Pandelis Karayorgis | piano
Damon Smith | bass
Eric Rosenthal | drums
Cliff explores density, pulse and texture in extended trio improvisations. Karayorgis and Rosenthal share a long musical relationship dating back to the early nineties. During the two years Smith lived in the Boston area, the three developed the concept of this trio over the course of several concerts at the Lilypad, in Cambridge.
Damon Smith studied double bass with Lisle Ellis and has had lessons with Bertram Turezky, Joëlle Leandré, John Lindberg, Mark Dresser and others. Damon’s explorations into the sonic palette of the double bass have resulted in a personal, flexible improvisational language based in the American jazz avant-garde movement and European non-idiomatic free improvisation. Visual art, film and dance heavily influence his music, as evidenced by his CAMH performance of Ben Patterson’s Variations for Double Bass, collaborations with director Werner Herzog on soundtracks for Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World, and an early performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Damon has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including: Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Henry Kaiser, Keith Rowe, Jaap Blonk, Roscoe Mitchell, Michael Pisaro, Wadada Leo Smith, Weasel Walter, Marco Eneidi, Wolfgang Fuchs, Peter Brötzmann and Peter Kowald. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and six great years in Houston, Texas working regularly with Alvin Fielder, Sandy Ewen, Thomas Helton, David Dove & Chris Cogburn, Damon moved to the Boston area in the fall of 2016 and began working with Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Joe McPhee and Ra-Kalam Bob Moses and many others. Damon has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians.
Eric Rosenthal is a percussionist originally from Cleveland Ohio and currently based in the Boston area. He studied jazz drumming with Ed Blackwell, South Indian Classical drumming with T. Ranganathan and West African drumming with Freeman Donkor and Abraham Adzinyah during his college years at Wesleyan university. He's a founding member of the seminal Avante Klezmer group 'Naftules Dream' with 5 recordings on both the Tzadik and Innova labels. He has two duo recordings of jazz standards and abstractions with cornetist Taylor Ho Bynum, as well as recordings with saxophonist Bhob Rainey, pianist Pandelis Karayorgis, Charlie Kolhase, Dave Bryant, Jorrit Dijkstra, electronic musician Andrew Neumann, among others. Eric is currently very active in a thriving improvised music scene in Boston and on the side, over the last decade he's been making and selling acrylic paintings in a modern impressionist style.
