An Explosive Contemporary Jazz Quartet THE TETRADE

Jeff Kaiser Guerino Mazzola Sirone Heinz Geisser (trumpet) (grand piano) (bass) (percussion) Jeff Kaiser (trumpet): http://www.jeffkaiser.com Jeff Kaiser is the recipient of numerous grants, honors and awards. He is a thirteen-time recipient of the Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Ventura and a three-time recipient of the Forum of the Arts Grant administered by the Ventura County Museum of History and Art. He has received critical praise in numerous internatonal publications. In addition to composing, he is well known in creative music circles as a trumpet player, performing with (among others) Eugene Chadbourne, The Michael Vlatkovich Brass Trio, Brad Dutz, as well as his own ensembles including his large group: The Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet. He is the founder and co-director of the Ventura New Music Concert Series, founder and co-editor of the NewCreativeMusic.com. He has released eleven CDs as leader/co-leader and has also appeared on CDs by Headless Household, The Motor Totemist Guild, Eugene Chadbourne, and others. He did the musical score and sound effects for the award-winning independent film by Ted Mills, Nowhereland, featured at national and international film festivals. The title work of his CD Ganz Andere was performed at the opening concert of the 1999 National Conference of the Society for Electro-Acoustic Music at San Jose State University. Television trumpet performance credits include the HBO series Deadwood. He has been a visiting artist/lecturer positions at Roosevelt University (Chicago, Illinois), Westmont College (Santa Barbara, CA), California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) and California Lutheran University (Thousand Oaks, CA). He has taught workshops at various locations including the Museum of Contemporary Art (San Diego, CA). He is a former music director for the Ojai Camerata. He is one of the founding (and current) members of the Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet. Guerino Mazzola (grand piano): http://www.encyclospace.org/jazz He qualified as a professor in mathematics at the University of Zürich. He developed a Mathematical Music Theory, which he implemented in composition, analysis, and performance software (presto, rubato). He has published 19 books and over 100 papers in the fields of number theory, topology, algebraic geometry, statistics, computer graphics, neuromusicology, music informatics, semiotics, epistemology, and science policy. As a contemporary jazz pianist and

composer he published 20 LPs, CDs, and a classical sonata. He as performed and recorded with Rob Brown, Mat Maneri, Scott Fields, Matt Turner, Sirone, Heinz Geisser, Urs Blöchlinger, Werner Lüdi, Paul Lovens, Yuki Suga, and others. His performances include Germany, France, Switzerland, South Korea, Indonesia, Japan, Mexico, and the United States. Apart from his continuous collaboration with the IRCAM (Institut de Recherche et Coordination Acoustique/Musique) and the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, he is lecturer for music informatics at the University and the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule of Zürich. His 1368-page book The Topos of Music was published in 2002 by Birkhäuser, Basel. With this work, he qualified 2003 at the University of Zürich as a professor in computational science. In 2005 he was visiting professor at the musicology department of the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. His present research focuses on gesture theory, collaborative arts and music software design. Since 2007, Guerino Mazzola is professor of music theory and collaborative arts at the School of Music of the University of Minnesota. Sirone (Norris Jones) (bass): http://www.allaboutjazz.com/php/article.php?id=16033 An excellent technician and composer, Sirone was part of the great Revolutionary Ensemble trio in the '70s, and has also worked with many other free bandleaders and groups. His prominent tone and decisive playing expertly meshed with Leroy Jenkins' and Jerome Cooper's on Ensemble recordings and in concert. Sirone worked in Atlanta with a band called the Group in the late '50s and early '60s. George Adams was among the players in this ensemble. Sirone moved to New York in the mid-'60s, and helped form the Untraditional Jazz Improvisational Team with Dave Burrell. He did sessions with Marion Brown, Gato Barbieri, Pharoah Sanders, Noah Howard, and Sonny Sharrock in the late '60s, and also played with Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler, Archie Shepp, Sun Ra, and many others. Sirone spent six years with the Revolutionary Ensemble, originally forming it with Jenkins and Frank Clayton (later replaced by Cooper). He recorded with Clifford Thornton, Roswell Rudd, Dewey Redman, Cecil Taylor, and Walt Dickerson in the '70s and early '80s and recntly with Guerino Mazzola and Heinz Geisser in their Tetrade trio. The trio date with Sirone, Dickerson, and Andrew Cyrille is available on CD, as are some earlier dates featuring him with Taylor, Redman, and others. Heinz Geisser (percussion): http://www.geisser.com Heinz Geisser was born in 1961 and studied classical guitar with Ermano Maggini and classical percussion with Horst Hofmann at the Zurich Music Conservatory. By his mid-twenties he was awarded the soloist diploma on classical guitar. He was also playing jazz on the instrument, making his first recording in 1988 with Swiss saxophonist Urs Blöchlinger. Since 1990 he has been concentrating increasingly on percussion, dedicating himself to improvised music. During an extended visit to New York City he formed the Collective 4tet with Mark Hennen, Jeff Hoyer and William Parker in 1992. Their five CDs The Ropedancer, Orca, Live at Crescent, Synopsis and Moving Along released on Leo Records have received outstanding reviews. For the last decade Heinz Geisser has performed and recorded with many leading artists in the USA, Europe and Asia including Guerino Mazzola, Sirone alias Norris Jones, Mat Maneri, Rob Brown, Scott Fields, Shiro Onuma, Yuki Saga, among many others.

Some reviews (for more, please, see the internet references!) Jeff Kaiser “Sinister, strident and glacial sounds emanating from sunny Ventura, California. Kaiser uses quartertone trumpet, McNalley electric guitar. Both add electronics to distort, extend and transmute their instruments. Zugzwang communicates a taste for controlled acoustic violence. It works well because Kaiser and McNalley's mutual understanding and individual skill are reinforced rather than masked by the treatments. The music has imaginative scope too: it's dramatic in structure as well as texture. McNalley, still in his early twenties, is developing an exciting and distinctive voice on an instrument that has already been exhaustively redefined by iconoclasts and innovators. And it's clear that he benefits from Kaiser's challenging company.” Julian Cowley, The Wire, November 2006 Heinz Geisser-Guerino Mazzola Duo „This is rare work, music of emotion and wit, filled with thoughts and feelings that can be expressed no other way, whether sombre or excited, filled with passions and longings, or playful, bantering, abrasive, and angular. Two musicians of the highest calibre take us through an imaginative landscape of mountain peaks and fragrant valleys, of glimpsed machines and sudden free falls into space, through known vignettes and incomprehensible equations that strike at our deepest sense of our own orderings.“ Canadian music critic Stuart Broomer on Duo CD Toni’s Delight – Live in Seoul Sirone „The final set was the William Parker Bass Quartet with Charles Gayle on alto sax. The quartet featured the amazing line-up of Alan Silva, Sirone, Henry Grimes and William Parker, all on acoustic basses. This was a truly historic meeting of four influential bassists with vast amounts of records and gigs for each. Each one has a most distinctive style and they worked together wonderfully - plucking, bowing, strumming and blending ideas into a rich and spicy soup of sound. Sometimes they created the ancient cosmic drone when two or more bassists would be bowing at the same time. There were moments of deep, dark and solemn sadness and moments of beauty and hope. They evoked a communal spirit and I got the feeling that both Peter Kowald and Wilber Morris would certainly be smiling down from the heavens.“ Bruce Lee Gallanter of Downtown Music Gallery, The 9hth Annual VISION Festival 2004