Sax Solos at The Creamery

7pm Aug 20, The Creamery - Join us for a reverberating evening within the epic walls of The Creamery with two solo sax performances featuring Danny Kamins on sopranino & soprano sax and Jamison Williams on baritone sax. This is an amazing opportunity to hear two incredible improvisational musicians collaborate with such a unique acoustic space. $10 suggested donation. The Creamery is located at 216 W. Birch in Rogers.

Danny Kamins is an improvising saxophonist based out of Houston, TX. His current musical endeavors include playing in various musical ensembles such as FireLife Trio, Relative Dissonance, CARL, El Mantis, Prion, and Etched in the Eye as well as directing the jazz program at Rice University. Musicians he has performed/recorded with include Tatsuya Nakatani, Alvin Fielder, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Aaron Gonzalez, Stefan Gonzalez, Susan Alcorn, Jamison Williams, Thomas Helton, Lisa Cameron, Adam Goodwin, Vinny Golia, Antonio Borghini, David Leon, Jeb Bishop, Taylor Rouss, Sandy Ewen, Damon Smith, Luke Stewart, Kamila Drabek, Marc Edwards, Natan Kryszk, Paulina Owczarek and NewMusic groups Le Train Bleu, Loop 38, and Transitory Sound and Movement Collective.

Relentlessly creative, baritone sax player Jamison Williams challenges the boundaries of saxophonic extended techniques, Jamison Williams' role in defining the pursuit of expressive freedom through the use of the instrument cannot be understated; from founding the Experimental Arts Union of Florida, +SoLo Sound Gallery's I/II, and Vantage Bulletin publishing, to designing the educational curriculum taught at [neu]Sonics Music Initiative, and as the current residing president of the Society of Independent Composers [sic], his energy is contagious and an inspiration.

Experimental Folk in the Creamery

7 pm, Aug 9, The Creamery in Rogers - Trillium is thrilled to present an evening of experimental folk with Magic Tuber Stringband and Ozark Free Music Society’s Austin Cash. Rooted in the fiddle/guitar duo of Courtney Werner and Evan Morgan, this Durham, North Carolina, group walks the line between improvisation and composition, the avant-garde and traditional forms. Their newest record Tarantism (Feeding Tube) is a joyful observation of the natural world as much as it is a somber lament for the deep losses and failures of Spring 2020, the time of its recording. Austin Cash is a guitarist and composer from Fayetteville. His 2023 releases Judsonia (Cruel Nature Records) and Hello, Franklin (Gar Hole Records) pursue the boundaries of american primitive, americana, and avant garde sonic art. The Creamery is located at 216 W. Birch in Rogers.

Immersive Color, Light & Sound

Our gallery series at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art continues at 7:45 p.m. Thursday, August 3, with Untight, an improvisation-driven sound art project by artist and musician Sam King. He’ll perform inside James Turrell’s Skyspace The Way of Color, located on the south lawn of the museum.

Untight’s program will provide an auditory complement to the Skyspace’s unique color-light program by utilizing microtonal electric guitar with a digital effects array to create a compelling, immersive listening experience created specifically for the space. King is an associate professor of art for the University of Arkansas School of Art.

As with all of our concerts at the museum, this program is free and open to the public. Due to limited space of 35 within the Skyspace, we’re asking you to reserve your seat!

Photo credit: Skyspace: The Way of Color at Crystal Bridges. Photography by Timothy Hursley.

Boundary-pushing prepared piano

We’re thrilled to present a Trillium + OFMS peformance with Eli Wallace, a Brooklyn-based pianist, improviser, and composer. The all-ages performance is at 7 p.m. Tuesday, July 25, inside Millar Lodge on Mount Sequoyah with a $10 suggested donation. Wallace’s work as a pianist displays his vast milieu of experiences from classical, jazz, and free improvisation, incorporating elaborate piano preparations that John Lewis (The Guardian) says is "...pushing the boundaries of the prepared piano." His compositions employ notational strategies to broaden how musicians produce sound and the ways in which they interact.

For this concert, Wallace will play one extended uninterrupted improvisation utilizing the same concepts in terms of approach to sound and form  employed in the preparation and construction of the album. However, the music presented in this concert will transpire according to visceral improvisational whim from beginning to end.

Eli Wallace’s first studio solo piano album - pieces & interludes - is a collection of four pieces (compositions) and three interludes in juxtaposition with each other. The pieces materialized from intentional experimentation with specific piano preparations that came to define the content and generate the morphology. However, the entire album is improvised; there’s no score. These compositions are a framework for spontaneity. 

The interludes are spliced contiguously from a much longer work and provide contrast to the intense intimacy of the pieces, taking the listener out for a few minutes before dropping them back into the intensity of the next piece. The music directs the listener into the piano, inviting them to share not only the cochlear experience but also the kinesthetic experience of the performer. Therefore, this work is an intimate expression of Wallace’s relationship to the piano, an uncompromisingly personal manifesto that encapsulates his lifelong love of the instrument.

