LaDonna Smith - Violinist - LaDonna Smith at MySpace

This is the twelfth concert in the Snowball Tour from Feb. 14 to Feb. 25, and from DC in the south to Dartmouth College in the north, and some eighteen musicians in all. Besides Jack Wright, who organized the tour, two of these musicians are from Europe, Andrea Neumann, from Berlin, and Stéphane Rives from Paris. As often before, the effort has been to bring American and European musicians together, mostly for the first time, and to be heard by audiences here, for whom they have never played.
In the Easton concert Jack and Stéphane will be joined by one of Jack's long-time partners from NY, Reuben Radding.
Full information on the tour:  http://www.springgardenmusic.com/tour-concert.html

Stéphane Rives in his own words:  “The mechanism of the saxophone permits a concrete-acoustic approach to the instrument. The possiblilities of acting directly on the pads and the flexibility of the reed offer subtle means of altering the sonic wave generated by breath. Once one adopts a way of thinking based on the sort of filtering any electronic musician does, one’s attention is drawn to the tiny micro-events that are barely audible in a traditional approach. The sonic planes twist and acoustic distortion emerges, revealing the subtle grains and textures lying “inside” the acoustic sound. New materials arise as though they had always been right there, hidden behind the immediately perceptible. In order to gain control of them, one reduces any idea of willful intervention to an absolute minimum, leaving only the flow of air through the metal cone, an action that is discrete in certain parameters.
My playing is not about arriving at something; instead, it is an instant that answers to that logic. My musical reflection focuses on questions of praxis. I am not driven by musical intention in the strict sense of the term, but the experience of sound I propose represents a means of “exciting” the listener, a way of questioning, of shaking up his feeling of psycological security and transforming his relationship to listening.”
http://www.myspace.com/stephanerives
http://stephanerives.net/

Reuben Radding, improvising bassist, emerged in the early 90's downtown scene working in groups led by Marc Ribot, John Zorn, Elliott Sharp, Dave Douglas, and led the Sun Ra repertory group, Myth Science. After touring Europe twice, he spent the late 90's on the West Coast collaborating with Eyvind Kang, Amy Denio, Wayne Horvitz, the Wally Shoup Trio, and Stuart Dempster among others. Currently residing in Brooklyn, Radding leads two groups, Intersections, and the Matrix String Quartet, and frequently performs with international improvisors like Wolfgang Fuchs, Daniel Carter, Carlo Actis Dato, Dylan Van der Schyff, Saadet Turkoz, Robert Dick, Jessica Lurie, and John Hollenbeck. His most recent release is the acclaimed duo CD "Luminescence" with Daniel Carter on the AUM Fidelity label.

http://www.reubenradding.com

Jack Wright: After teaching at Temple University in the 1960s and leaving academia in the early 1970s to engage in radical politics, by the late 1970s Wright directed his energies into music.  He is one of a very small group of musicians in North America that has played improvised music exclusively since the 1970s.  Through years of near constant touring, often performing for audiences in cities and towns where improvised music had never before been heard, he came to be regarded as something of an underground legend, called the "Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music". He has deliberately eschewed the conventions and socio-aesthetic limitations of musical careerism to pursue his own vision. Although his de-professionalized approach sets him apart from most musicians at his level of accomplishment, his art has always grown, expanded, and synthesized new information.  He is unquestionably an original and virtuosic saxophonist, a master improviser who is deeply lyrical, with humor never far away.
 
Today Wright tours frequently in Europe and North America (and in Japan in 2006), making new musical and human connections, bringing European musicians to the U.S. and bringing musicians everywhere together.  His inspiration has provided crucial impetus to hundreds of musicians and has even motivated several people to establish music venues in order to present him and other improvisers (e.g. Baltimore’s High Zero festival).  His vast list of collaborators includes some “name” luminaries (William Parker, Axel Dorner, Michel Doneda, Andrea Neumann, Denman Maroney, Bhob Rainey to name a few) but more significant are the many obscure greats he has played with.  He has made over 40 recordings (many published on his own Spring Garden label), performed in over 20 countries, and written extensively and insightfully about music and society for journals such as Improjazz (France) and Signal to Noise (US), as well as his own website.
http://www.springgardenmusic.com

Adam Web -
www.adamwebmusic.com

Birgit Ulher -Trumpeter Birgit Ulher originally studied the visual arts, which still have an important influence on her music. Since the early eighties she has been involved in free improvisation and experimental music. Since then she has “established a distinguished grammar of sounds beyond the open trumpet” (jazzdimensions.de). She performs solo, with dancers, working ensembles, and one-time collaborations with musicians from around the world. Current projects include duos with Ute Wassermann, Gino Robair and Damon Smith, UNSK (with Liselotte Norelius, Martin Kuechen and Raymond Strid), Nordzucker (with Lars Scherzberg and Michael Maierhof), and a trio with Lou Mallozzi and Michael Zerang.

Leonel Kaplan has developed a very special approach to the trumpet, which has led him to understand how to take maximum advantage of those aspects of his instrument directly linked to air itself. Thus, the physical nature of the trumpet and the presence of air as the bearer of sound became fundamental points of reference in his quest for a personal language. He has composed music for sound installations, dance and theater; and collaborated with experimental improvisers like Axel Dörner, Michel Doneda, Jack Wright, and Lê Quan Ninh, among many others.