Drummer Tomas Fujiwara and guitarist Mary Halvorson have been collaborating for eighteen years. They met in New York City in the early 2000's, and first started playing together in cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum's sextet. Since then they have become each other's most frequent collaborators, working together in a myriad of projects led by Michael Formanek, Adam O'Farrill, Matana Roberts, Tomeka Reid, Ben Goldberg and Mike Reed. Fujiwara is also a part of Halvorson's Code Girl and Amaryllis, and Halvorson is a member of Fujiwara's bands Triple Double and The Hook Up. This rare duo performance showcases a project built on years of history and collaboration in a stripped down setting.
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Guitarist, composer and MacArthur Fellow Mary Halvorson has been called “NYC’s least-predictable improviser” (Howard Mandel, City Arts), “the most forward-thinking guitarist working right now” (Lars Gotrich, NPR.org) and “one of today’s most formidable bandleaders” (Francis Davis, Village Voice). Halvorson’s most recent releases, Amaryllis and Belladonna, showcase her string quartet writing deftly interpreted by The Mivos Quartet, alongside a new sextet featuring Adam O’Farrill (trumpet), Jacob Garchik (trombone), Patricia Brennan (vibraphone), Nick Dunston (bass) and Tomas Fujiwara (drums). The twin debuts for Nonesuch Records, released in May 2022, were called “...new landmarks in Halvorson’s already inimitable discography” in a five star review by The Guardian. Collaborative projects include the longstanding collective ensemble Thumbscrew (with Michael Formanek and Fujiwara), and a chamber-jazz duo with violist Jessica Pavone. Over the past two decades Ms. Halvorson has also performed in bands led by Anthony Braxton, Tim Berne, Taylor Ho Bynum, Trevor Dunn, Ingrid Laubrock, Myra Melford, Jason Moran, Joe Morris, Tom Rainey, Tomeka Reid, Marc Ribot, Ches Smith and John Zorn, among others.
Brooklyn-based Tomas Fujiwara is an active player in some of the most exciting music of the current generation. He leads the bands Triple Double, 7 Poets Trio, and Tomas Fujiwara & The Hook Up; has a collaborative duo with Taylor Ho Bynum; is a member of the collective trio Thumbscrew (with Mary Halvorson and Michael Formanek); and engages in a diversity of creative work with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Mary Halvorson, Tomeka Reid, Matana Roberts, Nicole Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Amir ElSaffar, Benoit Delbecq, and many others. In 2021, he won the Downbeat Critics Poll for Rising Star Drummer, and premiered two suites of new music as part of his Roulette Residency: “You Don’t Have to Try” (with Meshell Ndegeocello) and “Shizuko." “Drummer Tomas Fujiwara works with rhythm as a pliable substance, solid but ever shifting. His style is forward-driving but rarely blunt or aggressive, and never random. He has a way of spreading out the center of a pulse while setting up a rigorous scaffolding of restraint…A conception of the drum set as a full-canvas instrument, almost orchestral in its scope.” (New York Times)
This event is part of the 2024 Biamp Portland Jazz Festival presented by PDX Jazz