EMAS Presents: Second Nature Ensemble & Kwan Leung Ling/Ben Baker/Evan Verploegh

EMAS Presents: Second Nature Ensemble & Kwan Leung Ling/Ben Baker/Evan Verploegh
Charlotte Street Foundation 7:30 pm
About the artists:
Second Nature Ensemble is a Kansas City, Missouri based new music collective that is staking out terrain covering free jazz, contemporary classical composition, and noise improv with post minimalism, math rock, and electronic beats. If Frank Zappa, Sun Ra, and Karlheinz Stockhausen produced a cybernetic offspring, it might sound like this. The band centers on the music of Seth Andrew Davis and Michael Eaton, performed by some of Kansas City’s finest musicians from the jazz and classical scenes and beyond.
Michael Eaton (b. 1981) is a Brooklyn, NY based saxophonist and composer/improviser active in contemporary jazz and free improvisation. He leads Individuation, a contemporary jazz ensemble that combines modern jazz with postminimalism, world rhythms, and open improvisation. On their 2019 album, Dialogical, AllAboutJazz said: “There is more than enough promising music on Dialogical to justify Eaton’s status as a force to be reckoned with in today’s jazz world.” Eaton has recordings available on Ropeadope, Steeplechase, Destiny Records, and Mother Brain Records.
Second Nature:Michael Eaton – saxophonesSeth Andrew Davis – electric guitar & electronicsDwight Frizzell – EWI/hornsBen Tervort – bassAlan Voss drums
New compositions by Seth Andrew Davis & Michael Eaton
Kwan Leung Ling/Ben Baker/Evan Verploegh
Kwan Leung Ling is a composer and performer born and raised in Hong Kong. His instrument is suona, a traditional Chinese double reed instrument. His musical style is influenced by his national identity and upbringing. Hong Kong is a city bursting with international life and color. His music concerns itself with finding varying fusions between multicultural music styles and searching for the connection between sounds.
Creating music based on the sounds from nature is a fundamental aspect of traditional Chinese music. Ling has been practicing suona since he was ten years old, the DNA of traditional Chinese music has been carved into his genes. Orchestrating the soundscape in his daily life is an integral part of his compositional process. Ling gathers found objects with no apparent relation to each other into collections and improvises and records their unique sound qualities. Those recordings become the key to expanding my sonic imagination.