Improvisations Now at Real Art Ways

Experience music imagined and created in real-time. This series runs from September 2024 to May 2025. Check out the full schedule here!

October 20 Performance:

Ingrid Laubrock is an experimental saxophonist and composer interested in exploring the borders between musical realms and creating multi-layered, dense, and often evocative sound worlds. A prolific composer, Laubrock was named a “true visionary” by pianist and The Kennedy Center’s artistic director Jason Moran and a “fully committed saxophonist and visionary” by the New Yorker and the New York Times nominated her composition Vogelfrei as ‘one of the best 25 Classical tracks of 2018’. She worked with Anthony Braxton, Muhal Richards Abrams, Dave Douglas, Kenny Wheeler, Jason Moran, Tim Berne, William Parker, Tom Rainey, Mary Halvorson, Kris Davis, Tyshawn Sorey, Craig Taborn, Andy Milne, Luc Ex, Django Bates’ Human Chain, The Continuum Ensemble, Wet Ink and many others. Awards included the BBC Jazz Award for Innovation in 2004, a Fellowship in Jazz Composition by the Arts Foundation in 2006, the 2009 SWR German Radio Jazz Prize, the 2014 German Record Critics Quarterly Award, Downbeat Annual Critics Poll Rising Star Soprano Saxophone (2015), Rising Star-Tenor Saxophone (2018) and Herb Alpert/Ragdale Prize in Composition 2019. Ingrid Laubrock has received composition commissions from The Fromm Music Foundation, BBC Glasgow Symphony Orchestra, Bang on The Can, Grossman Ensemble, The Shifting Foundation, The Robert D. Bielecki Foundation, The Jerwood Foundation, American Composers Orchestra, Tricentric Foundation, SWR New Jazz Meeting, The Jazz Gallery Commissioning Series, NYSCA, Wet Ink, John Zorn’s Stone Commissioning Series, and the EOS Orchestra. She is a recipient of the 2019 Herb Alpert Ragdale Prize in Music Composition and the 2021 Berklee Institute of Gender Justice Women Composers Collection Grant.

Ingrid Laubrock is a part-time faculty member at The New School and Columbia University. Other teaching experiences include improvisation workshops at Towson University, CalArts, UC San Diego, UC Irvine, Baruch College, University of Michigan, University of Newcastle, and many others. Laubrock was Improviser in Residence 2012 in the German city of Moers. The post is created to introduce creative music into the city throughout the year. As part of this, she led a regular improvisation ensemble and taught sound workshops in elementary schools.

Born in Newark, NJ, Steve Swell has been an active member of the NYC music community since 1975.  His breadth of versatility has allowed him to tour and record with mainstream artists like Lionel Hampton and Buddy Rich in the past, as well as more contemporary artists like Anthony Braxton, Bill Dixon, Cecil Taylor, and William Parker.  He has over 50 CDs as a leader or co-leader and is a featured artist on more than 125 other releases.  He runs workshops worldwide and is a teaching artist in the NYC public school system, focusing on special needs children. Swell has worked on music transcriptions of the Bosavi tribe of New Guinea for MacArthur fellow Steve Feld in 2000. His CD, “Suite For Players, Listeners and Other Dreamers” (CIMP), ranked number 2 in the 2004 Cadence Readers Poll. He has also received grants from USArtists International in 2006 and MCAF (LMCC) awards in 2008 and 2013. He has been commissioned three times for the Interpretations Series at Merkin Hall in 2006 and at Roulette in 2012 and 2017. Steve was nominated for Trombonist of the Year 2008, 2011 & 2020 by the Jazz Journalists Association, was selected Trombonist of the Year 2008-2010, 2012,  2014-2021, and 2023 by the online journal El Intruso of Argentina, and received the 2008 Jubilation Foundation Fellowship Award of the Tides Foundation.  Steve has also been selected by the Downbeat Critics Poll in the Trombone category each year from 2010-2018 & 2020-2024. The New York City Jazz Record chose his recording “Soul Travelers” with Jemeel Moondoc, Dave Burrell, William Parker, and Gerald Cleaver as Album of the Year in 2016. His performance of “Kende Dreams” with Connie Crothers, Rob Brown, Larry Roland, and Chad Taylor at the 2016 Vision Festival was cited as one of the year’s best performances by the same journal. This was also one of Connie’s last performances. We miss her dearly. Steve is a teaching artist through the American Composers Orchestra, Healing Arts Initiative, Mind-Builders Creative Arts Center (Bronx), the Jazz Foundation of America, Leman Manhattan Preparatory School, and the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music. Steve was also awarded the 2014 Creative Curricula grant (LMCC) for the project: “Metamorphoses: Modern Mythology in Sound and Words,” which was taught in a month-long residency at Baruch College Campus High School in Manhattan. Steve’s CD Music for Six Musicians: Hommage à Olivier Messiaen was listed in NPR’s top 50 albums for 2018. Steve is an inaugural recipient of a Jazz Road Tours grant (SouthArts.org) begun in 2019 and received a 2020 Creative Engagement grant (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council) for performances to take place in Manhattan. In 2021, Steve received the City Artists Corps Grant (NYC).

