Peter Evans Quintet
“I start with adjectives: amazing, abrasive, excessive, overwhelming, amazing, extreme, revolutionary, incendiary...” —Carlos Perez Cruz, El Club de Jazz, Madrid “For this group [Evans] has written pieces that merge articulately composed sections—everyone, including the drummer, sight-reading his way through the staccato tone rows and sudden changes of tempo—with melodic free improvisation on grooves and vamps.... He wove this all together into an unbroken set of music, making a fledgling band at a tiny place bring a dramatic arc to a huge amount of information.”
—Ben Ratliff, New York Times
“Ghosts is a modern classic of the future.”
—Mark Corroto, All About Jazz
Taking jazz ensembles into the 21st century, the Peter Evans Quintet incorporates real-time sound processing with traditional instruments. These live electronics allow the group to change their sound fluidly from mellow tones to jagged rattling to cacophonous reverberation. The quintet draws on traditional jazz idioms as source material and contorts them into something resembling classical European avant-garde—complete with complex rhythms played with pinpoint accuracy and confounding extended techniques. Peter Evans Quintet:
- Peter Evans (trumpets/compositions)
- Ron Stabinsky (piano)
- Tom Blancarte (bass)
- Jim Black (drums)
- Sam Pluta (live electronics)
Main Image: Peter Evans Quintet in 2013. Photo: EMPAC/Rensselaer.