2010 |
Ringing in the solstice “I guess when you play music that’s a little bit different, you’re always looking for someplace to present your music,” said Encinitas musician Nathan Hubbard as he helped usher in the winter solstice yesterday morning from a rocky amphitheater near Julian. You can cram a lot into the shortest day of the year. Take, for example, Encinitas musician Nathan Hubbard. Yesterday, he played three concerts in three places — outside Julian at sunrise, in Carlsbad at noon and in Point Loma at night — to mark the winter solstice. The day heralds the start of winter. Every year around Dec. 21, when the Earth’s axis is tilted away from the sun at its most extreme angle, the darkest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere becomes a cause for celebration for some. The inspirations for Hubbard’s unusual performances were John Bergamo’s “Three Pieces for the Winter Solstice” and, in a roundabout way, Hubbard’s children. A few weeks ago, en route to the mountain snow with his family, Hubbard stopped at mile marker 36.5 on the Sunrise Highway, just south of Julian, so his wife could feed their baby. Hubbard took his 3-year-old exploring and came across a rock outcropping that would double nicely as a concert venue. Any classically trained, experimental percussionist with a penchant for playing solo shows in roadside gazebos and recording music in parking structures could see it. “I never thought about it being that strange,” he said yesterday. “I guess when you play music that’s a little bit different, you’re always looking for someplace to present your music.” Even if that place isn’t a “traditional, people-sitting-in-chairs kind of venue.” Even if there aren’t any people at a ll. Hubbard, 33, picked a section of South Carlsbad State Beach called Ponto Beach for a noon show with a friend who plays woodwinds. He chose Desi ’n’ Friends, a more conventional venue with walls, a roof and a $5 cover charge, for the third show. He plans to put all the day’s video on YouTube this week. Without much publicity except word of mouth and his Web site, the performances were better measured in miles than smiles. Hubbard laughed when it was suggested that his morning show in particular put a new spin on “solo performance.” If not for two journalists and Dave Golia, a friend with a camcorder, Hubbard would have been playing only for birds. Not a single person drove by. Not even the park ranger or police officer he feared might. Wearing a light jacket and a warm hat but no gloves, Hubbard played for 16 minutes, starting at 6:33 a.m. under a lightening sky and ending two minutes after San Diego’s official 6:47 a.m. sunrise. As he played, clouds over nearby mountain peaks exploded in red. It was a beautiful sunrise, but lost in performance, Hubbard seemed to miss it. When he looked to the sky, it was gray with clouds colored more like smoke than fire. Hubbard was in constant motion throughout the show, at one point playing the drums with one hand while coaxing random sounds of static, chatter and music from a hand-held radio in the other and rolling a guiro over the rocky earth with a foot. The show began and ended with him whirring a red plastic air tube around and around. When the sounds of sampler, drum, cowbell, cymbal, maraca and music box had all become memory, the applause was the whooshing wind. Turning to Golia, Hubbard said slyly, “Sun’s up.” “Is it?” came the response. “Yup.” Looking around, Hubbard joked, “I need a clearer delineation of sunrising. Maybe we need to do one of those concerts that goes on for like six hours so we can really be sure.” As the day dawned around them, Hubbard and Golia packed up their equipment, walked back to the car and drove away. Hubbard had two more shows. But first, breakfast beckoned. |
|
Dizzy's lives! Proof: Catch Nathan Hubbard Octet there tonight There are several sound reasons for area jazz and improvised-music fans to celebrate when the Nathan Hubbard Octet performs downtown tonight. Eclectic drummer Nathan Hubbard will perform with his octet tonight at the opening of the new Dizzy's downtown.
