Cross Modulations Series: The Brunt + Genetti/Long/Sugimoto/Clark

The Brunt

The Brunt is the collaborative quartet of Dave Rempis, Gerrit Hatcher, Kent Kessler and Bill Harris. The four craft long form free improvisations with dense energy and expansive scope.

Saxophonist, improviser, and composer Dave Rempis has been an integral part of the thriving Chicago jazz and improvised music scene since 1997. With a background in ethnomusicology and African studies at Northwestern University, including a year spent at the University of Ghana, Rempis burst onto the creative music scene at the age of 22 when he was asked to join the now-legendary Chicago jazz outfit The Vandermark Five. This opportunity catapulted him to notoriety as he began to tour regularly throughout the US and Europe, an active schedule that he still maintains to the present day. At the same time, Rempis began to develop the many Chicago-based groups for which he’s currently known, including The Rempis Percussion Quartet, The Engines, Ballister, Rempis/Abrams/Ra, Wheelhouse, Triage, The Rempis/Rosaly Duo, and The Rempis/Daisy Duo. Other collaborations have included work with Paul Lytton, Fred Anderson, Peter Brötzmann, Hamid Drake, Tomeka Reid, Steve Swell, Elisabeth Harnik, John Tchicai, Roscoe Mitchell, Nate Wooley, jaimie branch, Jeff Parker, Paal Nilssen-Love, Nels Cline, Marshall Allen, and Joe McPhee. In 2013, he started his own record label, Aerophonic Records, to document this ongoing work. Rempis has been named regularly since 2006 in the annual Downbeat Critics’s Poll as a “rising star” on both alto and baritone saxophone, a category that he won in 2017. He’s received funding from the Foundation for Contemporary Art, Jazz Road Touring sponsored by the Doris Duke and Andrew Mellon Foundations, the City of Chicago Individual Artist Program, and was the recipient of a Ragdale Fellowship from the Herb Alpert Foundation in 2017. Rempis’ musical expression draws on a number of touchstones. While heavily improvisational in nature, his Greek ethnicity, studies in jazz and ethnomusicology, an appreciation for the philosophical underpinnings of contemporary composition, and a love for unforgivingly strident yelps, screeches, and squeals that can encompass the ever-evolving state of human depravity all inform his work. Aside from his work as a musician and composer, Rempis has worked tirelessly as a presenter. From 2002-2023, he curated and produced a weekly series of improvised music at Chicago’s Elastic Arts Foundation, where he also served as Board President. He was a founding member of the presenters’ collective Umbrella Music, and one of the lead producers and curators of its annual festival of improvised music from 2006-2014. He was business manager of the world renowned Pitchfork Music Festival from 2005-2016. Since 2017 he has worked as Operations Manager with the internationally renowned but neighborhood-based Hyde Park Jazz Festival in Chicago.

Gerrit Hatcher is a Chicago-based tenor saxophonist, improviser, and composer. Hatcher’s work typically engages with free jazz as a craft and set of practices that is as much historical as it is experimental. Gerrit has been involved in several working groups and other ensembles, based in Chicago and beyond. Without enumerating all of them, these have included collaborations with fellow Chicagoans Julian Kirshner, Paul Giallorenzo, Joshua Abrams, Tyler Damon, Peter Maunu, Katie Ernst, Ben Lamar Gay, Keefe Jackson, Dave Rempis, Kent Kessler, Bill Harris, Lia Kohl and Marvin Tate, as well as with artists based elsewhere including Jakob Warmenbol, Rob Magill, Patrick Shiroishi, Eli Namay, Erwan Keravec and Gaspar Claus. Hatcher founded his label Kettle Hole Records in 2019 and, in addition to his releases there, he has released work on Amalgam Music, Julian Kirshner’s imprint JAKI, Astral Spirits, No Index and The Bridge Sessions.

The prolific and in-demand jazz bassist Kent Kessler may be best known for his role in numerous Chicago bands, usually associated with reedman Ken Vandermark, but he has led or co-led nearly two dozen recordings on labels from Okka Disc and Atavistic to Not Two, Palomar, and Trost. He has played on more than a hundred others. He first began appearing on recordings in the early ’90s as a member of Hal Russell’s NRG Ensemble. The band continued after Russell’s death in 1992 with the addition of Vandermark. Kessler and Vandermark went on to play together in a number of bands that revitalized Chicago’s jazz scene, putting the city back on the avant-garde and free jazz map. The Vandermark 5, DKV Trio (which took a ten-year break between 2002 and 2012), and Steelwool Trio are just some of the many groups that feature Kessler’s wide and gritty sound. He has performed and recorded with a number of leading European improvisers, such as German powerhouse Peter Brötzmann (in his Chicago Tentet), Swedish avant-garde saxophonist Mats Gustafsson (in FJF), the late Dutch pianist Misha Mengelberg, and Dutch avant-garde saxophonist Luc Houtkamp. Kessler has also worked with legends who are closer to home, including Joe McPhee and the late Fred Anderson. Through his many projects, Kessler has toured all over North America, Asia, and Europe. In 2017 alone, his recording projects included DKV’s Latitude 41.88, Thinking Out Loud by Boneshaker with saxophonist Mars Williams and drummer/percussionist Paal Nilssen-Love, and An Ayler Xmas with Williams. He and DKV finished 2017 by playing some holiday concerts in Chicago with Joe McPhee. The Corbett vs. Dempsey label reissued Flats Fixed (with Fred Lonberg-Holm and the late Peter Kowald) in 2018.

Bill Harris is a percussionist, improviser, and audio engineer in Chicago. He also operates and produces for Amalgam, a Chicago-based label and collective, and co-operates Chicago recording studio Marmalade. Some of his primary groups are Je’raf: a psychadelic funk/free jazz/hip-hop group from the future; KAH: an improvising trio with Jeff Kimmel and Ishmael Ali; Hearsay: with Allen Moore and Ishmael Ali; Joybird: with Jess McIntosh and Aaron Smith; Errata: with Ishmael Ali and Eli Namay. Additionally, Bill focuses on solo work incorporating acoustic and electronic material, using feedback and timbral manipulation. He has recorded two solo records, Blinking Glue, and ONOMAT.

www.daverempis.com
www.gerrithatcher.com
www.billyharris.net

Genetti/Long/Sugimoto/Clark

Emerging from the currents of Chicago’s experimental and creative music scene, this first-time meeting of Carol Genetti (voice/electronics), Chad M. Clark (electric guitar), Mai Sugimoto (saxophone/composition), and Norman W. Long (sound art/field recordings) forms a compelling, cross-disciplinary improvisation collective with a rich and layered identity.