Jazz Gallery, New York City
Positive Catastrophe
Led by performer/composers Taylor Ho Bynum and Abraham Gomez-Delgado, Positive Catastrophe is a trans-idiomatic ten-piece little big band featuring some of NYC’s top musicians. On three days over the next four months, the Jazz Gallery will host a mini-residency of the avant-jazz/salsa ensemble for a series of workshops, open rehearsals, and performances. The group will also be performing at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn’s leading new music venue, on January 21.
At 3:30pm on each of the residency days at the Jazz Gallery, Bynum and Gomez-Delgado will offer a free workshop examining different facets of their musical collaboration: looking at composition, improvisation, and combining salsa rhythms and free improvisation techniques. At 5pm, Positive Catastrophe will conduct an open rehearsal, inviting students and interested participants an inside glimpse of the band’s working processes as they develop a new book of music. Finally, the full ensemble will close out each night with a live performance.
At the final performance on Saturday, February 19, the Jazz Gallery residency will culminate in the world premiere of Dibrujos, Dibrujos, Dibrujos, a new composition by Gomez-Delgado commissioned by a grant from Chamber Music America’s 2010 New Jazz Works, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation. The residency is also funded in part by a grant from Meet the Composer’s MetLife Creative Connections.
Winner of the 2010 ASCAP/CMA Award for Adventurous Programming, The Jazz Gallery is a nonprofit organization that nurtures the youngest generation of professional jazz musicians by giving them an audience for their performances and a stage upon which to assemble their bands. The Gallery is open 3 to 5 nights per week, 50 weeks per year and produces more than 150 events per year.