2013: Lewis Jordan’s Music at Large

Lewis Jordan: alto saxophone
India Cooke: violin
Karl Evangelista: guitar
John-Carlos Perea: electric bass
Jimmy Biala: drums, percussion

Lewis Jordan will debut a suite of new works entitled Only Children at the Outsound New Music Summit. The work is developed for quartet (saxophone, guitar, bass, and violin), and will incorporate scored and improvised sections in parallel and include text. The structure of the piece will create a context for group improvisation to nurture and grow the thematic material.

Lewis Jordan was born in San Francisco, raised in Chicago with the blues, all while learning to associate creative musicians with the advancement of society as we know it. An international touring and recording musician, composer, and poet since 1971, Jordan was a founding member of United Front, a seminal San Francisco Bay Area ensemble known for its originality, aggressive imagination, and cultural synthesis. As a solo artist and in collaboration, he has performed his work in musical and theatrical settings. With his independent productions of Music at Large, he has he has focused on creative compositional structures for improvisation, and has presented artists from a range of disciplines—dance, theater, and poetry, along with music. He seeks out performers who strive for modes of expression that honor their own unique traditions while speaking to the urgency of the present that binds us together. In his tenure, he has performed with such luminaries as Charles Tyler, Wilbur Morris, Jackie Prentice, Mark Izu, Carl Hoffman, Anthony Brown, Sachiko Nakamura, Brenda Wong Aok, Danny Glover, and Nobuko Miyamoto.

India Cooke, violinist, composer and educator, plays a wide range of music - from classical to jazz. India has performed in San Francisco Bay Area symphony and opera orchestras, chamber ensembles, and Broadway shows. As one of California's most respected contract artists, she has performed as featured soloist with Joe Williams and the Louie Bellson Orchestra, and has played with Sarah Vaughn, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and many others. Her continuing jazz and improvisation experiences include performances with Pharoah Sanders, Sun Ra, Cecil Tayor, Pauline Oliveros and many others. As an educator, Ms. Cooke was an Artist-in Residence at the San Francisco School of the Arts, and currently teaches at the San Francisco Community Music Center, Mills College, Santa Clara Children's Shelter and at her private studio. She has conducted lecture/performances in Bay Area public schools, colleges, and other educational programs.

Filipino-American guitarist/composer Karl Evangelista (b.1986) ranks among a new wave of creative musicians grounded in jazz, 20th century experimentalism, and popular song, exploring the place of multiculturalism and ethnic co-existence in an increasingly post-cultural, trans-idiomatic cultural space. As the creative force behind boundary breaking group Grex, Evangelista has been called “essential current-and-future listening, his music "a near-seamless blend of modern jazz, contemporary structuralist composition, indie rock, and blues rock” (Tiny Mix Tapes). This complex, powerful aesthetic fosters an “otherworldly experience” that is “completely original” (Eugene Weekly).

John-Carlos Perea (Mescalero Apache, Irish, German, Chicano) has maintained an active career as a performer and recording artist in San Francisco’s Jazz and World music scenes since 1997. First Dance (Aerep Music, 2001), his debut recording as a leader, featured John-Carlos’ original musical compositions and performances on electric bass, cedar flute, and pow-wow singing. Reviewer Thom Jurek noted that First Dance “feels like the late Jim Pepper’s Comin’ and Goin’” John-Carlos has recorded on over a dozen albums as a sideman and, in 2007, he won a GRAMMY® (Best New Age Album [Vocal or Instrumental]) as a member of the Paul Winter Consort for pow-wow and cedar flute songs contributed to Crestone (Living Music, 2007). Canyon Records released Waking from the Roots by Coyote Jump, a new collaborative ensemble featuring John-Carlos on cedar flute with composer Colin Farish, in Spring 2012. The album was nominated for Best New Age Recording in the 14th Annual Native American Music Awards (NAMMYS).

Artist (photo by Photographer)