While featuring 18 fewer members than Hubbard's acclaimed Skeleton Key Orchestra, his Octet doesn't lack for artistic ambition or textural richness. (A miniature big band, the Octet's elegant music at times reminds me of a cross between the Maria Schneider Orchestra and the Wayne Shorter-era edition of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers.) But an equal cause for celebration is the venue where Hubbard and his Octet will perform tonight: Dizzy's, or rather, the new Dizzy's. The old Dizzy's, opened in 2000, closed in June for a city-mandated retrofitting. Frustrated by construction and permitting delays, Dizzy's honcho Chuck Perrin has obtained a new, all-ages location. It's in the ground-floor event room of the San Diego Wine & Culinary Center in the Harbor Club Towers, directly across from the San Diego Convention Center at the corner of Second Avenue and J Street. The new location, with 200-plus capacity, will feature wine and food service, something missing from the old Dizzy's. But the emphasis will still be on listening to music in an intimate setting. And the new venue won't be directly impacted by Padres games (the original Dizzy's on Seventh Avenue was just across from the northwest side of Petco Park). |
U-Ex: een bijzonder initiatief Since last January 14th they organize very special Sunday concerts at the SJU Jazzpodium under the name U-Ex (Experiment in Utrecht). U-Ex garantees spontaneous meetings from musicians playing free and improvised music: instant composing / instant playing / instant listening. It’s an initiative from Utrechts flautist Mark Alban Lotz and bassist Meinrad Kneer. Prominent contemporary improvisators participating at this project are a.o. Wolter Wierbos, Achim Kaufman, Fred Lomberg Holm, Alan Purves, Christina Fuchs, Rafaël Vanoli and Oene van Geel. Sunday 1 April stood, with Mark Alban Lotz and Franz von Chossy, the complete american group Cosmologic on stage. Cosmologic is the group around saxophonist Jason Robinson, consisting further of Michael Dessen (trombone & laptop), Scott Walton (bass) and Nathan Hubbard (drums). "Cosmologic music is initiated by individual members and then doggedly worked and reworked until its internal logics are available for genuinely creative improvisation.... More than impressive," the respectable Music magazine The Wire wrote. This is not nothing. And that’s how it was. In the (unfortunatelly not fr a large audience) SJU Jazzpodium they played an unimitable 'instant composers'-concert. I seldom saw and heard an ad-hoc formation play so controlled and concentrated. From a seemingly minimal given they created suitelike music pieces. Splendidly constructed with solo space for everyone and - in the collective parts - an alert listening and reacting on each other. In this consonance palette there were added very adequate sounds via the laptop from Michael Dessen. As soloist on trombone he stayed at the background. He completed and filled in the de collectives. Centre in the web was drummer Nathan Hubbard. He reactyed very musically on the impulses from his companions. Besides that he impressed by the varied drumming; from ‘rustle’ ‘till swinging and groovy drumming. Tenor saxophonist Jason Robinson impressed a lot with beautiful and modern melodic improvisations and a wonderful warm sound. The mostly strongly playing and shouting in higher register in impro-jazz is not his favourite style. At least not this evening. On the contrary, his playing is thoughtful and intense, but also very vital. Mark Alban Lotz, Franz von Chossy and Scott Walton also delivered optimal musical performances, as well in ensemble playing as during the solos. For special concerts on Sunday evening you have to go to Utrecht.
|
Cosmologic RAISES SPIRITS WITH A DIFFERENT JAZZ This group already has 3 discs and much public acclaim, as evidenced by the attendance at this concert by Raul González Villa TIJUANA. "La antigua bodega de papel" was the scene of the first concert in Tijuana of 2007 for the international jazz group Cosmologic, that interpreted the best of its repertoire for the local public. The venue was filled with audience members who had come to see the musicians, who acted with a calm, bohemian atmosphere that contrasted with their avant-garde and highly energetic jazz. The Californian quartet, consisting of Jason Robinson on sax, Michael Dessen on trombone, Scott Walton on bass and Natan Hubbard on drums, interpreted pieces like “X Marks the spot”, “Mountains and waters” and “Shadows at night”, all their own compositions, which delighted the evening's audience. This group, founded in 1999 in San Diego, California, is a true collective, where no single leader exists but rather all decisions are shared, both onstage and off. When they first formed, the group interpreted works by well known stars of jazz, but they later decided to focus strictly on composing their own material, and today are themselves an influence on other nascent groups. Thanks to their fame for showing a different side of jazz, they have had the opportunity to perform in Mexico, Canada and the United States, as well as an upcoming tour in Europe where they will play in Belgium, Holland and France. Cosmologic is currently promoting their more recent album titled “Three” in the main cities of America and the old continent, and due to its success, is