Mindful Minimal

Our gallery series at Crystal Bridges continues at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 6, inside the Early American Galleries with pianist/composer D. Riley Nicholson, who presents a program that centers on minimalism and its particular ability to stretch time and allow a listener to move deeper within a moment.

Instead of dramatic cadences and exaggerated forms that foreground narrative – a march towards never ending arrivals, minimalism allows us to swim through patterns and textures that pause time. Movement does happen, but on its own organic timeline. Through movement and harmony, we sit with whatever is present – beauty, difficulty, playfulness, or even time itself. 

From seminal works such as John Cage’s 4’33” to Meredith Monk’s “Ellis Island" and two compositions from Nicholson himself, this FREE concert is not to be missed! The full gallery concerts series, which takes place the first Thursday of each month through November, is available here.

Photo Credit: Zach Miley

Percussive Resonance

"An amazing percussionist, Gray’s stunningly detailed playing sounds like a cross between Fritz Hauser and Roy Haynes." – All About Jazz

Trillium is thrilled to present Brooklyn/Berlin-based percussionist Devin Gray, for a night of resonance starting at 7 p.m., Tuesday, June 20, at Millar Lodge on Mount Sequoyah. He’s touring his first-ever solo recording Most Definitely, a project that welcomes deep listening. “I wanted to create a work of high detail where people can listen closely in more nuanced ways to what it is that I am communicating in my playing as a widely influenced active human listener, artist, and drummer,” he remarks. “I truly hope you are able to find some fun as well as a deeper understanding of expression from me and all of the musical artists from the worlds (and planets) of past, present, and future.”

It’s a mission that speaks deep to ours! Come resonate with us at this all ages show. We’ll have a snacks and drinks donations bar!

C4 Clarinet Quartet

Our series in the galleries of Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art continues with the C4 Clarinet Quartet performing all women composers including American composers Amy Beach and Florence Price. Join us at 6 p.m. Thursday, June 8, in the contemporary galleries to be awash in live music while surrounded by amazing art. This series is FREE and open to the public. Check out the full season line-up here.

Established in 2022, C4 Quartet is a clarinet quartet based in Northwest Arkansas. Its founding members include Janice Bengtson (bass clarinet), Manchusa Loungsangroong, Sarah Reed, and Deborah Shaw. When music calls for more, the quartet’s usual “plus-one” is Samantha Ellis. C4 has given concerts at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and at the local colleges and schools in the NWA area. C4’s outreach advocates for music education and promotes music by women composers, composers of color, and local composers through performances and commissioning works including works by Florence Price, William A.R. May, Kristi Sturgeon, and the University of Arkansas’ own Yoshio Yamashita. In addition to performing works by diverse composers, C4 performs a wide variety of genres including classical, jazz, contemporary music, and popular music.

Drone Day

It's collective d r ( ( ( ( ( ( o ) ) ) ) ) n e time! Join us from 4 - 10 pm this Saturday, May 27, at Likewise Community in Fayetteville as we participate in Drone Day. Soak in sonic vibrations of all textures & tones as we collectively celebrate International Drone Day, where communities across the globe will resonate with each other through sustained sound. Through our collective voice, participants are invited to travel inward, listen deeply to the world around us & to one another. The only goal is sound must be sustained throughout the entire event.

Bring an instrument, your voice or simply the movement of your body to contribute to the drone. Also recommended: a blanket, bean bag or yoga mat to set up and enjoy the reverberations of the studio walls.

This event is all ages with a suggested donation of $10 with proceeds donated to support artists + musicians from countries affected by the war in Ukraine. To join, entire under the Likewise logo and follow the ramp down. For parking assistance or accessibility accommodations call 479.601.1821⁠.

Deep Reeds

Our series with gallery performances at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art kick off with the Ozark Wind Quintet & the Fayette Junction Bassoons for a deep reedy performance featuring the rarely heard contrabassoon. The free concert is at 6 p.m. Thursday, May 4, in the salon area of the early American galleries. Mark your calendars for 6 p.m. on the first Thursday of May through October to experience music and visual art colliding!

Ambient Meditations

We’re thrilled to present Lake Mary and Chaz Knapp for an evening of ambient transcendence in collaboration with Ozark Free Music Society from 7-10 p.m. Saturday, April 29, at Likewise Community in Fayetteville. Through spacious personal hymns exploring the wilderness of deep emotional narrative, Lake Mary’s long-form compositions and improvisations for acoustic, electric and lap-steel guitar are boundless meditations on the landscapes, river ways, and wildlife of the American West. The night will open with local musician Chaz Knapp, a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose sounds revolve around feelings of desolation while blending in moments when light presents itself, blending organic sounds with folk traditions, marking the summation of a natural ambience he calls microfolk. This show is all ages with a suggested donation of $15. We’ll have a donations snacks & drinks table available and can’t wait to resonate with you!