Marilyn Crispell, Jason Stein, Damon Smith, Adam Shead

Marilyn Crispell has been a composer and performer of contemporary improvised music since 1978. For ten years, she was a member of the Anthony Braxton Quartet and the Reggie Workman Ensemble, and she has performed and recorded extensively as a soloist and with players on the American and international jazz scene, also working with dancers, poets, film-makers and visual artists, and teaching workshops in improvisation. She has been the recipient of three New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship grants, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust composition commission.

The trio of Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Damon Smith (double bass), and Adam Shead (drums) features some of the most energizing, creative, and prolific musicians currently working in the fields of jazz and improvised music. The trio has toured extensively throughout the United States since the release of their debut album Volumes & Surfaces (April, 2022) on the Balance Point Acoustics record label. Receiving institutional support from such organizations as South Arts, the Doris Duke Charitable foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The group has been described as “undiluted free jazz with energy as its calling card and attention as its driver” by Mark Corroto of All About Jazz.

Jason Stein is among the mere handful of improvisers who play the bass clarinet exclusively. Stein leads the acclaimed trio Locksmith Isidore as well as his own quartet. He contributes to several of the leading bands on Chicago’s new-music scene and has brought a vital voice to the freest of free-jazz jams. Stein’s playing showcases an extraordinary expertise on the bass clarinet, which ranges from powerful post-bop lines to ear-grabbing wails in the altissimo range. Chicago writer Neil Tesser notes that “Stein’s playing has a rawboned swagger particular to Chicago jazz in all its manifestations – from the trad playing of Bud Freeman and Jimmy McPartland in the 20s, through the tenor titans of the 50s, through the adventurers who formed the AACM in the 60s, and right up to the city’s renowned modern cadre of new-music improvisers.” Stein moved to Chicago in 2005 and has since recorded for such labels as Leo, Delmark, Not Two, Atavistic, 482 Music, Clean Feed, Astral Spirits, and Northern Spy.  Stein has performed throughout the US and Europe as both a bandleader and sideman and has amassed a discography of over 40 albums.

Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon’s explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson’s Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Jaap Blonk,Roscoe Mitchell, Weasel Walter, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Weasel Walter, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and six great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, Thomas Helton, David Dove & Chris Cogburn. Damon moved to the Boston area in the fall of 2016 and began working with Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Joe McPhee and Ra-Kalam Bob Moses and many others. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians.

Adam Shead is an educator, administrator, percussionist, and composer based in Chicago, IL who holds a Bachelor’s of Music from Columbia College Chicago in Instrumental Performance as well as a Master’s of Music in Contemporary Improvisation and a Graduate Certificate in World Performance Studies from The University of Michigan