Bio:
Anna Webber (b. 1984) is a New York-based flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live the overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. Her new album, Clockwise, featuring a septet comprised of several of the most creative musicians working in New York’s avant-garde, is out on Pi Recordings (February 2019). Webber is joined on Clockwise by Jeremy Viner, Jacob Garchik, Chris Hoffman, Matt Mitchell, Chris Tordini, and Ches Smith.
In addition to this septet, Webber also leads the critically acclaimed Simple Trio, featuring drummer John Hollenbeck and pianist Matt Mitchell, with which she has released two albums on Skirl Records: Binary (2016) and SIMPLE (2014). She has furthermore recorded for Munich’s Pirouet Records with the now defunct Percussive Mechanics. Her other projects a big band co-led with Angela Morris; Jagged Spheres with Devin Gray and Elias Stemeseder; EAVE with Erik Hove, Evan Tighe, and Vicky Mettler; and The Hero of Warchester with Nathaniel Morgan and Liz Kosack.
Webber has performed and/or recorded with Dan Weiss’ Sixteen; Jen Shyu’s Jade Tongue; Matt Mitchell’s A Pouting Grimace and Sprees; Dave Douglas’ ENGAGE; the John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble; Ches Smith’s Laugh Ash; Adam Hopkins’ Crickets; Geof Bradfield’s Yes and...; Ohad Talmor’s Grand Ensemble; Fabian Almazan’s Realm of Possibilities; Noah Garabedian’s Big Butter and the Eggmen; the Erik Hove Chamber Ensemble; a sextet from Bang on a Can All-Stars member Ken Thomson; Harris Eisenstadt’s Recent Developments; and the Marike van Dijk Stereography Project. She recently played in the world premiere of Sila: The Breath of the World by Pulitzer Prize-winner John Luther Adams at the Lincoln Center.
Webber is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. She has additionally been awarded grants from the Shifting Foundation (2015), the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Canada Council for the Arts and residencies from the MacDowell Colony (2017), the Millay Colony for the Arts (2015), and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2014). She is the winner of the 2010 Prix François-Marcaurelle at the OFF Festival of Jazz in Montreal. In 2014 she won the BMI Foundation Charlie Parker Composition Prize as a member of the BMI Jazz Composers' Workshop.
Originally from British Columbia, Webber studied music at McGill University in Montreal before moving to New York City in 2008. She holds master’s degrees from both Manhattan School of Music and the Jazz Institute Berlin.
Quotes, Notes & Etc.
...pay attention to Webber, both in the moment and in the future.
- Bill Meyer, Downbeat
Reedist Anna Webber, a Brooklynite by way of British Columbia, is one of the most exciting new arrivals on the New York avant-garde jazz scene in the past couple years. ...her detail-rich writing recalls the work of elders as disparate as Tim Berne and Henry Threadgill, and her busy motion evokes a fizzy sort of exhilaration.
- Peter Margasak, Chicago Reader
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—Clarice Assad (RIO DE JANEIRO/CHICAGO): Pianist and composer with works performed by Yo Yo Ma and orchestras around the world
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Salvador is our base. If you plan to visit Bahia, there are some things you should probably know and you should first visit:
Conceived under a Spiritus Mundi ranging from the quilombos and senzalas of Cachoeira and Santo Amaro to Havana and the provinces of Cuba to the wards of New Orleans to the South Side of Chicago to the sidewalks of Harlem to the townships of South Africa to the villages of Ireland to the Roma camps of France and Belgium to the Vienna of Beethoven to the shtetls of Eastern Europe...*
*...in conversation with Raymundo Sodré, who summed up the irony in this sequence by opining for the ages: "Where there's misery, there's music!" Thus A Massa, anthem for the trod-upon folk of Brazil, which blasted from every radio between the Amazon and Brazil's industrial south until Sodré was silenced, threatened with death and forced into exile...
And thus a platform whereupon all creators tend to accessible proximity to all other creators, irrespective of degree of fame, location, or the censor.
Matrix Ground Zero is the Recôncavo, bewitching and bewitched, contouring the resplendent Bay of All Saints (end of clip below, before credits), absolute center of terrestrial gravity for the disembarkation of enslaved human beings (and for the sublimity these people created), the bay presided over by Brazil's ineffable Black Rome (seat of the Integrated Global Creative Economy* and where Bule Bule is seated below, around the corner from where we built this matrix as an extension of our record shop).
("Black Rome" is an appellation per Caetano, via Mãe Aninha of Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá.)
*Darius Mans holds a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT, and lives between Washington D.C. and Salvador da Bahia.
Between 2000 and 2004 he served as the World Bank’s Country Director for Mozambique and Angola. In that capacity, Darius led a team which generated $150 million in annual lending to Mozambique, including support for public private partnerships in infrastructure which catalyzed over $1 billion in private investment.
Darius was an economist with the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, where he worked closely with the U.S. Treasury and the IMF to establish a framework to avoid debt repudiation and to restructure private commercial debt in Brazil and Chile.
He taught Economics at the University of Maryland and was a consultant to KPMG on infrastructure projects in Latin America.
I'm Pardal here in Brazil (that's "Sparrow" in English). The deep roots of this project are in Manhattan, where Allen Klein (managed the Beatles and The Rolling Stones) called me about royalties for the estate of Sam Cooke... where Jerry Ragovoy (co-wrote Time is On My Side, sung by the Stones; Piece of My Heart, Janis Joplin of course; and Pata Pata, sung by the great Miriam Makeba) called me looking for unpaid royalties... where I did contract and licensing for Carlinhos Brown's participation on Bahia Black with Wayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock...
...where I rescued unpaid royalties for Aretha Franklin (from Atlantic Records), Barbra Streisand (from CBS Records), Led Zeppelin, Mongo Santamaria, Gilberto Gil, Astrud Gilberto, Airto Moreira, Jim Hall, Wah Wah Watson (Melvin Ragin), Ray Barretto, Philip Glass, Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd for his interest in Bob Marley compositions, Cat Stevens/Yusuf Islam and others...
...where I worked with Earl "Speedo" Carroll of the Cadillacs (who went from doo-wopping as a kid on Harlem streetcorners to top of the charts to working as a janitor at P.S. 87 in Manhattan without ever losing what it was that made him special in the first place), and with Jake and Zeke Carey of The Flamingos (I Only Have Eyes for You)... stuff like that.
Yeah this is Bob's first record contract, made with Clement "Sir Coxsone" Dodd of Studio One and co-signed by his aunt because he was under 21. I took it to Black Rock to argue with CBS' lawyers about the royalties they didn't want to pay (they paid).
EX TERRA BRASILIS
The Small World Phenomenon
Susan Rogers
Alicia Svigals
Julian Lloyd Webber
Clarice Assad
Sodré
Betão Aguiar
Bule Bule
Caetano Veloso
Darius Mans
Sparrow/Pardal Roberts
RÁDIO MATRIX