Calendar

November 18, 2011

The Loft, New York City

Positive Catastrophe

Positive Catastrophe is the brainchild of Taylor Ho Bynum and Abraham Gomez-Delgado. Bynum has been described as “animated as a vintage Loony Tune…one of the most exciting figures in jazz’s new power generation” by Steve Dollar of Time Out Chicago. Gomez-Delgado has been called “the new century’s mad scientist, creating a musical hybrid so seemingly wrong it can be nothing but right” by Global Rhythm Magazine. Together they have come up with Positive Catastrophe: a trans-idiomatic ten-piece little big band that connects the dots between Sun Ra and Eddie Palmieri.

The group enlists a bevy of New York’s most adventurous jazz and salsa musicians, all composers and leaders in their own right, whose performing credits include such luminaries as Anthony Braxton, Max Roach, Henry Threadgill, Paul Motian, Steve Coleman, and Eddie Bobé. With the exceptional musicianship of the players and their fluidity in multiple genres, a unique instrumentation that hints at a traditional jazz and salsa big bands yet includes french horn, erhu, and rock guitar, and a pair of dramatic vocalists that are comfortable singing in three languages, Positive Catastrophe creates a truly boundary-crossing kind of new music.