THE FOREST
a percussion quintet
(L to R) MICHAEL WIMBERLY, LEAH BOWDEN, ANDREW DRURY, LESLEY MOK, GUSTAVO AGUILAR
The Forest is a new, cooperative percussion group comprised of five composer/percussionists who possess deep experience working in dialogue with a wide range of African-Diasporic musics, Contemporary New Music, Free Improvisation, and other musical forms and philosophies. The Forest seeks to contribute to, and expand upon, these traditions through the incorporation of new performance techniques, explorations of setting and space, and through innovative collaborations with musical communities of all kinds. The Forest is dedicated to improvisation and composition, performing new and existing works by its members and selected works by other composer/percussionists. Individual members of The Forest have performed worldwide on projects involving many disciplines and media with great artists well-known and obscure. Each member teaches and works as a community artist. Three of the five have affiliations with universities. All are organizers whose experience includes working in many community settings, promoting music and musicians, and elevating community.
2022
JAN 19-22 retreat @ Tuckaway Farm, Conway, MA
MARCH 3 workshop @ Bennington College
MARCH 3 community drumming jam @ Orchard Hill C.C. (East Alstead, NH)
MARCH 28 workshop @ the Low Income Housing Institute (Seattle)
MARCH 29 site-specific performance in… a forest! (location tba)
MARCH 30 workshop @ Newport High School (Bellevue, WA)
MARCH 31 workshop @ U. of Washington/Cornish College students
MARCH 31 & APRIL 1 FOREST FEST! with BONNIE WHITING and JAMES FALZONE @ Wayward Music Series, Seattle
APRIL 3 community drum jam @ Cesar Chavez Park, presented by Stay Strange (San Diego)
April 4 & 5 workshops at Cal Arts (LA)
April 5 performance at Cal Arts w/ VINNIE GOLIA
April 6 site-specific performance at the US/MEXICAN border (location tba)
April 7 workshop @ UC San Diego
April 7 performance @ Bread & Salt, presented by Project [BLANK]
April 11 workshop @ the Hippy Cafe, Skid Row
presented by Urban Voices (LA) date tba workshop in a Brooklyn high school
JUNE 7 performance @ Roulette (Brooklyn) w/ special guests JD PARRAN and WARREN SMITH
JUNE 10 & 11recording session (Brooklyn) w/ special guests JD PARRAN and WARREN SMITH
JULY 21 performance @ Lincoln Center Atrium w/ special guests JD PARRAN and WARREN SMITH
FOREST FEST
MARCH 31 8pm
(doors open at 7:30)
$15
SEATTLE: FOREST FEST @ THE CHAPEL PERFORMANCE SPACE
4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., 4th floor of the Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, WA
(SW corner of 50th & Sunnyside in Wallingford. Nearest Metro bus stops: 62, 44, 26)
BONNIE WHITING/LESLEY MOK/LEAH BOWDEN percussion trio
UW PERCUSSION ENSEMBLE improvisation
ANDREW DRURY “HIDDEN VOICES” solo floor tom
BONNIE WHITING/JAMES FALZONE percussion/clarinet duo
APRIL 1 8pm
(doors open at 7:30)
$15
SEATTLE: FOREST FEST @ THE CHAPEL PERFORMANCE SPACE
4649 Sunnyside Ave. N., 4th floor of the Good Shepherd Center, Seattle, WA
(SW corner of 50th & Sunnyside in Wallingford. Nearest Metro bus stops: 62, 44, 26)
THE FOREST *DEBUT PERFORMANCE*
two compositions:
SOUND FIELD 1
(D)RUMINATIONS FOR EDWARD BLACKWELL: MU FIRST PART & MU SECOND PART with guests BONNIE WHITING and JAMES FALZONE
Continuum Culture & Arts presents FOREST FEST, a mini-festival that brings The Forest—a percussion quintet based in New York and San Diego—to Seattle for two nights of adventurous music. Members of The Forest include Seattle-native Andrew Drury, Gustavo Aguilar, Leah Bowden, Lesley Mok, and Michael Wimberly. They will be joined on stage in various combinations by percussionist Bonnie Whiting and clarinetist James Falzone, two accomplished musicians who teach at the University of Washington and Cornish College respectively.
