The Nathan Clevenger Trio, featuring Jordan Glenn & Cory Wright, celebrates the release of their new album, ‘Unsettled by the Ocean.’ For tonight’s performance, the trio is joined by Phillip Greenlief & Marié Abe.
Oakland musicians Nathan Clevenger, Jordan Glenn, and Cory Wright share a long and entwined history of collaboration across various projects, including Wiener Kids, Ashen Cleric, and Fellow Hominids. Formed in 2021, the trio has released 3 albums — including the forthcoming “Unsettled by the Ocean” — and recently initiated a series of collaborations with guests, including Kasey Knudsen, Crystal Pascucci, Phillip Greenlief, Marié Abe, and Safa Shokrai. Working from, between, and against Clevenger’s compositional frames and utilizing the multi-instrumental flexibility of each player, the trio (and guests) weaves between non-idiomatic improvisation and often gnomic composed material, with focus on spaciousness and timbral detail.
Nathan Clevenger
Nathan Clevenger is an Oakland born composer and multi-instrumentalist, working on the margins of modern composition, jazz, and improvisation. In 2022, Clevenger released ‘i had a dream about amnesia’, an album compiling 2 suites for solo, duo, and trio configurations, composed and recorded during the Covid-19 lockdown. The eight-piece Nathan Clevenger Group has released three albums, including ‘Stateless’ (2019, Slow & Steady Records). Nathan’s Trio, with Jordan Glenn & Cory Wright, has released 3 albums and initiated a series of collaborations with guest artists. Notable recent performances include the premieres of extended compositions at the Berkeley Finnish Hall (‘Astrolabe’ for large ensemble), SF Contemporary Jewish Museum (‘for david berman’, performed by Ashen Cleric) and the Exploratorium (‘Ice Hours’, a multimedia collaboration with violinist/composer Kristina Dutton and artist Kim Miskowicz).
Jordan Glenn
Jordan Glenn spent his formative years in Oregon and in 2006 relocated to the Bay Area where he received an MFA from Mills College. Since then he has been most closely associated with Fred Frith (FF Trio, Gravity Band), William Winant, Zeena Parkins (The Adorables), Roscoe Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Lisa Mezzacappa (avantNOIR, Glorious Ravage, Lisa Mezzacappa Six), Motoko Honda, Dominique Leone, Michael Coleman and the bands Jack O’ The Clock, Kyle Bruckmann’s Degradient, tUnE-yArDs, and the Oakland Active Orchestra. He has also worked with Rhys Chatham, Secret Chiefs 3, The Rova Sax Quartet, composer/bagpiper Matthew Welch and has been commissioned to create scores for evening-length dance pieces by Sharp & Fine and Liss Fain Dance. As a leader he has composed and conducted the trio Wiener Kids, Mindless Thing (a collaboration with poet Jim Ryan) and the percussion heavy large ensemble BEAK.
Cory Wright
Reeds player and composer Cory Wright studied music at Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Southern California and has been involved in both the jazz and creative music worlds for the past 20 years, including time spent in New York, Los Angeles and his current home in the San Francisco Bay Area. His recent projects reflect his interest in blurring the distinction between composed and improvised music, and in combining the harmonious with the atonal, the grooving with the arrhythmic. Wright has performed in ensembles led by Anthony Braxton, Vinny Golia, Todd Sickafoose, Adam Rudolph and Yusef Lateef. He is currently a member of Bristle, the Nathan Clevenger Group, and Goggle (saxophone quartet) and leads his own projects Fellow Hominids and The Green Mitchell Trio.
Marié Abe
Born in Japan, Marié Abe is an accordionist, keyboardist, and an ethnomusicologist based in Oakland. Marié enjoys exploring the intersection between improvisation and composition, while integrating her interest in vernacular and popular musical styles ranging from indie pop to Ethiopian jazz, Balkan, Brazilian forró, Colombian vallenato, and more. She has recorded, performed, and toured with various artists across the US, the UK, Europe, Japan, and Brazil, including 70’s Ethiopian groove collective Debo Band (Subpop), Japonize Elephants, Thorny Brocky, Ramon and Jessica, Fred Frith, Carla Kihlstedt, Guts and Buttons, Ethiopiasia (Kyoto, Japan), Chichuike (Japan), and more. Marié also teaches as Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology in the Department of Music at UC Berkeley.
Phillip Greenlief
Since his emergence on the west coast in the late 1970s, saxophonist/composer Phillip Greenlief has achieved international acclaim for his recordings and performances with musicians and composers in the post-jazz continuum as well as new music innovators and virtuosic improvisers. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Meredith Monk, Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Reiner, and They Might Be Giants. Albums include two LANTSKAP LOGIC TRIO releases (w/ Evelyn Davis and Fred Frith), THAT OVERT DESIRE OF OBJECT with Joelle Leandre, ALL AT ONCE with FPR (Frank Gratkowski and Jon Raskin), and OH THAT MONSTER with LA punk pioneers Thelonious Monster. Recent residencies have included the Banff Center for Art and Creativity, Neue Muzik Koln, and Headlands Center for the Arts. His critical writing has been published in Artforum, Open Space (SFMOMA), Sound American, and Signal to Noise.
“The Bay Area’s do-it-yourself ethos has produced a bevy of dazzlingly creative musicians, but few have put the philosophy to work as effectively as Phillip Greenlief.” – Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Chronicle