several cool things coming up, gig wise. to wit:

2/6 – Philadelphia, PA – Ortlieb’s with Doug Hirlinger, Tarus Mateen, and Darius Jones.

We’re stoked to add Darius to the trio.

2/26 – Bloomington, IN at IU Jacobs School of Music – clinic and concert with Brad Shepik’s Human Activity Quintet

For this concert Human Activity will be Brad Shepik, Ralph Alessi, Matt Pavolka, Mike Sarin, and myself.

IU is one of my alma maters – I’m really excited to go back and play there, I haven’t been to Bloomington since 1996!

3/4-12 – Europe tour with John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet.

3/5 – Antwerpen, Belgium – De Singel
3/6 – Braga, Portugal – Teatro Circo
3/9 – Vienna, Austria – Porgy and Bess
3/10 – London, UK – The Vortex
3/12 – Birmingham, UK – Harmonic Festival

Claudia for this tour is John Hollenbeck, Drew Gress, Ted Reichman, Chris Speed, and Tim Collins. plus me.

4/13 – Philadelphia, PA – The Philadelphia Art Alliance – Matt Mitchell’s Central Chain.

this is the band of mine I’ve been talking about: Tim Berne, Oscar Noriega, Mary Halvorson, John Hebert, and Tomas Fujiwara. Rehearsals have been going great so far, I’m feeling great about it. I’ve been allowing myself to write some crazy music and everyone’s nailing it! This will be part of the Ars Nova Workshop series.

4/28 – Philadelphia, PA – The Rotunda – with Inzinzac, performing to Melies short movies.

This may be the first time I’ve played live music for a film, so this should be a treat, not least because I’ll be playing with these great musicians – Inzinzac is Alban Bailly, Dan Scofield, and Eli Litwin.

5/5-12 – Australia tour with the Claudia Quintet

5/6 and 8 – Melbourne, AU – Melbourne Jazz Festival
5/10 and 12 – Sydney, AU

I’m extremely excited to go to Australia with Claudia. For this tour Claudia will be John Hollenbeck, Drew Gress, Ted Reichman, Chris Speed, and me.

Last but not least – head on over, if you’re so inclined, to www.screwgunrecords.com to hear 3 new, long audio chunks of me playing piano with Tim Berne’s Los Totopos, taken from several of our gigs this past fall.

I think that’s it for the moment, so for the moment, good day.

-mm

it has been a long time since I’ve written here. So here is what’s happening over the next few weeks [sent out to my email list]:

Hello everybody!

I have a number of things happening within the next month or so centered around the east coast that I wanted to mention. Organized by city…

in NYC:

12/3 – with Tim Berne’s Los Totopos at IBeam – 168 7th St in Brooklyn. 9 pm, probably two sets
12/23 – with Los Totopos at Barbes – 9th st/6th Ave in Brooklyn. 8 pm, probably one long set
1/7/10 – Los Totopos at the Jazz Gallery – 290 Hudson St. in Manhattan. Sets at 9 and 10:30.

For the 12/23 date I’ll be playing Wurlitzer, the other two will be acoustic. We’ve done it both ways now, it seems to work nicely either way.

in Philadelphia:

12/12 – with Tim Berne at Ars Nova Workshop – Philadelphia Art Alliance – 251 S 18th St. 8 pm, 2 sets

For the first set I’m playing a solo piano set of Tim Berne’s compositions. I’ve been preparing for this set for about a year now!
The second set I’ll be playing with Tim Berne’s Adobe Probe, which for this gig will be Tim Berne, Chris Speed, Shane Endsley, Marc Ducret, Michael Formanek, Dan Weiss, and me.

You can read an interview David Adler did with Tim and me here: http://pmpmagazine.wordpress.com/2009/11/23/tim_berne_matt_mitchell/

12/19 – with Darius Jones, Tarus Mateen, and Doug Hirlinger at Ortlieb’s Jazz Haus – 847 N 3rd St

very excited to add my new friend Darius Jones to the trio with Tarus and Doug!

and finally, closing out the month and year in Boston:

12/31 – with John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet at Emmanual Church Boston “First Night” Event
set times:
9:00 PM – 9:45 PM , 10:15 PM – 11:00 PM
http://www.firstnight.org/FirstNight2010/Events/Evening.aspx

I’m very excited to play with the Claudia Quintet for the first time! Trevor Dunn will also be joining the band for this gig.

On tap for the new year is the debut of my new group, which is a sextet consisting of Tim Berne [alto AND bari!], Oscar Noriega [bass clarinet], Mary Halvorson, John Hebert, and Tomas Fujiwara. I feel very fortunate to have these amazing musicians playing my music! Our first gig will be April 13, 2010. I have a couple other projects in the works too – I’ll let them out of the bag when it’s time…

That should do it for now. Have a great holiday season! Please let me know if you want me to remove your name from my list.

best wishes,

-mm

lots of exciting stuff these days.

Had my first rehearsal with a new, as-yet-nameless band last week, formed specifically to try some new music of mine. The personnel is

Tim Berne – alto
Oscar Noriega – bass clarinet
Mary Halvorson – guitar
Chris Lightcap – bass
Tomas Fujiwara – drums
me – piano

needless to say – though I’ll say it anyway – I’m very excited, both to have a band at all and to have one full of such amazing musicians who are willing to play some strange music.

Speaking of Tim Berne, Ethan Iverson of the Bad Plus blog has a really long, really great interview with him here:

part one: http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2009/06/interview-with-tim-berne-part-one.html

part two: http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2009/06/interview-with-tim-berne-part-2.html

the end of part two includes a mention of Adobe Probe [the Berne band I’m a part of] as well as a link to a video of me playing his piece Huevos Expanded at my solo gig at The Stone this past January.

gigs: next one is this coming Sunday, 6/28, at the Saratoga Jazz Festival with Ralph Alessi’s band, which will also include Tony Malaby, John Hebert and Mark Ferber. Also I recently played Ortlieb’s with Tarus Mateen and Doug Hirlinger, which was a huge amount of fun, easily the most fun I’ve ever had playing standards.

tillnextthyme.

-mm