Music from the Deserts
Music from the Deserts
Chris Jonas: Music from the Deserts explores the music and videos created over 60 days / three years of solitary winter camping in Arizona's Barry Goldwater Missile Range throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.
This collection of music and videos tours worldwide in 2023 and 2024 with shows in Chicago, Berkeley, Santa Fe, Southern California, Tel Aviv, Rome, Bologna and Siena.
Music from the Deserts features Santa Fe-based composer and saxophone player Chris Jonas along with musicians from a few key collaborations across the globe including:
Oakland, CA
Chris Jonas, compositions, projected video, soprano and tenor saxophones
Cory Wright, baritone sax, clarinets
Lisa Mezzacappa, bass
Jason Levis, drums
Bologna, Italy
Chris Jonas, compositions, projected video, soprano and tenor saxophones
Luca Serrapigglio, contrabass clarinet and baritone saxophone
Luca Bernard, bass
Giacomo Pisano, drums
Chicago, IL
Chris Jonas, compositions, projected video, soprano and tenor saxophones
Jeff Kimmel, clarinets
Robert Lundberg, bass
Sam Scranton, drums
Santa Fe, NM
Chris Jonas, compositions, projected video, soprano and tenor saxophones
with various ensembles, including
Delbert Anderson, trumpet
Jerry Weimer, clarinets
Jeremy Bleich, electric bass
Cyrus Campell, double bass
Milton Villarrubia III, drums
Jonas’s music for the Deserts contains some elements of a jazz-based ensemble, and works with colors and sounds outside of the usual domains of traditional jazz, mixing elements that are quirky, delicate, weirdly groovy, polyphonic, and a mixture of the disjointed and melodic.
Videos projected during each concert include images from the Goldwater Missile Range, Trump and Obama's border walls, the complex community of Yuma, Arizona and the vast wilderness surrounding these places.
RECENT PERFORMANCES
October 22, 2023 at Mosswood Chapel, Oakland, CA
with Cory Wright, clarinet and baritone saxophone, Lisa Mezzacappa, bass, Jason Levis, drums
October 20, 2022 at the Palo Alto Art Center, Palo Alto, CA
with Cory Wright, clarinet and baritone saxophone, Lisa Mezzacappa, bass, Jason Levis, drums
August 6, 2023 at Shape Shoppe Paradiso studios Siena/Monteriggioni, Italy
Chris Jonas Desert 4tet with Luca Serrapigglio, contrabass clarinet and baritone saxophone, Luca Bernard, bass and Giacomo Pisano, drums
August 3, 2023 at Collywood, Bologna, Italy
Chris Jonas Desert 4tet with Luca Serrapigglio, contrabass clarinet and baritone saxophone, Luca Bernard, bass and Giacomo Pisano, drums
July 21, 2023 at Levontin 7, Tel Aviv, Israel
Chris Jonas conducting the Lost Time Orchestra
featuring Assif Tsahar, tenor saxophone
May 4, 2023 at Elastic Arts Foundation in Chicago, IL, as part of their Improvised Music Series and featuring Jeff Kimmel on clarinets, Sam Scranton on precussion, and Robert Lundberg on bass
May 2, 2023 at Uncle Art Gallery in Chicago, IL, presented by Department of Harmony and featuring Jeff Kimmel on clarinets, Sam Scranton on precussion, and Robert Lundberg on bass
April 20, 2023 at San Miguel Chapel in Santa Fe, NM,
with two ensembles consisting of a broad swath of multi-generational musicians:
A trio with Jeremy Bleich on electric bass and Milton Villarrubia III on drums,
and a Quartet/Quintet featuring Jerry Weimer on clarinet, Leroy Medina on bassoon,
Cyrus Campbell on Double Bass, and Dan Cuatt on drums
November 10, 2022 at Bird & Beckett Books, San Francisco CA
featuring Chris Jonas with
Liza Mezzacappa, bass
Jordan Glenn, drums
Creative Music Ensembles
(conducting/composing)
-Ann Powers, The New York Times
Ensemble Projects
Drawing from my experiences working in ensembles led by my long term collaborators of the Goggle Sax Quartet, Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor, Butch Morris, and William Parker, I became fascinated with how composition can be the halfway point between an idea and a performance, cuing up a diverse body of musicians to have enough stability and fresh materials to create new things on stage while freeing them to be fully themselves in the moment.
