A NEW QUINTET - SECOND ARROW

SECOND ARROW is my first small band in some 20 years. With the exception of long-time collaborator and legendary bassist Jerome Harris, Previte has populated the band with musicians he has as yet only admired from a distance—the magnificent pianist Angelica Sanchez, the stunning guitarist Wendy Eisenberg, and the deeply thoughtful Matt Bauder on woodwinds. These musicians have collaborated with an astonishing array of artists from all over the music spectrum.

I have been interested in the idea of a group that takes separate paths to the same goal, and whose idea of playing “together” is broader than the usual “locked-in” approach. To quote my friend and the great musician Steve Swallow, who said it better than I ever could, ‘Interaction is overrated.’ The music for SECOND ARROW is probably the most ensemble dependent music I have ever presented—just a series of signposts for these particular improvisers, directing them to the clearest path of connection. Or put another way,  “It’s not the notes you play. It’s how you play ‘em.”

Angelica Sanchez “seeks out the lyrical heartbeat within any avant-garde storm.” (New York Times). A pianist, composer, and educator, her debut solo CD, A Little House, was featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition, and her recording with Marilyn Crispell, How to Turn the Moon, was selected as one of the top 50 best recordings of 2020 in an NPR critics poll. Additional honors include a Civitella Ranieri Music Fellowship, Umbria, Italy; Berklee Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice Composition Award; Pocantico Artist Grant, Rockefeller Brothers Fund; and French-American Jazz Exchange Grant, Chamber Music America. She has performed at venues and festivals in the United States and abroad, including, among many others, the Trans-Pecos Festival, Marfa; Tectonics Festival, Glasgow; London Jazz Festival; the Kitchen, New York City; Vancouver Jazz Festival; and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music.

Wendy Eisenberg is an improviser and songwriter who uses guitar, pedals, the tenor banjo, the computer, the synthesizer and the voice. Their work spans genres, from jazz to noise to avant-rock to delicate songs; their performances span venues, from international festivals to intimate basements. Though often working solo as both a songwriter and improviser, with acclaimed releases on Tzadik, VDSQ, Out of your Head, and Garden Portal, they also perform in the rock band Editrix, and in endless other combinations of their heroes and peers. They are also a writer on music and other things, with published essays on music in Sound American, Arcana, and the Contemporary Music Review. 

Matt Bauder is a saxophonist, multi-instrumentalist, composer, and educator whose work “blends adventurous improvisation with lyrical clarity” (DownBeat). He has performed and recorded with a diverse range of artists including David Byrne, Arcade Fire, Father John Misty, Anthony Braxton, and Rob Mazurek, and leads his own band, Hearing Things, which combines surf riffs, soul grooves, and sideways jazz to create a noir world of space-aged eclecticism. He also creates soundtrack work for interdisciplinary artists such as Aki Sasamoto and Ben Hagari, presented in international art museums and galleries.

.Jerome Harris appears on over sixty recordings, and his formative musical experiences include blues, folk, gospel, and a range of other American music genres. A double threat on bass and guitar, he has performed on six continents with a wide array of legendary musicians.  First becoming known with jazz icon Sonny Rollins from 1988 to 1994, he has gone on to work with Jack DeJohnette, Bill Frisell, Paul Motian, Leni Stern, David Krakauer, Martha Redbone, Ray Anderson, Julius Hemphill, Amina Claudine Myers, Ned Rothenberg, and Oliver Lake, among many others. An accomplished essayist, Harris's published writings include "Considering Jaki Byard" (Sound American SA22; New York: Anthology of Recorded Music, Inc., 2019), and "Jazz on the Global Stage" (The African Diaspora: A Musical Perspective; edited by Ingrid Monson; New York: Garland/Taylor & Francis, 2000). 

Bobby Previte is a composer and performer whose work explores the nexus between notated and improvised music. Previte is the recipient of the 2015 Greenfield Prize for Music and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2012, as well as multiple awards for composition from the NEA, NYFA, and NYSCA. Mr. Previte has been an artist-in-residence at the Rockefeller Foundation in Bellagio, Italy, Civitella Ranieri, The Montalvo Arts Center, The Hermitage Artist Retreat, and nine times at the MacDowell Colony.