CHAMELEON- Chamber Jazz

CHAMELEON is a drummer-less trio that explores a sotto voce approach often associated with West Coast jazz artists like Jimmy Giuffre, et. al., focusing on melodic invention and harmonic exploration over intensity and energy-driven music. The trio features the music of band leader Phillip Greenlief, who has recently moved to Maine from the West Coast , where he established himself as a restless and prolific composer and improviser. BAND BIOS

Phillip Greenlief- Since his emergence on the West Coast in the late 1970s, saxophonist/composer Phillip Greenlief has achieved international acclaim for his recordings and performances with musicians and composers in the post-jazz continuum as well as new music innovators and virtuosic improvisers. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Meredith Monk, Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Reiner, and They Might Be Giants. Albums include two LANTSKAP LOGIC TRIO releases (w/ Evelyn Davis and Fred Frith), THAT OVERT DESIRE OF OBJECT with Joelle Leandre, ALL AT ONCE with FPR (Frank Gratkowski and Jon Raskin), and OH THAT MONSTER with LA punk pioneers Thelonious Monster. Recent residencies have included the Banff Center for Art and Creativity, Neue Muzik Koln, and Headlands Center for the Arts. His critical writing has been published in Artforum, Open Space (SFMOMA), Sound American, and Signal to Noise.

Ryan Blotnick
Ryan Blotnick (b. 1983) is a New England-based composer and improviser who creates ambient score music for documentary films and specializes in jazz, avant-garde, and afrobeat guitar. As a jazz guitarist, Blotnick’s debut album Music Needs You (Songlines, 2008) was praised for its maturity and synthesis of freshly contemporary jazz and rock. The next year, Everything Forgets (Songlines, 2009) expanded on those concepts with a focus on free improvisation. After several years of playing with Pete Robbins and Centric, the Michael Blake Band, and Akoya Afrobeat, he did some soul-searching with Solo, Volume I (2012), an ambient exploration of the acoustic guitar sounds of his childhood. His latest album, Kush (Songlines, 2016) expresses an “ambient approach rooted in jazz, blues, Afro/Latin and even psychedelia (Elliott Simon).”

Jonathan Henderson
Jonathan Henderson is a multi-instrumentalist active as a musician, producer, writer, and educator. He has produced recordings in the US and Senegal, created music and sound art for film, theater, and art installations, and regularly performs on the street and the stage. He is a co-founder of the transatlantic collaboration Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba, the intermedia ensemble Invisible, and the radical marching band Cakalak Thunder. Jonathan holds a Ph.D. in Ethnomusicology from Duke University and is a Professor of Music at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, Maine. Jonathan’s academic research concerns how local musical traditions are transformed through recording studio practice and come to articulate new meaning in their international circulation. He has many years of experience studying music from the Black Atlantic, from Brazil to Senegal to the US South. While pursuing his research, Jonathan remains active as an artist and performer. Most recently, he produced the album “Routes” for his band Diali Cissokho & Kaira Ba. The album was recorded both in Senegal and North Carolina and garnered critical acclaim from Songlines, Afropop Worldwide, The Financial Times, and Robert Christgau for Vice.

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