Unpredictable, uncategorizable, strange and singular!
Two sets looking for the edges of musical possibility!
“Jonah-Jak Almost Music” is the duo of sex legend Jack Wright and trumpterJohn Gelbert. Opening the night is an all-new trio of local Peabody-based musicians Kieun Song (voice), Timothy Krippner (piano) and Robert Karpay (cello).
Jack Wright has an intimate relationship to the Red Room and High Zero Festival, serving as an inspiration for grassroots organizing and the formation and nurturing of sound-based free improvisation communities around the USA (and beyond). His playing is always casual, conversational, off the cuff and quirky. He still “leads by example,” energetically touring DIY spaces at 84 years old!
Info here on “Jonah-Jak Almost Music”
Jonah Gelbart is an improviser, composer, system-builder based in the greater Philadelphia area, playing trumpet and shofar. He plays everything from classical, straight-ahead jazz, new music, to free improvisation. He is currently a member of the Hansen-Protasi Group, the Kitchen Sink ensemble, the (Toshi) Makihara/Allen/Gelbart Trio, and various other temporary musical arrangements. Playing sessions regularly since June 2025 at the Spring Garden Music House in Philadelphia with Jack Wright, saxes, and Henry Allen, guitar.
Jack Wright is a saxophonist in the Philadelphia area, one of the originals of American free improvisation, and still actively touring. Now 83, he lived some diverse lives, as activist and academic, until settling into music full-time in 1979–free playing is all he’s done since then. He is still touring in Europe (April 2023, Oct. 2024) and the US, where he is still the “Johnny Appleseed of Free Improvisation,” as guitarist Davey Williams called him. He started out in the free jazz direction, but by the late 90’s found that boring and conventional; shifting gears a few times he is now playing sounds that few have heard before. His playing consists of distorted pitches, precise timing, intrusive multiphonics, sudden changes of direction, obscene animalistic sounds, and occasional “real” notes. He partners mostly with Zach Darrup, Ben Bennett, Evan Lipson, and Ron Stabinsky, his most current groups being Wrest, Minimal Disturbance, Roughhousing, and Never. He published a book in 2017, The Free Musics, sold to most of the free players in the US and many in Europe. In 2022 he released a book of mostly political critique, drawing on his background, Shaky Ground. For the books go here; for sounds, etc. see Spring Garden Music.
