Home » Events » Radical Empathy Trio featuring Thollem McDonas, Michael Wimberly, Nels Cline

Radical Empathy Trio featuring Thollem McDonas, Michael Wimberly, Nels Cline

Loading Map....

Date/Time
Date(s) - 08/26/2016
10:00 PM - 11:00 PM

Location
The Stone

Category(ies)

Add This Event to Your Calendar


$20/set | More Information

First ‘live’ performance by this improvising trio featured on the Relative Pitch recording released in early 2015.

Michael Wimberly, percussionist/composer/arranger/producer from Cleveland is based in Harlem, NYC. Wimberly has recorded and toured internationally with Charles Gayle, William Parker, Sabir Mateen, Cooper-Moore, Borah Bergman, Steve Coleman, Roy Campbell, David Murray, John Blum, Kali Fasteau, Sirone, Vernon Reid, Kidd Jordan, Cooper-Moore, Henry Rollins, Blondie, Mickey Hart, Teramasa Hino, Onaje Allen Gumbs. Oluyemi & Ijeoma Thomas and many others.

As a percussion soloist, Wimberly has been featured with Europe’s Rundfunk and Tonkuntsler Symphony Orchestras, International Regions Symphony of Europe, Yakima Chamber Orchestra (Yakima,Wa.), Sage City Symphony, (Bennington, Vt).
As a composer, Wimberly’s compositions appear in dance companies Urban Bush Women, Joffrey Ballet, Alvin Ailey, Philadanco, Forces of Nature, Complexions, Alpha-Omega, Purelements, and The National Song and Dance Company of Mozambique. Wimberly is the president of Together with Music, a non-profit collective on the island of São Miguel, Azores, PT. Since 2012, Wimberly has been a professor of music at Bennington College in Vermont.

Guitar explorer Nels Cline is best known these days as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career – spanning jazz, rock, punk, and experimental – is well into its fourth decade, with over 160 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader. Born in Los Angeles in 1956, Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods” and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time.

Beyond Wilco, he leads The Nels Cline Singers (featuring Scott Amendola, bassist Trevor Dunn and Cyro Baptista), performs in a duo project with jazz guitar prodigy Julian Lage, and plays with Stained Radiance (an improvisational live project with performance painter Norton Wisdom), Fig (a collaboration with Yuka Honda), BB&C (a trio with Tim Berne & Jim Black) and Pillow Wand (a duo with guitarist Thurston Moore). A few of the other musicians with whom he has performed and/or recorded include: Ramblin’ Jack Elliot, Yoko Ono, Jeff Gauthier, Mike Watt, Carla Bozulich, Vinny Golia, Marc Ribot, Tinariwen, Julius Hemphill, Charlie Haden, Wadada Leo Smith, Lydia Lunch, and Lee Ranaldo.

Thollem has been excavating depths of sound and energy for 48 years. After dedicating his 20s and 30s to grassroots political activism, he’s refocused his attention these last 10 years on a breadth of musics that incorporate his myriad experiences and curiosities.

In this last decade alone, he has played well over 1,000 concerts throughout N. America and Europe as a soloist and in collaboration with hundreds of musicians, dancers, and filmmakers. As leader or co-leader, he has released over 40 albums in that span on 19 different vanguard labels to international critical acclaim.

“Thollem is an astounding pianist who understands the huge scope of the instrument” (Terry Riley) and who continues to delve into the furthest reaches and sub-genres of Post-Classical, Free Jazz, Noise, Punk, dance and film. A brief cross section of his many recent collaborators include William Parker, Pauline Oliveros, Stefano Scodanibbio, Mike Watt, Martha Colburn and Matthew Barney. He is the founding director of Estamos Ensemble, a Mexican-American cross border ensemble for musical exchange as well as the lead singer of the Italian agit-punk band Tsigoti.


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.