simultaneously preparing their fourth album that will be released at the beginning of March. “For us jazz is very broad, and has many related branches. Sometimes we play music that sounds like jazz and sometimes we play more modern music, contemporary and open, like the rhythms and the harmonies that are not traditional, something more avant-garde”, said Michael Dessen with respect to their style. They also pointed to a discomfort with the critics, since some locate them as inauthentic interpreters of jazz and others, more open to such new directions, applaud their experimentation and performances. “We love playing in Tijuana. The audiences here are better than those in San Diego, they are more open. They are not scared of unfamiliar music, but on the contrary they are interested in things that are different from what they know. But what I like most it is that audiences here are very warm”, they concluded. *published in the newspaper the Mexican Monday 22 of January of 2007 |
17 de Enero del 2007 Para quienes les gusta escuchar nuevas propuestas de jazz libre y avant garde, vuelve la noche “Dijazz”, que el próximo sábado 20 de enero presentará la banda californiana Cosmologic Quartet. |
Living on the edge is a way of life for Mark Dresser and Nathan Hubbard, who perform a concert of all-improvised music tonight (thurs) at 8 at Point Loma's 300-capacity Desi 'N' Friends, 2734 Lytton Street. A master of the contrabass and a composer and improviser of the highest order, Dresser moved back here from New York in 2004 to teach at UCSD, his alma mater. Although he has the technical command to sometimes sound like several bassists performing at once, he injects every note he plays with meaning, rich textures and a deeply felt sense of musicality. He is also that rarest of artists who can make even the most challenging, left-of-center music sound appealing, even mesmerizing. Dresser has made 10 solo albums since 1983, and is featured on more than 100 other albums by such kindred spirits as avant-jazz saxophonists Anthony Braxton and John Zorn, clarinetist Don Byron, trumpeter Dave Douglas and pianist (and fellow UCSD music professor) Anthony Davis. Hubbard, a composer and instrument-builder, is prolific in his own right. He's currently a member of the ARC Trio, The Unmentionables, Cosmologic, and (with fellow percussionist Curtis Glatter) the Glatter/Hubbard Duo. Hubbard, who has been featured on at least 17 albums since 1999, is also the driving force behind the Skeleton Key Orchestra, one of San Diego's largest and most daring ensembles. The opportunity to hear him perform solo and as a duo with Dresser tonight promises much to savor for fans of provocative, envelope-shredding music. - George Varga San Diego Union-Tribune |
Cosmologic For five of the last seven years, San Diego-based jazz quartet Cosmologic has been able to remain a cohesive unit, playing live and putting out three albums, even though one of its members has been living on the East Coast. However, this fall he returned to Southern California, which should give the band a chance to gig out more regularly. That is a very good thing, because, if their Sunday-night performance at {open} is any indication, this is an outfit that should be heard by any and all jazz enthusiasts. Cosmologic is Jason Robinson on saxophone(s), Michael Dessen on trombone, Scott Walton on stand-up bass, and Nathan Hubbard on drums/percussion. Their straight-ahead jazz capitalizes on improvization, yet it's about as structured as jazz can get without getting locked into the strictures of (e.g.) "big band" compositions. All four members regularly attend to their sheet music, even as they let fly with a perfect freedom that somehow coexists with each keeping good track of his bandmates' musical maneuverings. On this evening, the group moved through seven brand-new compositions, which they're scheduled to take into the studio in a couple of weeks. One can only hope that they will be able to reproduce there what they played at {open}, because they were dead on, leaving no hint in the execution that this is not music that's been with them for years. Cosmologic's new album promises to be everything the jazz purist could want: a straight-ahead sound that hearkens back to the glory days in a voice that is uniquely this unit's. Their new album promises to be that; their live show is that. To find out for yourself, visit www.cosmologic.org. To keep up with the venue that lets you experience acts like this in a setting only slightly less intimate than said acts' practice spaces, go to www.accessopen.com. |
| San Diego's ARC Trio may feature a standard piano-bass-drums lineup, but there's nothing standard about its impeccably crafted style of jazz, which showcases the almost telepathic interplay between the group's members. Daring yet accessible, the trio's new album, the aptly titled “Triptych Mirror,” features nine multifarious original compositions that are by turns contemplative and animated. You can toast the release of the album when the ARC Trio performs Sunday afternoon at the all-ages Dizzy's. George Varga Union Tribune November 2006 |
Music collective brings festival to Point Loma - Bart Mendoza - November 02, 2006 Point Loma Beacon
