MUSIC

Saturday 11 April @ OUTPOST, 8pm $10 or b/o subconsciouscafe presents ESP Records 60s Free Jazz Pioneers BURTON GREENE & PERRY ROBINSON Burton Greene - piano / Perry Robinson - clarinet http://www.klezmokum.com/burtongreene/ http://www.myspace.com/perryrobinson Burton Greene figured prominently in New York's free jazz movement of the '60s, performing with such major figures as Marion Brown, Sam Rivers, Gato Barbieri, and Alan Silva. As a child, Greene studied classical music at the Fine Arts Academy in Chicago; from 1956-1958 he studied jazz with Dick Marx. Greene moved to New York in the early '60s, as the city's free jazz movement was gathering momentum. There, he formed the Free Form Improvisation Ensemble with Silva in 1963 -- reputedly one of the first groups devoted to playing a wholly improvised music. In 1964, he joined the Jazz Composer's Guild. During the mid-'60s, he recorded for the ESP-Disk label as a leader, before moving to the Netherlands in 1969. Greene became something of a journeyman, performing all over Europe while maintaining a residence on a houseboat in Amsterdam. He recorded intermittently in the '70s and '80s. Greene became one of the few free jazz musicians to experiment with synthesizers. He's played solo and led various bands of unusual instrumentation; a recent project is a klezmer group called Klez-Jazz, which features clarinetist Perry Robinson. During the '90s, Greene recorded more frequently in the U.S., notably for the Cadence Jazz and C.I.M.P. labels. Greene's autobiography is entitled Memoirs of a Musical "Pesty Mystic" -- or -- From the Ashcan to the Ashram and Back Again, published by Cadence Jazz Books. Perry Robinson For over four decades, Perry Robinson has been the sui generis master of the clarinet in jazz, folk and avant-garde music. Early in his career he was a sideman with Tete Montoliu, and he has since worked with some of the world's best musicians, including the Brubeck Family, Gunter Hampel, Henry Grimes, Bill Dixon, Naná Vasconcelos, Carla Bley, Archie Shepp, Charlie Haden, Badal Roy, John Carter, Anthony Braxton, Mark Whitecage, Pete Seeger and George Clinton. He has been a mainstay of Burton Greene's Klezmokum and of Lou Grassi's Po Band, which has recorded with Marshall Allen, John Tchicai and Joseph Jarman on CIMP. His own trio Raga Roni, featuring Badal Roy and Ed Schuller, released its self-titled debut disc in 2002 on Geetika Records. Robinson also performed on William Parker's trio recording Bob's Pink Cadillac on Eremite. The Perry Robinson Quartet, featuring pianists Simon Nabotov and Christoph Adams, bassist Ed Schuller and drummer Ernst Bier, has released four CDs: Nightmare Island, Call To The Stars, Angelology and Still Traveling on the West Wind and Timescraper labels; the trio of Robinson-Schuller-Bier is featured on Children's Song (Konnex Records). Recently Perry has been playing with Wynne Paris and Groovananda, the band Centazzo-Robinson-Stowe featuring percussionist Andrea Centazzo and pianist Nobu Stowe, the Israeli clarinetist Harold Rubin, U.S. Pipe & the Balls Johnson Dance Machine, and the Israeli composer-pianist Anat Fort, whose new ECM release A Long Story features Perry. Perry's autobiography, The Traveler, was published in 2002.