"Halloween Throw-Down" w/ Revolutionary Snake Ensemble at Regattabar

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Revolutionary Snake Ensemble Halloween Show featuring Jerry Sabatini (trumpet), Ken Field (sax), Tom Hall (sax), Dave Harris (trombone & tuba), Phil Neighbors (drums), Blake Newman (bass) and special guest Jon Bernhardt on theremin. Friday, October 31, 7:30 pm. Regattabar at the Charles Hotel, One Bennett Street, Cambridge. After crowd-stunning performances this summer at the UFO Festival in Roswell, NM and the Festa del Redentore in Venice, Italy, New England Music Awards nominee Revolutionary Snake Ensemble (RSE) returns to Regattabar for a costumes-optional Halloween throw-down!

Guest soloist Jon Bernhardt will supply appropriately scary and spooky sounds via his theremin, one of the world's earliest electronic instruments, which is magically controlled without physical contact by the thereminist.

Background information:

Formed in 1991, RSE is a funk & street beat improvisational brass band performing a unique blend of original and traditional music. Leader Ken Field is a longtime member of the acclaimed modern music ensemble Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and an active composer and performer.

RSE has performed at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Tipitina's, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and many other venues. Notable guest musicians who have appeared with RSE include Charles Neville, Trombone Shorty, Kenny Wollesen, Matt Darriau, and Josh Roseman.

RSE's most recent CD "Live Snakes" received airplay on over 100 radio stations throughout the US and Canada, received an Editor's Pick in Downbeat, and was listed on the CMJ Jazz Top-40 chart for almost 3 months. The New Orleans magazine "Offbeat" called it "a stone cold killer diller!"

Guest musician Jon Bernhardt has been playing theremin since 1996 with such bands as The Lothars, The Pee Wee Fist, and UV Protection. As a solo performer, he specializes in theremin versions of songs that are completely inappropriate for that instrument, although he's been known to throw in a few standards to keep the audience on their toes. When not playing the theremin, he DJs an indie-rock radio show at WMBR-FM in Cambridge.

"New Orleans brass band meets Sun Ra and Ornette Coleman -
fiery yet booty-shaking music - it's a stone cold killer diller! ...
Most bands can't get the New Orleans stuff right, but the
Revolutionary Snake Ensemble is one of the few
who does and then takes it in fascinating directions."
OffBeat (New Orleans)

[RSE at UFO Festival, Roswell, NM; photo credit: Cecily Miller]

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