News

Please note that we have contracted renowned booking agency Concerted Efforts to enhance and expand the touring profile of the Don Byron New Gospel Quintet and the Parkington Sisters.

We will continue to book all other artists directly, including Don Byron’s other projects.

Artist News

DAFNIS PRIETO
The Cuban-born drummer/composer capped off a year highlighted by a 2011 MacArthur Fellowship award with a six-week teaching residency at the Swanarbhoomi Academy of Music in Southern India. He will tour Europe from January 10-18 with his Proverb Trio featuring vocalist Kokayi and keyboardist Jason Lindner. Upon their return to New York, the trio will record its debut album, to be released on Prieto’s own Dafnison Music label in late spring. Dafnis will be featured in the February issue of Down Beat Magazine.  2012 plans include touring with the Proverb Trio and his Si o Si Quartet, and a performance at the Newport Jazz Festival with his sextet.

DON BYRON
Love, Peace, and Soul, the debut album by the Don Byron New Gospel Quintet, will be released on Savoy Jazz on February 21, 2012. With jazz as a springboard, the virtuosic clarinetist/saxophonist and his stellar band mine the historical riches of American Gospel music via the spirit and pioneering songs of founding father Thomas A. Dorsey and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Byron’s latest project is the result of an ongoing re-awakening of his own faith and a dynamic, soul-stirring outlet for his personal religious expression. The album’s release will be celebrated in concert at Columbia University ‘s Miller Theatre on February 25, with some of the record’s special guests helping mark the occasion.

Byron has also composed an original film soundtrack for director Joel Katz’s new documentary “White: A Memoir in Color,” their second collaboration after the acclaimed “Strange Fruit.” “White” premiered at the New York Jewish Film Festival on January 12.

IVA BITTOVA
The enchanting Czech chanteuse and violinist spent most of the summer and fall of last year in Europe, touring extensively as a soloist and with her bands Cikori and Bile Inferno. She is touring in Holland with the Nederlands Blazer Ensemble in January before making her first solo record for ECM Records with producer Manfred Eicher in February. Her long out-of-print 1997 recording of Bela Bartok’s “44 Duets for Two Violins” with fellow Czech violinist Dorethea Kellerova will be reissued by Nonesuch Records in the spring. Iva counts on performing more often in the United States for the remainder of 2012.

PARKINGTON SISTERS
The Parkington Sisters had the honor of opening the “First Night” New Year’s Eve concert at Boston’s Symphony Hall for gospel icon Mavis Staples. Other highlights from last year include the release of their debut album, Till Voices Wake Us, performing at the Bonnaroo Festival and touring with Boston rock heroes Dropkick Murphys. The Sisters are currently writing new songs for their next record and plan to tour extensively throughout 2012.

RON MILES
The Denver-based trumpeter’s longstanding relationship with guitarist Bill Frisell began in 1994 and has resulted in countless collaborations, including Heaven, an intimate duet recording from 2002. Their special musical chemistry is highlighted again and most impressively on Ron’s newest recording as a leader, which features the trumpeter and guitarist in a trio setting with master drummer Brian Blade. Comprised mostly of Miles’s own compositions, the yet untitled record is scheduled for a summer 2012 release.  On May 12, at the Ludwigburger Schlossfestspiele in Germany, Ron Miles will be the soloist in a performance of Juan Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez” from the classic Miles Davis-Gil Evans album Sketches of Spain.

TIN HAT
The acclaimed chamber jazz ensemble just finished recording a new album entitled “The Rain Is a Handsome Animal,” their first release on New Amsterdam Records. It is at once a new chapter for Tin Hat and a distillation of the qualities that have entranced the band’s fans for fifteen years. At its heart are two unique voices: the poetry of E.E. Cummings and the singing of Tin Hat’s violinist Carla Kihlstedt. Following the album’s release in early April, Tin Hat will perform at the San Francisco Jazz Festival, at New York’s Symphony Space, at World Café Live in Philadelphia, and other US venues.

Tin Hat guitarist Mark Orton’s ever increasing work as a film composer can be heard in
“Buck” the acclaimed documentary about a horse trainer, the upcoming “Flat Daddy” (about the families of Iraq War soldiers), and “360,” a new film by director Fernando Mereilles (City of God, The Constant Gardener).

SPECIAL PROJECTS:

BRIAN CARPENTER’S GHOST TRAIN ORCHESTRA
The Ghost Train Orchestra's debut album Hothouse Stomp, featuring trumpeter Brian Carpenter’s arrangements of some of the best Chicago and Harlem jazz of the 1920’s, has made several top ten lists for 2011. NPR's Patrick Jarenwattananon said "It's weird and unfamiliar music; not quite big-band swing, not quite early New Orleans polyphony, it rewards the close listener with unexpected twists and turns." Jon Garelick of the Boston Phoenix wrote “If part of what's grabbed you about HBO's Boardwalk Empire and Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's Prohibition is the music, then you owe it to yourself to catch Brian Carpenter's Ghost Train Orchestra. This is music from the heart of the Jazz Age that still has a raucous immediacy. In fact, just about every track on the band's Hothouse Stomp (Accurate) has the hookiness of a pop hit. And in response to a Ghost Train performance in Boston last October, Garelick commented "This was not a staid recreation, but a crackling performance that evoked the Prohibition era when the music was born.”

The Ghost Train Orchestra is currently developing music for their second album, featuring wild new arrangements of "chamber jazz" from the mid-to-late 1930s by John Kirby, Reginald Foresythe, Raymond Scott, and Alec Wilder.

TRIO M
Featuring pianist Myra Melford, bassist Mark Dresser, and drummer Matt Wilson, TRIO M displays its telepathic interplay on new album, The Guest House, out February 1st on Enja Records. Please read Nate Chinen’s glowing review in the New York Times. The trio will be on tour in the U.S. in February and March.