ORGAN TRIO 2 is the newest installment of a project I’ve been working on since 2016: riffing on the classic jazz organ trio through a 21st-century lens. My longtime collaborator (and my various bands’ secret weapon), guitarist Anders Nilsson, and I will now be joined by the electrifying drummer/percussionist Kate Gentile. We’ll debut a set of five compositions I wrote during the latter part of 2020, reflecting on things lost, found, and imagined. These new pieces build on my previous work for this band, more deliberately weaving in strands from avant-garde jazz and concert music, blues, rock, and more. The result is an eclectic ride, by turns dramatic, elegiac, groovy, and (dare I say) wry, through unusual forms, moods, and sound-worlds. This music is an intricately structured mix of written and free-improvised aesthetics, turning on a dime between precise ensemble passages and freewheeling solos that highlight each musician's unique voice in counterpoint with the others’.

APOCALYPSCAPADES is a set of ten decadently virtuosic etude-like pieces for solo piano which I composed in 2018-19. Feelings of the perpetual effort, futility, excitement, desperation, danger, and absurdity of living in our times (pre-pandemic!) drove my creation of these pieces. One could describe this as music that sounds like dancing on the edge of a cliff (or looking over the edge of one). To help shoulder the physical/mental burdens of this music, and to share its joys, I’ve invited three of New York’s most marvelously fearsome new-music pianists — Marilyn Nonken, Steven Beck, and Stephen Gosling — to join me in bringing these pieces alive into an even more apocalyptic “apocalypscape.”

Tickets will be available only at the door (cash only). $20 suggested.

I-Beam is a wonderful artist-run space which is big on music but small in square footage, so seating is very limited. Doors will open around 8:15pm; please don’t be late as that will delay or disrupt the start time of the concert. For everyone’s safety, all performers are vaccinated against COVID and will be wearing masks, and the same is required of the audience.