Thumbscrew

A guitar-bass-drums trio for the avant advantage of creative jazz, Thumbscrew is a genuine collaborative device, featuring veteran bassist Michael Formanek and two music artists who’ve been building considerable waves for the Brooklyn picture during the fresh millennium, guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Tomas Fujiwara. ECM documenting artist Formanek gets the lengthiest jazz connection with the three, showing up like a sideman through the ’80s and debuting like a innovator using the 1990 Enja label launch Wide Open Areas before linking up with saxophonist Tim Berne inside a musical collaboration — notably including Berne’s Bloodcount music group — that could extend through a lot of the ’90s. Carrying on to business lead or collaborate in a variety of New York-based innovative jazz ensembles as the 10 years neared its end, Formanek started to wheel of life on the highway and its effect on his creativeness, and in 2003 he shifted to the Baltimore region with his family members to instruct bass and jazz background and business lead the jazz orchestra in the Peabody Conservatory of Johns Hopkins College or university. However, vanishing in to the globe of academia had not been in his idea, as he worked well to determine links between Peabody as well as the Baltimore jazz community, continuing performing and documenting in various configurations, and by the 2010s experienced released two acclaimed albums like a innovator on ECM, 2010’s The Rub and Extra Switch and 2012’s Little Locations (both quartet times offering Berne, pianist Craig Taborn, and drummer Gerald Cleaver). Provided Formanek’s continuing contacts in the Brooklyn- and higher East Coast-based innovative jazz globe, crossing pathways with comparative beginners Halvorson and Fujiwara was most likely unavoidable. Boston-born guitarist Halvorson analyzed with Anthony Braxton for quite some time at Wesleyan University or college (and offers performed and documented in a number of Braxton ensembles); after graduating she ensconced herself in the Brooklyn picture in the first 2000s, gradually getting a reputation on her behalf inimitable guitar design. After showing up on recordings by numerous organizations including cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum’s sextet, a duo with violist Jessica Pavone, bassist Trevor Dunn’s Trio-Convulsant, as well as the avant rock and roll outfit People who have drummer Kevin Shea, the guitarist stepped out as innovator from the Mary Halvorson Trio, with bassist John Hébert and drummer Ches Smith, on Dragon’s Mind, a 2008 launch on the brand new Haven, Connecticut-based Firehouse 12 label (co-founded by Bynum). The guitarist led many more classes over the next years, leading to the Mary Halvorson Quintet recordings Saturn Sings this year 2010 and Twisting Bridges in 2012 (both on Firehouse 12) and another trio recording, Ghost Loop, on For Melody Information in 2013. Being a bandleader, collaborator, or contributor, Halvorson made an appearance on over 50 recordings by enough time she co-founded Thumbscrew with Formanek and Fujiwara. Also given birth to in Boston, drummer Fujiwara, a fresh York citizen from age 17, began showing up on record in the middle-2000s and, like Halvorson, is usually a member from the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet; the drummer and guitarist could be noticed together around the sextet’s albums THE CENTER Picture (Firehouse 12, 2007), Asphalt Plants Forking Pathways (hatOLOGY, 2009), Obvious Range (Firehouse 12, 2011), and Navigation (Probability Abstracts X & XI) (Firehouse 12, 2013). Among his a great many other tasks, Fujiwara has documented inside a duo with Bynum; in the collective quartet Thirteenth Set up with Halvorson, Bynum, and Pavone; in the experimental Sunlight Ra-informed Chicago-New York non-et Living by Lanterns (including Halvorson and Bynum); in the “Sunlight Ra matches Eddie Palmieri” ten-piece Positive Catastrophe led by Bynum and percussionist Abraham Gomez-Delgado; in the Steve Lacy tribute music group Ideal Bread; so that as the first choice of his very own quintet, Tomas Fujiwara & the ATTACH (also offering Halvorson), which released Actionspeak this year 2010 accompanied by THE ENVIRONMENT DIFFERS in 2012 (both for the 482 Music label). Bandleader and Firehouse 12 co-founder Bynum certainly statistics prominently in the executing and recording encounters of Halvorson and Fujiwara — and actually, the cornetist offered indirectly being a catalyst for the forming of Thumbscrew when Formanek sat along with the Taylor Ho Bynum Sextet during 2011 as well as the bassist, Halvorson, and Fujiwara discovered themselves playing jointly for the very first time, albeit as half a six-piece lineup. The threesome uncovered an instantaneous rapport, and vowed to execute being a trio in the foreseeable future. In the meantime, Formanek, Halvorson, and Fujiwara continuing to appear within bigger groupings, when Formanek performed with Halvorson and Fujiwara in the latter’s ATTACH quintet, so when Halvorson and Fujiwara performed in Formanek’s substantial (not only “bigger”) 18-piece Brooklyn all-star Outfit Kolossus. The Thumbscrew trio finally moved into Brooklyn’s Bunker studio room in Apr 2013 to record their eponymous debut recording with engineer Jon Rosenberg. Formanek, Halvorson, and Fujiwara each penned three compositions for Thumbscrew, that was released from the Cuneiform label in January 2014.