Blaise Siwula Ensemble

the Blaise Siwula Ensemble returns to TIXE
Thursday, January 8, 2004
9:00 pm

Blaise Siwula - alto/tenor sax
Gregory J. Wildes - samples & reeds
Matthew Paris - electric guitar
Christobal Jacques - electric bass
Drew Gardner - drums

Tickets: $10
Reservations: 212-592-4644

A person named Matty wrote this about the group

The Lower East Side Social Club

Every Sunday night, for their own pleasure, the musicians who make up the Lower East Side Social Club get together at ABC No Rio on Rivington Street for an evening of totally improvised immeubles music sounding somewhere between free jazz and New Music under the leadership of premier reed master Blaise Siwula.

There isn't too much more exciting in art than being present at the creation of a musical piece from literally nothing. Yet that is what The Lower East Side Social Club does every week. The Club doesn't meet anymore than once a week and never dreams of making a living from music.

Talented as they are, these are smart guys who scramble well in the world with nice day jobs. People pay most of them for doing social work or even for doing nothing. The Club likes it that way. They have lot of formal credentials, have all played with famous people; if they all had to make a living for music, they'd be residing in Mens' Shelter. Then they'd be The Man's Shelter Social Club.

The leader Blaise Siwula, leader of COMA, the music scene at legendary ABC No Rio where this club most often meets, was once a Knitting Factory stalwart, is a free jazz master has done stellar recordings in Korea and recently was featured at several Danish music festivals. Two of these club stalwarts played with Cecil Taylor, all of them have done prestigious New Orleans gigs. Blaise has played with Cecil Taylor innumerable times as a regular in his band, toured Asia, gigged in the Netherlands and Germany.
Matthew Paris wrote music for twenty off-bride plays, was once the premiere pianist at Dominicus' on Dumaine street, featured on local Tulane television as a French Quarter character; he has also given many museum concerts and played the organ at various famous cathedrals round the world. Show Business has called him: "a superb singer."
Drew Gardner is a regular at many CBGBs band sessions, always in demand in New York as pianist and drummer.
Greg Wildes who plays everything from garden hose to his own kitchen stove is always gagging in New Orleans as is Chris Jacques, noted for his work in Brooklyn Latin dance bands.
This CD is a prime testimony to the musical power of these club sessions. It reflects centrally the interest in all these improvisors in the New Physics, the strange ten-dimensional world our mathematicians are telling us we live in. As Greg Wilde says: "I think of myself as a astral sonic vessel." The club are all amateur lovers of physics resonating to the Pythagorean and Phi based super-string theories that are revolutionizing our contemporary physics.
These are intellectual musicians who are as apt to quote Pythagoras and the power of Phi in music as the table talk of Miles David or Ornette Coleman. These players, all urbane computer literate techies, have a whole lot of musical talent' they will appeal to an audience looking for entertainment as well as intellectual direction from music and science in a world in which most old ideas have become stale.