Nate Wooley, known as one of the small group of improvisers working to expand the limits and expectations of modern trumpet playing, performs his new electroacoustic work, For Kenneth Gaburo, as well as solo amplified trumpet improvisations.

For Kenneth Gaburo is a new project by Wooley that works within the concepts of combinatory sound found in his recording, The Almond, as well as using linguistics as an oral-mechanical source for affecting the acoustic sound of the trumpet—a concept he has been working with in his [Syllables] series of compositions. This piece takes text by composer Gaburo and combines synthesized tones on tape with manipulated trumpet techniques to create shadings of the phonetic sounds inherent in the text. It is in homage to two of Gaburo’s iconic masterpieces, Maledetto and Mouthpiece II for Trumpet Sextet. Portions of the long piece will be performed.

Nate Wooley was born in 1974 in Clatskanie, Oregon, a town of 2,000 people in the timber country of the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. He began playing trumpet professionally with his father, a big band saxophonist, at the age of 13.

Since moving to New York in 2001, he has become one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Éliane Radigue, Ken Vandermark, Fred Frith, Evan Parker and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans and Mary Halvorson. A combination of vocalization, extreme extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics, amplification and feedback, and compositional rigor has led one reviewer to call his solo recordings “exquisitely hostile.”

Presented in partnership with the Graham Foundation