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| Guitarist/Composer Björn Wennås' Static Coming July 12th On July 12th, Swedish-born guitarist/composer Björn Wennås will release Static (Beartones 003), featuring fellow Boston scene veterans Carmen Marsico (vocals), Phil Grenadier (trumpet), Michel Reis (piano), Bruno Råberg (bass), and Ziv Ravitz (drums). Static's eight tracks are performed by combinations of musicians ranging from duo to sextet, and feature both original music and unusual arrangements of seminal pieces by Miles Davis, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane. Wennås will celebrate the CD's release live July 24th at the Zeitgeist Gallery in Cambridge, MA. Influenced as a child by the open, organic music of Pink Floyd and early David Bowie, Wennås began his professional career at 12 as a classical guitarist, but soon joined a variety of rock bands. He didn't begin studying jazz until he was in college and therefore his eclectic original music as a professional jazz musician has always included rock and pop sensibilities. The music on Static still shows those influences, and the like-minded strengths of frequent collaborator Marsico's voice, but also more deeply investigates a variety of tone colors and creative improvisation. The son and brother of accomplished pianists, Wennås studied musicology and anthropology at Sweden's Uppsala University, where he developed an interest in jazz and researched improvisation from an anthropological perspective. His transition to jazz led him to performing with various large and small ensembles at his country's most distinguished jazz clubs before leaving his native Sweden to accept a scholarship to Boston's Berklee College of Music in 1999, where he studied with Mick Goodrick, Hal Crook, Jon Damian, Ed Tomassi, Dave Santoro, Greg Hopkins and Tim Miller. Since then he has performed around Boston with his own groups and in collaboration with a variety of others. His debut CD as a leader, Early Summer Sketch (Beartones 001), was released in 2003. write your comments about the article :: © 2005 Jazz News :: home page |