Hidemi Akaiwa is a Japanese pianist and composer. At 30, she shifted from a successful corporate career to focusing on jazz music. She received a full scholarship to  Berklee, where she participates in the college’s Global Jazz Institute, Institute of Jazz and Gender Justice, Planet MicroJam Institute, and Interdisciplinary Arts Institute. These experiences have allowed her to study with world-class musicians, including Danilo Pérez, Kenny Werner, Terri Lyne Carrington, Kris Davis, Billy Childs, David Fiuczynski, and many others. Her passion is to create a new art form infusing the tenets of Japanese Zen with the sounds of jazz and microtonal contemporary classical music.   Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.” He has performed or recorded with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn, Evan Parker, Matthew Shipp, William Parker, Wadada Leo Smith, David S. Ware, Sunny Murray, Marshall Allen, Dewey Redman, Lawrence “Butch” Morris, Andrew CyrilleJoe Maneri, Barry Guy, Tyshawn Sorey, Ken Vandermark, Mary Halvorson, Han Bennink, Barre Phillips, Tomeka Reid, Paul Rutherford, Agustí Fernández, Nate Wooley, Peter Evans, Gerald Cleaver, Rob Brown, John Butcher, Eugene Chadbourne, DKV Trio, Aaly Trio, Daniel Carter, Rashid Bakr, Wilbur Morris,, Kidd Jordan, Alvin Fielder, Ikue Mori, Zeena Parkins, Tim Berne, Fred Anderson, Ivo Perelman, Andrea Parkins, Hamid Drake, Thurman Barker, Fred Hopkins, Bern Nix, Joe McPhee, Billy Bang, Lowell Davidson, Peter Kowald, Simon Fell, Roy Campbell Jr., Raphé Malik, Whit Dickey, Sabir Mateen, Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway, Warren Smith, Karen Borca, Malcolm Goldstein, Paul Lytton, Tim Berne, Suzie Ibarra, Mat Maneri, Sylvia Courvosier, Thurston Moore, Alex Ward, Jamie Saft and many others. He has also performed as a member of William Parker’s Organic Ensemble, Pipeline 2000, Jim Hobbs Ghost Band, Alan Silva’s Celestial Communications Orchestra, Simon Fell Orchestra, Agustí Fernández Celebration Ensemble, and in a large ensemble led by Leroy Jenkins. He currently leads various groups including Abstract Forest, a 20+ piece improvising ensemble, Go Go Mambo, Joe Morris Quartet, Mess Hall, Shock Axis, Plymouth, as well as performing solo, in duos and as a freelance guitarist and double bassist. In 2019 he began his INSTANTIATION music, recording and performing the first four parts of the multi-part work that uses the properties of free music in new ways with various ensembles. He is featured as leader, co-leader and sideman on 150 recordings to date. Many of his recordings as a leader have been named among Writer’s Choice (best of the year) in the Village Voice, Chicago Tribune, Wire, Coda, and Jazziz, and on Free Jazz.org and All About Jazz.com.. He has recorded for the labels AUM Fidelity, SoulNote, Thirsty Ear, Ayler, Knitting Factory, Okka Disc, OmniTone, Avant, Incus, Hat Hut, ECM, Leo, Homestead, NoMore, About Time, Clean Feed, Skycap, Rogue Art, Rare Noise, ESPdisk, Bug Incision, Relative Pitch, and Cuneiform. In 2014 he founded Glacial Erratic records. In 2019 he was nominated for a St Botolph Distinguished Artist Award. He received the 2017 Killam Visiting Scholar Award from the University of Calgary Alberta Canada. He was the recipient of a Meet the Composer grant in 2004. He was nominated for a 2001 Calarts Alpert Award. He was nominated as New York Jazz Awards Guitarist of the Year in 1998 and 2002. In 2012 he published the book Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti, 2012). His article Encryption was included in Arcane vol 7 (Tzadik 2014). His article Perpetual Frontier appears on www.pointofdeparture.org (Pod39) May 2012. He has written numerous liner note articles on his music and for other artists for recordings on the labels Sony, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, RogueArt and others. His monthly column Intentional Evolution begins publication in the German magazine Jazz Podium in January 2020. He has presented workshops and master classes in a wide variety of settings throughout North America and Europe, including at Harvard University, Princeton University, Dartmouth College, University of the Arts, Berklee College of Music, University of Calgary, University of Guelph, University of Alberta, and Mannes School of Music. He has taught improvisation and/or guitar on the faculty at Tufts University Experimental College, Southern Connecticut State University and the Longy School of Music at Bard College. He is a lesson faculty member at New School Jazz and Contemporary Music. He has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation Department at New England Conservatory of Music since 2000. He began his work as an organizer and performance producer/curator in 1976 in Boston and continued there and in New York until 2001 when he left Boston for New Haven CT. Upon moving to Connecticut in 2001 he created the Just Play series in New Haven (2003/2004), curated the premier season at Firehouse 12 (2005), was artistic director for Hartford Jazz Society Jazz in the Park series (2008), co-founded and curated the Improvisations series at Real Art Ways in Hartford (2011–2016), and founded and co-curated the Multiplex series at State House in New Haven (2019). He was in residence at The Stone NYC for two weeks in January 2013, and for one week in June 2014, August 2016, June 2017 and May 2018. In September 2015 through June 2016, he produced the series Arcade which presented him in performance with new emerging musicians with ten performances presented in New Haven, Hartford, Cambridge, Mass., and Brooklyn, N.Y. His one-day festival Spectacle was presented at Real Art Ways in Hartford CT annually from 2013-2018. It featured emerging musicians performing in ad-hoc groupings with well-known professionals.