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9

KNITTING FACTORY
Goes to the NorthWest
Town Pump
Feb. 24 • 8PM
$19.50 (GST included)
During the 1980s. the
Knitting Factory in New York
City established itself as the place
to hear creative. adventurous
music. Bill Frisell. John Zorn and
dozens of others have frequently
played there over the years. Much
of the great music heard on any
given night has been documented
and recently released in a series
called .. Live at the Knining
Factory. Vol. 1-4" (A&M
Records).
During the last week of
October. 1990, the Coastal Jazz
and Blues Society, with the
financial assistance of External
Affairs in Ottawa, arranged a
series of concerts at the Knitting
Factory featuring leading
Canadian contemporary
musicians. The musicians chosen
were all members of Vancouver's
New Orchestra Workshop Society,
with the addition of Montreal
based bassist Lisle Ellis. The
series. featuring Vancouver's
Chief Feature, Lunar Adventures,
Paul Plimley/Lisle Ellis and
Graham Ord was very successful
and \I ell received in New York.
Now, the Knitting Factory
hits the road. Three cutting edge
bands that currently play at the
club a lot will be doing a West
Coast tour.

The SONNY
SHARROCK Band
Sonny Sharrock - guitar
Melvin Gibbs - bass
Lance Carter - drums
Abe Speller - drums
Dave Synder - piano
Guitarist Sonny Sharrock
lent his skills to the great
improvisors Miles Davis and
Pharoah Sanders in the late 1960s.
He is acknowledged as one of the
innovators of avant garde guitar,

2

February/March

and his groups, Last Exit and No
Material (with Ginger Baker),
might be described as "mind
meets metal" - a marriage of
remarkable musical facility with a
go-for-broke attitude. Musician
magazine hailed him as a "genius
whose playing has the beauty,
power and implacable momentum
of a lava flow." Guitar Player
Magazine called him "America's
leading free jazz guitarist".
Regarding his bandmates
Sharrock says "they're killers and
I love 'em ... a
rhythm section that
swings and
improvises, brings
excitement and
surprise to the
music. They make
the music as
wonderful as a first
love and as
dev~tating as
death~The five
piece band includes
superb drummers
Abe Speller and
Lance Carter,
each of the
drummers is a
multi-directional
whirlwind.
Sharrock took his
band as part of the
Knitting Factory
Tour of Europe
and was hailed the
best band on the road. Together
they tum the beat inside out,
making it seem endlessly elastic,
yet never lacking a pulse of
extreme urgency.

CHUNK
Samm Bennett vocals, electronic
percussion
Mark Deffenbaugh guitar, vocals
Oren Freed - drums
Joe Gallant - bass
Samm Bennett's ensemble
CHUNK is a difficult group to
pigeonhole - the usual generic
descriptions or categories just
don't apply. The inspirational

sources that are reflected in one
way or another in Bennett's songs
are diverse. One hears echoes of
African drumming, the Blues, the
Beatles, Appalachian Folk music,
and what-have-you. The songs
cover a range of styles and
emotions that don't fall into
readily defined modes. A New
York Times reviewer said
"CHUNK sets up intricate offcenter patterns, clanking, jingling,
sputtering, often using electrical
equivalents of non-Western
instruments like log-drums or

Sonny Sharrock: " ... music
as wonderful as a first love
and as devastating as
death."
gongs .. . CHUNK's arrangements
show a careful ear for texture - if
one song clatters the next is likely
to wheeze and twang instead."
Bennett's background as a
drummer/percussionist interested
in various traditions of drumming
throughout the world gives
CHUNK its unique rhythmic
impetus. One reviewer in Holland
put it this way, "Bennett works in
the area of pop song form, but his
songs have something all too often
hard to find - a characteristic
rhythmic design."

THIRD PERSON
Tom Cora - cello
· Samm Bennett drums/percussion
Wayne Horvitz keyboards
Tom Cora moved to New
York City in 1979 and
subsequently became an important
player in the downtown new
music scene. Deemed an "unsung
wizard" of the cello by the
Baltimore Press, Cora is a
founding member of Skeleton
Crew with Fred Frith and has
collaborated with Eugene
Chadbourne, John Zorn, Karl
Berger and George Lewis.
Percussionist and composer
Samm Bennett is a regular
contributor to important
collaborative groups and plays
with a variety of people. Bennett
is a co-founder of Bosho, plays
with Odd Job, Semantics with
Elliott Sharp and Ned Rothenberg,
and leads his own group,
CHUNK.
In the more than twenty live
concerts Third Person has played
at the Knitting Factory over the
last two years the third chair has
never been occupied twice by the
same person. For the Vancouver
performance, the Third Person
will be keyboardist/composer
Wayne Horvitz (recently seen in
Vancouver with Bill Frisell). Cora
and Bennett have a way of
improvising together that owes as
much to pop song form as it does
to free improvisation. Sceptics of
'free improvisation' have
characterized its practitioners with
the operative "when in doubt,
trill". Third Person's grooves
leave little room for doubt. This
ever-changing trio keeps itself and
the audience on its toes.

For complete
Ticket Info
please see the
back page.

Looking Ahead