(Wednesday) June 20: IMOO #180 – Monicker

***NOTE – special day and time: this is a Wednesday concert with an 8pm start time***

Roger Turner – drums
Arthur Bull – guitar
Scott Thomson – trombone

The international, intergenerational, improvising trio, Monicker, will play seven concerts in four Canadian provinces, 16-23 June. Drummer Roger Turner (London, UK) is a legend in the field of creative improvised music, having played far and wide since the early 1970s with incredible collaborators including, notably, Cecil Taylor, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Annette Peacock, and Min Tanaka. He first played with guitarist Arthur Bull (Digby Neck, NS) in 2002 at a workshop at the Guelph Jazz Festival, and the two have reconvened to play duo concerts periodically ever since. In 2017, they invited trombonist Scott Thomson (Montreal), a key figure from a younger generation of Canadian creative musicians, to form a trio during a Halifax residency. From there Monicker’s fully improvised music forged its distinct artistic signature: Propulsive, dynamic, challenging, full of forward momentum, and obliquely tuneful as it artfully side-steps the pitfall clichés of generic free jazz. This Eastern Canadian tour will represent both a consolidation and the further development of this music, to the benefit of listeners in the locales along the way.

Roger Turner has been working as an improvising percussionist since the early 1970s, collaborating in numerous established and ad hoc configurations. He has focused on solo work, work with electro-acoustic ensembles, open-form song, as well as extensive work with dance and visual artists. Specific jazz-based ensembles have led to collaborations with the most interesting European and international musicians and performers including Annette Peacock, Phil Minton, Cecil Taylor, Masahiko Satoh, Charles Gayle, Lol Coxhill, Derek Bailey, Otomo Yoshihide, Alan Silva, Keith Rowe, Josef Nadj, Min Tanaka, Toshinori Kondo, and Axel Dorner. He has toured and played concerts worldwide from Sydney to the Arctic, Tokyo to Belfast, New York to Beirut. https://www.turners-site.com

Arthur Bull is a veteran musician of the improvising music scene. Formerly the guitarist with The Bill Smith Ensemble, Bull has also played extensively with Paul Dutton, David Prentice, Michael Snow, John Oswald and John Heward, and he has performed in concert with Derek Bailey, Roscoe Mitchell and Roger Turner. He is also a poet, with three books published, and a translator from the Chinese. Originally from Ontario, Bull now lives in Sandy Cove, Nova Scotia, with his artist and musician wife, Ruth Bull. http://www.actuellecd.com/en/bio/bull_ar/

Scott Thomson is an improvising trombonist and composer. He works extensively with singer and dance artist, Susanna Hood, and writes songs for her based on published authors’ texts to be played in many contexts, from duo to octet and sometimes including Susanna’s choreography. Scott co-founded the Association of Improvising Musicians Toronto (AIMToronto) in 2004 and served as a director until 2009, and co-directed the AIMToronto Orchestra, formed for a project with Anthony Braxton in 2007. In 2016, he convened the Montreal-Toronto Art Orchestra to play Roscoe Mitchell’s music. He founded Somewhere There, a Toronto creative music venue that hosted 850 concerts during his tenure, 2007-10. Scott has composed a series of site-specific works, ‘cartographic compositions’ for mobile musicians and audiences in unconventional performance contexts including, notably, the National Gallery of Canada; the Art Gallery of Ontario; and Montréal’s Vieux Port and Parc La Fontaine. He programs the Guelph Jazz Festival. http://www.scottthomson.ca