FOREST FEST represents the public culmination of a six-day residency in Seattle during which the Forest will rehearse at the University of Washington while leading workshops with residents of a low-income housing development, Newport High School, and students at Cornish College and the University of Washington. Following FOREST FEST, the quintet begins a similar six-day residency in San Diego and Los Angeles, and in June the group performs and records in Brooklyn with the eminent percussionist and M’Boom co-founder, Warren Smith.
FOREST FEST was conceived and initiated by Andrew Drury, a fifth-generation Seattleite who studied for eight years in the 1980s with the legendary drummer, Ed Blackwell, at Wesleyan University before returning to Seattle in the mid-1990s. In Seattle he was active in the Northwest jazz scene as a performer/composer, working with artists such as Wayne Horvitz and Eyvind Kang, and as a presenter of DIY shows in local theaters and venues such as the OK Hotel, The Compound, and the Oddfellows Hall on Capitol Hill where his grandmother took piano lessons in the 1910s. Drury moved to New York City, where he now lives, in 1998.
As was characteristic of his past work in the Northwest, FOREST FEST centers on creative approaches to percussion and performance, with strong social undertones, while being solidly grounded in African-diasporic musical forms, Contemporary New Music, and other traditions. The music presented at FOREST FEST will employ innovations Drury has developed including techniques for playing drums as wind instruments, for playing dustpans with violin bows, and for using bamboo slivers, to name a few.
The festival will also play something of a revivalist role in reinvigorating the legacies of the multi-cultural, intersectional, collective percussion ensemble M’Boom, and the legacy of Drury’s mentor, Ed Blackwell. The Forest doesn’t merely perform work created in past eras, it attempts to take the next logical steps on the trails blazed.
The very existence of The Forest is a kind of tribute to M’Boom in that there have been few, if any, ensembles that have followed, much less extended the pioneering work of this group founded by Max Roach and others in 1969. And the connections go further. Forest member, Leah Bowden, wrote a D.M.A. dissertation on M’Boom at University of California, San Diego and is a leading scholarly authority on the group, and is the current director of the archives of Warren Smith a founding member of M’Boom. In addition both Drury and Michael Wimberly have active artistic relationships with Warren Smith.
The April 1 performance will feature the world premiere of a composition Drury wrote entitled “(D)ruminations for Edward Blackwell: Mu First Part & Mu Second Part.” This piece is the first in a series in which Drury explores memories and sonic material that have lovingly haunted his musical imagination in his 40 years listening to, and studying with, Mr. Blackwell, and as a professional musician. “(D)ruminations” examines in detail the classic Don Cherry/Ed Blackwell duo recordings, Mu First Part and Mu Second Part (1969) as a way to further develop many ideas contained and hinted at in this rich recording.
All these activities are made possible with support from a Jazz Road Creative Residency grant from South Arts, and from Continuum Culture & Arts, a non-profit organization. The Seattle portion of the project has been made possible by partnerships with organizations including the Low Income Housing Institute, CultureWorks, Common Tone Arts/The Institute for Creativity, Seattle JazzEd, and the Wayward Music Series.
The Forest’s activity from January to June 11 is made possible with support from Jazz Road, a national initiative of South Arts, which is funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation with additional support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Additional support is provided by Bennington College, University of Washington Music Department, Cornish College, Cal Arts, University of California, San Diego, and community partners Common Tone Arts, The Wayward Music Series, Newport High School, Brooklyn Collaborative Studies, Stay Strange, Project [BLANK], the Low Income Housing Institute, Urban Voices, Seattle Jazz Ed, Roulette Intermedium, and the Orchard Hill Community Center.