For each of these bandleaders, there became the necessity for developing unique ways of communicating with an ensemble in performance: for Braxton it was structured by his Language Music, and for Butch Morris, the complex array of hand symbols codified in what he called “Conduction.” My own activity as a composer/performer/conductor has come to be central to my work.
Current Ensemble Work
Somehow, there’s an entirely new spirit of music and creative work in my life today. This is very much a carryover from the work I did in the Bay Area in the weeks before Covid. There, I worked on a series of projects in collaboration with long-time comrades in duo B. Experimental Band, co-led by Lisa Mezzacappa and Jason Levis; Goggle Saxophone Quartet with lifelong collaborators Cory Wright, Dan Plonsey, and Randy McKean; and my collaborations with the Del Sol String Quartet, which has been ongoing since 2008.
duo B. Experimental Band
(guest conductor)
duo B. Experimental Band (guest conductor)
Spring of 2020, I worked with a marvelous group of musicians in Oakland and Berkeley exploring my own idiosyncratic ways of conducting and performing the work of Anthony Braxton. With Polly Moller Springhorn and Erika Oba, flute, Matt Ingalls and Rachel Condry, clarinets, Bruce Ackley, Randy McKean, Michael Zelner, Dan Plonsey, woodwinds, Tom Weeks and Kasey Knudsen, alto saxophone, Daniel Goldberg, tenor saxophone, Steve Adams, sopranino saxophone/electronics, Ian Carey, trumpet
Gabby Fluke-Mogul and Kevin CK Lo, violin, Juan Hernandez and John Finkbeiner, Brett Carson, piano, Kjell Nordeson and Dillon Vado, vibraphone, Lisa Mezzacappa, Andrew Harlan, and Safa Shokrai, acoustic bass, Suki O'Kane, percussion, Jordan Glenn and Jason Levis, drums. Co-led by the marvelous Lisa Mezzacappa and Jason Levis.
Goggle Sax Quartet
This band, a collective of composer-performers, the seed of which formed in 1989
through Mills College, has been a life-long adventure of composition, working as an ensemble and asking questions about how to carry the influences of key saxophon players and composers into my own music. With Chris Jonas, Randy McKean, Dan Plonsey and Cory Wright.
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Cure-All Records
Santa Fe-based ensembles (saxophone, composition)
In spite of the town’s small size, Santa Fe is filled with remarkable artists, including some exceptional musicians.
This includes those I work with in a sextet that has been together for nearly a decade called Ornetc, as well as a wide variety of trios, quartets, and ensembles.
Chris Jonas Desert TrioThis trio draws on the music from the solo desert composition trips January of both 2021 and 2022
With Casey Anderson, Jeremy Bleich, bass; Loren Bienvenue, Milton Villarrubia, drums.
Ornetc With Dan Pearlman, cornet, Lee Steck, vibes, Chris Jonas, saxophone, Alex Murzyn, saxophone, Noah Baumeister, bass, Dave Wayne, drums.
New Collaborations with Alexander Hawkins (composer, arranger, co-director)
With UK-based composer/pianist Alexander Hawkins, this multi-year collaboration
explores the ensemble music of Anthony Braxton, Cecil Taylor (drawing on never
performed ensemble pieces I helped arrange as a member of Cecil’s band 1995-97), as well as our own compositions and ensemble practices. This will weave together musicians from the US, UK and Europe, workshopping and performing together worldwide. (LINK: https://www.alexanderhawkinsmusic.com)
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