Hailing from New Orleans, the free jazz new music group Sonic Chambers Quartet will be making their Red Room debut along with our local favorite, Bashi Rose & inc. inc. inc.
Check out their new album “Kiss of the Earth“. The title track is an arrangement of Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring in a jazz combo setting.
Group Bio:
Sonic Chambers Quartet is a New Orleans based group co-led by saxophonists, clarinetists and composers Byron Asher and Tomas Majcherski. The band is filled out by New Orleans drummer Doug Garrison and North Carolina-based Matt Booth on bass. Their music combines new compositions and expansive improvisations using a wide array of woodwind colors and combinations. Sonic Chambers Quartet’s debut release on 577 Records was called “wildly melodic and a rhythmic dynamo” by Dave Sumner at Bandcamp.
Though forming officially in 2024, Sonic Chambers Quartet has been unknowingly in the making for over a decade. When fate brought Asher and Majcherski together, they bonded over their creative passions and strikingly similar life paths that meandered through avant-garde theater and formal studies in philosophy and religion. These shared experiences turned out to be highly valuable to their collaborations. In their new project, the emotional impact of their work is nuanced by Booth’s and Garrison’s talents and contributions, themselves longtime collaborators with Majcherski and Asher on the New Orleans music scene.
Individual Bios:
Byron Asher is a saxophonist and clarinetist and composer based in New Orleans and working at the intersection of broadly experimental composition and jazz and improvised music. Raised in Maryland, he has become an integral member of New Orleans’ creative music community since arriving there in 2011, working as a bandleader, collaborator, improviser, composer, and curator. In spring 2024, he released two new LPs on Sinking City Records: Lord, when you send the rain, the second release from his celebrated large ensemble project Skrontch Music, and May Day, from his “free jazz party band” Basher. Basher’s 2021 release Doubles received 4 stars from Downbeat and was called “unbearably beautiful” by Pitchfork. The debut Skrontch Music recording was named a top 20 jazz release of 2019 by textura.org. Byron teaches in the music department at the University of New Orleans.
Tomas Majcherski is a New York City based saxophonist, clarinetist and composer. He lived in New Orleans for an extended period, where he received an MM from the University of New Orleans. In 2018 he was awarded the ASCAP Louis Armstrong Foundation Scholarship for his compositions. He has frequently performed internationally, including at the Montreal Jazz Festival, New Orleans Jazz Festival, Ottawa Jazz Festival, and the Umbria Jazz Festival. He has released two albums as a co-leader which feature his compositions, including Kiss of the Earth on 577 records and Walking, Remembering on Kanuga Records.
Matt Booth is a bassist, composer, and educator based in Durham NC. Over the last decade, he has worked continuously in a wide range of groups and in various musical styles, both in his previous home of New Orleans, and touring around the world. His quintet recently released a new album, and he has released numerous albums over the years as a co-leader of the piano trio Extended, with his quartet Palindromes, and with the guitar trio Some Antics. He performs nationally as a member of the band led by celebrated R&B organist/pianist John “Papa” Gros. Booth has accompanied an eclectic variety of artists including Aurora Nealand, Anders Osborne, Lynne Arriale, Johnny Vidacovich, Leo Nocentelli, Sean Jones, John Sinclair, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux, and Brian Haas.
Originally from Memphis, Doug Garrison has been living and performing music in New Orleans since 1993 as drummer of the roots rock band The Iguanas. He is highly in-demand, working with many other bands in town, playing country, rock, traditional jazz, modern jazz, free improvised music, and klezmer. Prior to that, he performed with rock icon Alex Chilton for roughly ten years, touring internationally, and recording five albums. He is frequently called upon for a variety of New Orleans studio gigs, and has contributed to many movie and television soundtracks, on and off-screen. He has performed alongside such musical luminaries as Mose Allison, Milt Jackson, Anthony Braxton, and Gatemouth Brown, Rufus and Carla Thomas, country music legend Charlie Rich, and the great piano genius Phineas Newborn Jr.