The Collective will stage the latest installment of the fourth annual New Sounds Downtown Music Festival Thursday, Nov. 2, at Desi ‘n’ Friends, 2734 Lytton St. The night’s bill includes performances from free-form metal sextet Obscuricon and an acoustic trio, The Invisible 3, both of which include series curator and noted percussionist Nathan Hubbard. “The event was started four years ago by fellow percussionist Curtis Glatter,” Hubbard explained. “I was helping him put things together, collaborating on ideas about the festival, when he relocated to the Midwest suddenly. Since we were already well into the process, it was decided that I just continue on with it and become the curator.” In addition to his work on the event – which Hubbard cites as including “everything from getting the sound system going to booking the performers” – he is also a member of several different groups, including Cosomologic, The Skeleton Key Orchestra and Arc Trio. He also has dozens of recordings to his credit and a new album, Blind Orchid, on the way. “The title comes from my wife,” he joked. “Actually, she said ‘Ghost Orchard,’ but when I needed the title, I couldn’t remember that. Just that it was two words. Still I like the fact that the first two initials are the same on this disc as on my last, Born on Tuesday.” Although he is now the percussionist of choice when it comes to jazz and improvisational recordings, his beginnings were much more humble. “It was the classic situation where band classes were taught in sixth grade,” Hubbard remembered. “You could pick what you wanted to play and I just randomly chose percussion. I wonder about that sometimes. I can play a variety of instruments and often compose on the piano, but I always come back to percussion.” The festival will continue with shows through February, each hosting an eclectic line-up of both local and national acts. “The idea behind this festival is to present artists that don’t usually get showcased in a club atmosphere into that setting,” he stated. “Desi ‘n’ Friends brings everything closer to the audience, and since much of what is performed is improvisational, that can add a different dimension to what’s being played.” Hubbard said he hopes the festival expands next year and includes more touring acts, but notes there is one small problem with being located in San Diego. “The city and its population are very transitory,” he said. “I think it’s why the local music scene hasn’t begun to coalesce until recently. On one hand, it’s kind of nice because the constant influx of new people brings new ideas and players into the community. But on the other hand, it can be difficult to get things together in this town because people move so much.” Despite the odds, Hubbard said he feels the area has strong potential for more improvisational music concerts. “Once people know that these sorts of things are happening, they come out,” he said. “But for now, we’re hoping to build up our audiences. Everything will grow from that.” |
Todays Local News (San Diego) Collaborating minds By Michael Dolan
Fresh off a performance Thursday at Palomar College’s Concert Hour with one of his projects, Something Strange Is Afoot, Hubbard recently released a solo CD titled “(compositions 1998-2005)” after some delay. Hubbard describes his music projects as branching off of his solo work and increasing in numbers of members and musical collaboration up to his formation of the Skeleton Key Orchestra, a group he brought together in 2001. “I had done a lot of playing with different groups. At that point it was mostly a group called Return To One,” Hubbard said. “At some point I started (performing) as a community, doing more improvised (work). I was trying to figure out how come Jason Robinson never played with Lee Elderton? They’re both great sax players, but they’ve never played together. But I’m in these different groups with them, so I was like ‘How do I put all these people together?’” From that Hubbard brought together the group, which usually hovers around 20 members. “Skeleton Key was for me a study in bringing these people together and then also writing more,” Hubbard said. “It was kind of like putting a community together. … It’s like a bubble of what society is.” Even though the orchestra was a successful project — it performed at San Diego City College for Jazz 88.3 and San Diego State University — Hubbard branched out into different avenues. “I started doing smaller gigs,” Hubbard said. “It’s impossible to put 20 people on a stage in this town. There’s no stages big enough. That band in its totality only plays once a year.” One such collaboration is the Trummerflora Collective, a group of musicians that take their name from a term used by environmental artists Helen and Newton Harrison to describe bomb debris mixed with plant life. “Trummerflora is not a group, it is a collective of musicians,” Hubbard said. “This was a little bit more communist, not in the political sense, but in the sense of everybody having a equal voice and anybody being able to do anything.” “That collective just came about as people trying to help each other present concerts and support each other in the community,” Hubbard said. Hubbard’s music falls in the category of “out” or creative music, a postmodern take on music in which the musician’s influences and experiences play into the improvisation and experimentation in the music. In San Diego County, the creative music scene can be traced, in large part, back