Nu Jazz at the Reformed Church: a quartet of world-famous jazz musicians consisting of John Ruskin, Vladimir Tarasov, Stan Sandell and Tim Perkis will perform in Riga

On October 18 at 19:00 in the Reformed Church in Old Riga (Mārstaļu 10) for the first time and for one evening only – on one stage will be the Raskin-Sandell-Perkis-Tarasov quartet – masters, pillars and prominent figures of new jazz (nu jazz) and free improvisation.
Experimenters and innovators who had a huge influence on the jazz scene, teachers of many famous musicians. This will be a special concert - electroacoustic improvisation and studio recording.

Quartet line-up:
Jon Ruskin, saxophone, USA
Sten Sandell, piano, Sweden
Tim Perkis, electronics, USA
Vladimir Tarasov, percussion, Lithuania

 The concert of the Raskin-Sandell-Perkis-Tarasov quartet will certainly become a bright and unforgettable event in Riga’s musical life. It does not fit into narrow genre boundaries, because everything that musicians of this scale do on stage has long gone beyond any templates and conventions.

Jon Raskin: This is a special group and I’m very excited to be playing with Vladimir Tarasov, Tim Perkis, and Sten Sandell. They are pioneers and innovators in their approach to music expanding the language of their instruments and redefining the nexus of improvisation and composing. By composing I mean the ability to hear, support, and add to the ideas that are being created by each other. This allows for fluidity of form and flow in the interactions of the players.

Tickets are already available on the Biļešu Serviss network

https://www.bilesuserviss.lv/eng/tickets/muzika/kvartets-raskin-sandell-perkis-tarasov-444038/

Jon Raskin, expert of various saxophones, electronics and concertina, is best known as a co-founder of the famous Rova Saxophone Quartet in which he plays baritone and alto saxophones. Rova has released more than 40 albums and toured many countries. Raskin studied composition and saxophone, and at the beginning of his career played in the new music ensembles directed by John Adams and Barney Childs. In the 1970s, he served as music director of the Tumbleweed Dance Company and helped found the Blue Dolphin Alternative Music Space and Farm project in San Francisco. The saxophonist is active as a composer, has received commissions from various organisations and ensembles, and has composed music for theatre, film and dance companies. He has recorded with the Anthony Braxton Quintet, Tim Berne, Phillip Gelb, Dana Reason and Pauline Oliveros, JR Quartet (with Liz Allbee, George Cremaschi, and Gino Robair), the FPR Trio (with Frank Gratkowski and Phillip Greenlief), and has released personal albums. Raskin’s other groups include The Out Of Bounds Trio (with Tim Bulkley and Safa Shokrai), a duo with drummer Jon Bafus, the projects 2+2 (with Ph. Greenlief) and The Long Table (with Ph. Greenlief, John Hanes, Dan Seamans and John Shiurba).

Sten Sandell is a prominent voice of Swedish improvised music: keyboardist, also playing piano, organ and electronic instruments, producer, Doctor of Philosophy. For his contributions in music, he was endowed with the Swedish Royal Academy of Music’s Jazz Award in 2012.

Sandell has collaborated with Scandinavia’s leading improvisers Emil Strandberg, Paal Nilssen-Love, Johan Berthling, Sven-Åke Johansson, Mats Persson, Sofia Jernberg, Carl-Axel Dominique, Mats Gustafsson, Raymond Strid, world celebrities Evan Parker, Chris Cutler, etc. He is involved in projects with visual artists, dancers, writers.

Tim Perkis is considered one of the most exciting masters of the live electronic and computer sound, and a prominent figure on the improvised and electronic music scene. Over a career spanning decades, he has collaborated with hundreds of musicians, including many of the leading figures in free improvisation from the US and Europe. He has formed a number of ensembles, including FuzzyBunny, Splendor Generator, League of Automatic Music Composers, The Hub, Rotodoti and Natto Trio. He and The Hub were presented with the GigaHerz Award for excellence in electronic music by the Karlsruhe (Germany) Centre for Art and Media.

Improvisers are attracted by his intellectuality and openness to the ideas of his collaborators. Perkis has performed and recorded with pianist Chris Brown, saxophonist John Butcher, guitarist Fred Frith, percussionist Gino Robair, trumpeter Wadada Leo Smith and many other celebrities. His works have been performed in avant-garde venues in North America, Europe and Japan. Perkis has designed displays for science and music museums in San Francisco, Toronto, Seattle, assisted various institutions as a media consultant. He is renowned as an inventive developer of video and audio equipment. His articles have appeared in The Computer Music Journal, Leonardo, and Electronic Musician. He is composer-in-residence at Mills College in Oakland.

Percussionist, composer and visual artist Vladimir Tarasov has left a strong imprint on jazz and academic music. He composes for orchestras, films, theatre, and has been a member of the Lithuanian Composers’ Union since 1991. The musician has collaborated with many performing arts representatives and institutions, including the Stuttgart State Theatre, the Majestic Theatre of the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, and the Josef Nadj Centre Choregraphique National in Orléans. Since 1991, Tarasov has been participating in solo and group exhibitions of visual art, creating audiovisual installations, for which he often finds themes during his travels to exotic countries. He has shown his works at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art, Centre Pompidou in Paris, Venice Biennale, EXPO-2008 in Zaragoza, Bass Museum of Art in Miami, Kulturhuset in Stockholm, major Lithuanian exhibition venues and other art centres. Tarasov regularly takes part in theatre, jazz and visual art projects in France, Italy, Germany, USA and other countries. The percussionist has collaborated with Andrew Cyrille, Rova Saxophone Quartet, Anthony Braxton, Lauren Newton, Butch Morris, Thomas Stanko, Didier Petit, Mark Dresser, Gyorgy Szabados, Masahiko Satoh, Kazutoki Umezu, Anatoly Vapirov, and other prominent improvisers and jazz musicians.