Show: 8:00pm
Tickets: $20/PWYC
This unnamed-as-of-yet ensemble is a classic case of 3 musicians meeting that just works.
Presenting ensembles, projects and premiers in Jazz, Creative Music and Contemporary Classical circles, Alex Fournier is a double bassist with an interest pursuing his instrument’s idioms completely. Alex began his musical studies at the University of Toronto under such Canadian masters as Dave Young, Andrew Downing and Jim Vivian. As well, he began studying composition under Andrew Downing and Phil Nimmons, graduating with a Bachelor of Music with honors in 2011. Alex later attended both the Banff Creative Music Workshop and the SIM Workshop in 2013, leading him to a position in the Johns Hopkins University’s Peabody Conservatory’s Jazz Performance program. Alex has studied both performance and composition under Michael Formanek, as well as Paul Johnson for classical performance, while performing in multiple classic and contemporary jazz ensembles, various classical chamber groups, orchestras and solo performances and presenting multiple concerts and initiatives featuring a hybrid of composed and improvised music. Alex graduated with a Graduate Performance Diploma in Jazz Performance in May of 2016.
Currently based in Toronto Ontario, Alex presents multiple groups, series and initiatives. Among his projects is his main vehicle, Triio, which features episodic compositions that focus on the interplay and mutual influence shared between written music and free/collective improvisation, creating the effect of a “living score”. Triio released its first album in 2019, and it’s second release, Six-ish Plateaus, in late summer of 2022 both to wide critical acclaim. Alex makes up one third of the collective, Money House, which focuses on original compositions and sketches which draw influence from the writing of many of the bebop and post-bop piano trios of the 1950s and 60s. Money House’s first album, Jazz and Financial Solutions, will see its release in late 2022. As well, Alex contributes to the group Huet//Fournier//Kuhl, a collective focused on free and textural improvisation, featuring performers Edwin Huet on electronics and live processing, and Mike Kuhl on drums and percussion. They released their first album, Rarefied Air, in early 2020. Alex also acts as a sideman in several other projects, such as an “impossibly hard music” group Bearrah Fawcett, a semi-modular group, The Dan Pitt Trio and Quintet, and a group dedicated exclusively to free improvisation, Pineapple. Alex also hosts his own performance/writer’s workshop series help of collaborator, Patrick O’Reilly. Furniture Music takes the form of both monthly installments of curated performances by improvising artists of any discipline from Toronto and beyond, as well as a writers workshop featuring a rotating panel of musicians who perform incomplete pieces, sketches and graphic scores brought in live while offering commentary on the directions that the score can be taken in.
Rick Sacks began freelancing in Manhattan performing with ensembles including The New Orchestra, Newband, The New Jersey Percussion Ensemble and The Composer’s Ensemble. After teaching at Bennington College for two years, Rick began traveling to Toronto to perform with the Canadian Opera Company, on film tracks, in modern dance works and with the contemporary and avant-garde groups Arraymusic, Aventa, Art of Time, Glass Orchestra, New Music Concerts, Ensemble Noir, Red Sky Performance, The Evergreen Club Gamelan and many others. He has toured extensively throughout Africa, Asia and Europe with these groups and has worked with such masters as Pierre Boulez, Henry Brant, George Crumb, Heinz Holliger, Mauricio Kagel, Udo Kasemets, Helmut Lachenmann, Witold Lutoslawski, Charles Wuorinen, Terry Riley and James Tenney.
Rick was Artistic Director of Arraymusic from 2011 to 2016 and Array’s Technical Director from 2016-17. He now broadcasts live at twitch.tv/soundpilot
In 1986 Mr. Sacks revised and Edited, for COLFRANC Music Publishing Corp., Edgard Varèse’s Hyperprism available through Boosey and Hawkes.
