The Renga Ensemble

Between 2000 and 2012, Chicago clarinetist, composer, improviser, and bandleader Adam Falzone revealed an expansive artistic imagination on eight recordings released by his Allos Records label, including two albums by his Middle Eastern-informed Allos Musica group and three by his shimmery avant jazz quartet KLANG, but Falzone’s next task would end up being one of is own most ambitious undertakings to time. Falzone conceived an all-reeds sextet, emphasizing a complete selection of clarinets but also including saxophones, that could perform and record his compositions penned with some extremely specific group associates at heart. In Apr 2013 he set up these music artists — a few of the most acclaimed reed players in innovative improvised music — to take part in the task, which he called the Renga Outfit after a Japanese type of poetry, more than 100 years old, where poets compose collaboratively in pairs or little groups. To become listed on him in the Renga Outfit, Falzone (playing B-flat and E-flat clarinets) decided three leading performers in the Chicago avant jazz community — picture veteran and generating drive Ken Vandermark (B-flat clarinet, bass clarinet, baritone saxophone), Keefe Jackson (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, contra B-flat clarinet), and Jason Stein (bass clarinet) — aswell as two respectable reedmen from contrary coasts: NY City’s Ned Rothenberg (B-flat clarinet, alto saxophone) and Berkeley, California’s Ben Goldberg (B-flat clarinet, contra E-flat alto clarinet). The Renga Outfit played shows on the three Chicago locations, the Chicago Cultural Middle, the Hideout, as well as the Elastic Arts Base, immediately before documenting their debut record, The Room Is normally, with engineer Greg Norman on Apr 12, 2013 at Chicago’s Steve Albini-founded Electrical Sound studio. Using the title from the record (and five of its compositions) attracted from a haiku by poet Anita Virgil, THE AREA Is was created straightforwardly, using the group associates sitting within a group recording right to tape, sans overdubbing. In keeping with its renga poetry theme, the record — melding jazz and modern improvisational vocabularies with components of contemporary traditional chamber music — afforded adequate chance of the music artists to express their particular personalities while eventually creating a singular group identification from their specific individual contributions. THE AREA Can be was the tenth launch from Allos Papers, and came on Feb 24, 2015.