to one musician, Hubbard said. “(The scene) really got built up when George Lewis was here at UCSD (University of California San Diego). … He brought this whole scene to another level in my mind,” Hubbard said. “A lot of people in Trummerflora and a lot of people around town went to UCSD and studied with him. I think a lot of how people think about improvising and how people think about presenting their works, presenting concerts, … being somebody who thinks critically when they write. A lot of that comes from George.” Hubbard graduated from Palomar College in 1996, after which he studied music at San Diego State. “We’ve always known that he was going to do something unusual,” said David Chase, a professor of music at Palomar College who taught Hubbard freshman music theory. “He was like a sponge as a student (and) one of the most memorable students we have ever had. He is the most cutting edge musician we have had come through here.” Hubbard also educated himself by performing. “I spent from about age 17 to age 23, I was playing coffee shops like three or four a week in North County: Metaphor, Miracles, Mocha Marketplace. … But at some point I just got fed up with that scene,” Hubbard said. As his music changed from background coffee shop music to more of his own style, Hubbard realized that he did not mesh well with coffee shop patrons or the shop’s owners. “The scene had really dried up by that time,” Hubbard said. “Honestly, it’s that way in every town. Twice a year I go to Seattle and back and it’s the same thing. It’s hard to get people out. It’s hard (to) find venues. People are struggling just (to) keep the music moving.” In addition to his performances and compositions, Hubbard creates instruments to fit his needs. “A lot of what I do isn’t so much about building instruments as it is modifying materials,” Hubbard said. “I’ll take a cymbal and cut it in a spiral.” Hubbard will be performing with the Trummerflora Collective in May as part of the collective’s yearly Spring Reverb. The Spring Reverb is scheduled for the first weekend in May with a performance on the May 5 at the Museum of Making Music in Carlsbad and a show on May 7 at Cal State San Marcos. |
Save Long Beach City Skyline's Summer Concert at Koo's Art Center and The Unmentionables' performance at {open}. I will creatively call these Parts 1 and 2 of the evening. Greggory Moore Part 2 There's just too much shit to do in my neighborhood. I didn't get over to {open} until after the first act, Drumolin, had finished. I was told they were magnificent. I did arrive in time to catch all of The Unmentionables' set. This trio of Kris Tiner (trumpet), Noah Phillips (guitar), and Nathan Hubbard (drums/percussion) was one of my very favorite acts from last year's socalsonic, and so I was delighted to have the chance to see them again. They do a sort of improvy combo of noise-band antics and the kind of responsive listening to each other that is in the best tradition of keeping jazz about the moment. The first time I saw The Unmentionables, Phillips used all manner of pedal effects, bows, and implements on his guitar to elicit from it sounds that moved from quasi-traditional chords and lines to out-and-out fuzz manipulation (the double-entendre is all in your puerile mind). If anything, he now brings out more sonic variety. Meanwhile, on drums and an array of percussive devices-including the neatest fucking homemade vertical rack of rods, coils, and whatnot of different lengths and shapes for plucking, bowing, you name it (all somehow augmented by electronics that I simply do not understand)-Hubbard, as always, brought to the table his unique soundmaking. The biggest change was with Tiner. Whereas before he relied simply on his trumpet, breathing, twittering of tongue and lips, and frenetic manipulations of various plungers (there you go again with your sex-thoughts), he now sports an entire table+ of effects. The result is a new ingredient of pure sonics in the stew. I have to confess that I'm ambivalent about this. There's no doubt that Tiner does more than arbitrarily twist knobs and punch pedals; and his ear for employing these new devices is as quick and sensitive as you'd hope. However, his attention is now split between his playing and its electronic manipulation, and the result seems to be that the trio's music scurries less-their scurrying being something I find (to quote myself) delightful. To be sure, there are still flashes of it, but generally everything is more slow-paced and open; and conversely, since there are now more ways to create sound, there is a percentage of less-is-more moments that has been lost (although they certainly get there). What is unchanged is the entrancing way the group can, as a unit, drop down into whispery passages which seem like they are coming to a dead stop but instead perpetuate themselves in a harmony of pulling out each other's notes and tones, plaintive moans, rhythmic and harmonic equivalencies plucked out of the air. What the hell did I just say? But see, their music's kind of like that. You've got to hear it. Go to www.whoaretheunmentionables.com for where you can (including on a 20-minute CD that excellently captures what they do). To keep up on a venue as unique as the acts it features (as well as to get more info on those acts), visit {open} at www.accessopen.com. |
