2013: Kyle Bruckmann’s Wrack

Kyle Bruckmann: oboe
Jen Clare Paulson: viola
Jason Stein: bass clarinet
Anton Hatwich: bass
Tim Daisy: drums
Jeb Bishop: trombone
Darren Johnston: trumpet

Wrack is both a chamber ensemble with a highly unusual instrumentation and a book of compositions tailor-made for the musical personalities of its members. While the compositions’ melodic and contrapuntal content is reminiscent of European classical modernism, the open structures, improvisational procedures and energetic performances are heavily indebted to the innovations of the African-American Creative Music tradition.

The Ensemble will premiere the entirety of …Awaits Silent Tristero’s Empire, a 2012 CMA New Jazz Works commission still in progress. The core quintet will be augmented by two guest musicians: trombonist Jeb Bishop (reinstating a founding member of the ensemble) and trumpeter Darren Johnston. This addition of a brass section will not only dramatically expand Bruckmann's compositional palette, but also strengthen the Chicago-Bay Area axis (Johnston is a key figure in San Francisco jazz with strong ties to Chicago--including a working group with Bishop) and Bruckmann's role within the music community he now calls home. The composer anticipates a set-length piece of 45-60 minutes in duration.

“The score will take the form of an over-arching modular framework featuring many hallmarks of my compositions–parallel and tangential layers of polymetric riffs, intricate atonal counterpoint, and improvising subgroups of the ensemble–but on a larger scale than anything I’ve achieved to date,” says Bruckmann. “The work is inspired by the fiction of Thomas Pynchon–specifically V. (1963), The Crying of Lot 49 (1966), and Gravity's Rainbow (1973). These novels are peppered throughout with the rollicking, ribald, sardonic lyrics to imaginary songs. They come accompanied by evocative suggestions of style: sea shanties, drinking songs, marches, blues, Tin Pan Alley. I’ve come to find it amusing and provocative to think of them as a nonexistent but deeply resonant Great American Songbook, refracted through the shattered lenses of postmodernism.”

“A selection of these ‘songs’ will be set instrumentally; not just as melodic material, but embedded structurally in ways that abstractly reference the real Great American Songbook’s relationship with the jazz tradition,” continues Bruckmann. “I’m really not a ‘changes’ player (my most significant models are drawn from the post-free and AACM continuum), so I’m intrigued by this opportunity to obliquely engage with that aspect of the music’s history. Pynchon’s books are rife with references to and pulse with the energy of much contemporaneous New Thing jazz (for example, there’s a character named McClintic Sphere who plays a white saxophone), which I will also enjoy using as a stylistic grounding and jumping-off point.”

Oboist and composer Kyle Bruckmann founded Wrack in Chicago in 2002 as a vehicle for his compositions in the Creative Music tradition, drawing together inspirations from free jazz, European free improvisation, classical modernism, and particularly the legacy of the AACM. The original incarnation included four multi-faceted improvisers from that vibrant city's busy scene: Jeb Bishop (trombone), Tim Daisy (percussion), Kurt Johnson (bass), and Jen Clare Paulson (viola).

The debut record was released on Red Toucan in 2003. Bruckmann moved to San Francisco later that year, but has maintained the ensemble long distance. When he returned to Chicago for a 2005 homecoming visit, Bishop was unavailable and Johnson had moved out of town. Bass clarinetist Jason Stein and bassist Anton Hatwich stepped in for a regional tour and recording session that resulted in a 2006 release on 482 Music. This lineup has remained constant ever since, with periodic Midwestern performances and a 2010 West Coast tour.

While Wrack's cross-country personnel has made more frequent outings difficult, 2012 was marked by key developments propelling them towards 'mid-career' status. Their first European tour was anchored by an April appearance at the Ulrichsberg Kaleidophon festival in Austria. Their third album, Cracked Refraction (Porter Records) was followed quickly by On Procedural Grounds (New World), a collection of Bruckmann's compositions for varied ensembles, with the half-hour title piece uniting Wrack with the venerable Rova Saxophone Quartet, and live electronics pioneers Tim Perkis and Gino Robair. In July, Wrack was awarded Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works: Commissioning and Ensemble Development grant.

Outsound Presents’ presentation of Kyle Bruckmann’s Wrack is supported by Presenting Jazz, a program of Chamber Music America funded through the generosity of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Artist (photo by Photographer)