Burton Greene/Elliott Levin/Scott Verrastro Trio at Rotunda, Monday 10/23

[Elliott Levin]

This Monday at the Rotunda, please join us for a rare Philly appearance from avant-jazz pianist BURTON GREENE, in a trio performance with saxophonist/flutist/poet  ELLIOTT LEVIN and percussionist SCOTT VERRASTRO. Burton just turned 80 in June and is one of the pioneers of improv piano and synthesizers in the jazz/avant realm, alongside Cecil Taylor, Dave Burrell, McCoy Tyner, Bobby Few, Paul Bley, and Andrew Hill. He made two albums for ESP and one for BYG and even recorded for Columbia in 1968. He's an expat living in the Netherlands for a few decades and makes it over here occasionally but American appearances are getting rarer.

We'll be playing two sets with room for solo expression, starting shortly after 8pm. As always at Rotunda, events are free but donations are strongly encouraged. More info below.

BURTON GREENE/ ELLIOTT LEVIN/ SCOTT VERRASTRO Trio

BURTON GREENE: Greene rose to popularity during the 1960s on New York's free jazz scene, gigging with well-known musicians which included Alan Silva and Marion Brown, among a host of others. With Alan Silva he formed the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble in 1963.[1] He joined Bill Dixon's and Cecil Taylor's Jazz Composers Guild in 1964, and also played with a number of other artists, including Rashied Ali, Albert Ayler, Gato Barbieri, Byard Lancaster, Sam Rivers, Patty Waters, and others. During this time, he recorded two albums under his own name for ESP-Disk.

He moved to Europe in 1969, first to Paris. Since then he has been living in Amsterdam and played with such Dutch musicians as Maarten Altena and Willem Breuker. During the late 1980s he began exploring the Klezmer tradition in his groups Klezmokum (along with Perry Robinson), Klez-thetics, and a more recent group called Klez-Edge with vocalist Marek Balata. Klez-Edge has a recent recording Ancestors, Mindreles, NaGila Monsters(2008) out on John Zorn's Tzadik label. A duet with Perry Robinson, also on the Tzadik label, Two Voices in the Desert was released in January 2009.

Since the mid-1990s Greene has often performed and recorded in New York and along the East Coast. Greene's recent performance and recorded groups based in New York include a duet with bassist Mark Dresser; a quartet with trumpeter Roy Campbell, Lou Grassi and Adam Lane; a trio with Ed and George Schuller on bass and drums (recorded on the CIMP label); and a quintet with the Schuller brothers, Russ Nolan on saxes and flute and Paul Smoker on trumpet. His autobiography written over 20 years, Memoirs of a Musical Pesty-Mystic, was published in 2001 (Cadence Jazz Books).

ELLIOTT LEVIN is a Philadelphia born and based poet and musician. He studied musical and literary composition at the University of Oregon. He has done further studies with Michael Guerra of the Phila. Orchestra; Cecil Taylor, pianist, composer, poet; Claire Polin, flutist composer; and Odean Pope, saxophonist, composer. Elliott has performed throughout the world with such groups as the Cecil Taylor Ensemble, Harold Melvin & The Bluenotes, New Ghost, Interplay, Talking Free Be-Bop, Odean Pope's Saxophone Choir, Don Preston's Akashic Ensemble, Cee-Knowledge & The Cosmic Funk Orchestra, Alan Silva's Sound Vision Orchestra. He has collaborated in performance with many poets including Miguel Algarin, Bob Holman, Gloria Tropp, Reg. E. Gaines, John Sinclair, Butch Morris' CHORUS OF POETS, Wil Perkins, Frank Messina and David Amram. His original music and poetry can be found on the recordings: OLDUVAI MUSIC ("Or-Om-You'll-Us" 1978), and ILTAR ("Ewe-Doh-Noh-What-Fo'-Kiss" 1979), on TIWA Records. He was the associate producer, composer, and performer for the compilations: POETRY IN PHILADELPHIA (1989), and MUSIC FROM PHILADELPHIA (1990). As producer, composer, performer, in 1990 and 1992, he created two internationally broadcast features for New American Radio.

Percussionist SCOTT VERRASTRO utilizes a plethora of sticks and mallets, brushes, bells, shakers, cymbals and gongs, bowed metal, contact mics, and household items -- in addition to a traditional drum kit -- to coax a wide palette of sounds. Verrastro received a degree in music literature from Northeastern University in Boston and continues to examine many forms of music, including all styles of improvisation and traditional folk. His main percussion influences are Milford Graves, Rashied and Muhammed Ali, Sunny Murray, Han Bennink, Jaki Liebezeit, Tony Oxley, and Bill Bruford and Jamie Muir circa King Crimson's Larks' Tongues in Aspic. His improv psych band Kohoutek explores all of this territory, veering from drony Krautrock-inspired psych to abstract noise freak-outs and everything in between. Other projects include Curanderos (with members of Bardo Pond), Pneumagon, Dirt Weed Revue, Erik Ruin's Ominous Cloud Ensemble, Insect Factory, Kuschty Rye Ergot, Power Vacuum, and a percussion duo with Nathan Bowles. Past and present collaborations include Damo Suzuki, Marshall Allen, Peter Brotzmann, Jandek, Gibby Haynes, Elliott Levin, Paul Flaherty, Khan Jamal, George Kinney (of Golden Dawn), Richard Pinhas (of Heldon), Max Ochs, Mike Tamburo, Rat Bastard, Kenny Millions, Little Howlin' Wolf, John Dikeman, Anthony Pirog and many more.

  

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