Presented by Talent Moat:
Eli Winter Trio
Eli Winter is a composer, self-taught guitarist, essayist, and Houston native. His music synthesizes aspects of folk, rock, jazz, and devotional music, maintaining a waggish disregard for genre constraints emblematic of Chicago, his adopted hometown. His new album, A Trick of the Light, is an elegantly crafted and vibrant collection that finds the bandleader at the height of his powers: the dazzlingly intense arrangement of Don Cherry and Ed Blackwell’s “Arabian Nightingale” that opens the album, Winter’s muscular, dreamy originals, and his daring arrangement of Carla Bley’s “Ida Lupino.” His trio features Chicago improvisers Sam Wagster of Fruit Bats (pedal steel guitar) and Tyler Damon of Circuit des Yeux (drums), with performances at prestigious music festivals like Primavera Sound and Big Ears, and collaborations with a wide range of artists live and on record, including Yasmin Williams, jaimie branch, Caroline Rose and Ryley Walker. His concert history spans prestigious music festivals like Primavera Sound and Big Ears, pristine listening rooms, museums, university chapels, laundromat bars, and small rooms in shotgun houses.
Danny Paul Grody Duo
On his 2023 release arc of day danny paul grody (The Drift, Tarentel) gathered an ensemble of musicians and gave us compositions that conjured not just bird-like flights but the supportive skeleton of a bird itself - intricate, delicate, but able to carry a body (or a listener) through bright, airy spaces. that same ensemble, since renamed the danny paul grody duo, now bring us arc of night - a sister collection to arc of day, shaped from core collaborations between grody and percussionist/drummer rich douthit along with additions on select tracks from trevor montgomery on electric bass and chuck johnson on pedal steel guitar. though coming from the same musical bones as its sibling album, the darker tones and predominance of electric guitar on arc of night evoke a different aviary figure - the nightbird. there are moments in these pieces that feel like stepping out at twilight as a single nightjar begins its song. other voices soon answer, inviting us to say goodnight to sleep, to stay with them till sunrise. other tracks give the feeling of waking at 3 AM - hearing a far off train, the wind, the deep drone of the hour, and above it all the cry of some nightbird hunting for companionship - or prey - in the darkness. there's terror on >arc of night, specifically the terror of not knowing whether one is awake or dreaming, but there is also comfort - the world, however dark, is still there outside the window, outside the ear, and even terror has its place in the flow of things.
day will come but thankfully not yet.
CHIROMANCER
(with Evelyn Davis & Elihu Knowles)
DOORS at 7:00PM | MUSIC at 8:00 PM