Exhibition on view through April 7, 2024
Ancient Prayerz
Gallery hours are Wednesday through Sunday, 12noon-3pm and by appointment

In the late 1980s, M, Saffell Gardner and Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts initiated their first of many collaborations that would occur over the course of four decades. Ancient Prayerz is a series of monoprints dating from 1991-92, made from a woodcut they hand-carved in Pitts’ Hamilton Street studio in Detroit, and printed at Robert Blackburn’s legendary Printmaking Workshop, a seminal open studio on 17th Street in Manhattan since its establishment in 1947. Run on Rives and Arches archival paper, each work in this vintage series represents a unique variation featuring inked stencils of self-referenced icons related to West African deities.

Known as an activist, artist and poet, Aaron Ibn Pori Pitts (September 16, 1941 – August 13, 2022) founded the Ogun artist collective more than 40 years ago, as well as the local press Black Graphics International, Kcalb Gniw Spirit and Band Unit #10. He was a member of the Detroit radical labor group League of Revolutionary Black Workers. Pitts exhibited and performed internationally. M. Saffell Gardner (February 7, 1954) is a multi-disciplinary artist, art historian, curator, educator and mentor, whose drawings, paintings and sculpture have been exhibited internationally. His work is in the permanent collections of Henry Ford Hospital, Detroit Medical Center, The Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, Renaissance High School, Southeastern High School, Detroit School of the Arts, Detroit rePatched, and Michigan Legacy Art Park, among others.


Sundays at 4 pm (except March 24)
The Out Session
Hosted by Zekkereya El Magharbel and Detroit Composite Trio
Free

Come check-out or participate in our early Sunday series put together by rising star trombonist/artist Zekkereya El Magharbel and featuring Detroit Composite Trio. After a feature set, the stage will be opened up to other improvisers and ad hoc ensembles. No covers, no standards, no originals. Free and open to the public.





TICKETS NOW ON SALE 



Wednesday, March 20
Eli Winter Trio (with Tyler Damon, Sam Wagster)
Jonah Parzen-Johnson Record Release
Dr. Pete Larson
Doors 7:30 pm

Eli Winter is a 26-year-old rising star guitarist instrumentalist whose diversity of creative approaches places him outside of the typical finger-pickers idom. His most recent record, Eli Winter, features collaborations with peers and contemporaries including Cameron Knowler, Yasmin Williams, David Grubbs, Ryley Walker, Tyler Damon and jaimie branch.  Eli Winter showcases a compositional depth and authoritative skill only hinted at on Winter’s acclaimed previous work. Currently headed to the Big Ears Festival with his trio of Tyler Damon (drums) and Sam Wagster (pedal steel guitar), this will be a great opportunity to hear Winter in an unusual context with top-drawer players.

Baritone saxophonist Jonah Parzen-Johnson returns to Trinosophes for a record-release concert of his new work, You're Never Really Alone. In previous performances, Parzen-Johnson has used his baritone and an array of electronics to create an electro-acoustic music that is melodic and ambient, conveying a sense of empathy and kindness. For You're Never Really Alone, he has turned his focus to solo saxophone, eliciting textures from the horn that replace the role previously performed by the electronics, while maintaining a contrasting, emotive, melodic style.

From Keyan folk-stylings to modular synthesis, Dr. Pete Larson has made his mark on Michigan music, both as a performer and as the brain behind the internationally-minded Dagoretti Records and the seminal 90’s indie-imprint, Bulb Records. He currently performs most frequently on the Kenyan Nyatiti.





Friday, March 22 & Saturday, March 23:
Doug Hammond Trio with Jaribu Shahid (bass) and William Evans (piano)
7:30 pm doors



At the Door:
$20 General admission 

Legendary drummer/composer Doug Hammond graces out stage again in a new trio, featuring one of our favorite musicians, bassist Jaribu Shahid, and a pianist that’s new to us, William Evans, who Hammond called "one of Detroit's unsung jewels." A native of Florida, Hammond has had a prolific career, much of it in Detroit. His first record, Reflections in the Sea of Nurnen, was a standout in the catalogue of Detroit's legendary Tribe Records and the track "Moves" was so liked by Charles Mingus that he covered it and named his record Mingus Moves after it. Besides playing drums in the Mingus band, Hammond has also performed with Ornette Coleman, Nina Simone, Alice Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Donald Byrd and many others.

Now living in Austria, Hammond has stayed highly connected with up-and-coming Detroit players, using people like Kirk Lightsey, Regina Carter and Geri Allen in his ensembles. He is the largely uncredited innovator of the M-Base improvisational system, which he taught to his sideman, Steve Coleman, who proliferated it. Hammond's music has always connected sophisticated or even abstract jazz compositions with more roots-based, soul-inflected songs of great beauty and he’s an outstanding vocalist. As he excels in so many contexts, we're excited to be presenting him in this new trio.

Image: copyright Deneka Peniston




Sunday, May 12
Jim White and Marisa Anderson

At the Door:
General admission $20
Reserved seating $25

The collaboration between renowned drummer Jim White and acclaimed guitarist Marisa Anderson is a natural union of two of the most intuitive players and listeners working in music. White and Anderson are each very in-demand as collaborators in no small part because of their mastery, versatility and highly expressive playing. The duo have each amassed an impressive body of work, and remain at the vanguard of their practices due to an insatiable curiosity and delight in exploration of new avenues of expression. Their 2020 debut The Quickening exemplified that daring spirit as an exercise in trust: two musicians who had never performed together before committing those first moments in time to record. 2024’s Swallowtail is a deepening of that trust, White and Anderson completely immersed in the moment, each attuned to the other fluidly moving as wind and water.

The duo avoids preconceived movements, instead focusing on their musical conversation. As Anderson puts it, “The ideas aren’t the music, they are the pathway into the musical possibilities.” Their trust in one another and skillful interplay create an effervescence throughout the album. There is an organic ebb and flow to the duo’s motions that brings a sense of serenity and ease to spontaneous transitions, each swell and retraction sounding as free as it does inevitable.




Friday, June 7
Gwenifer Raymond


Gwenifer Raymond began playing guitar at the age of eight shortly after having been first exposed to punk and grunge. After years of playing around the Welsh valleys in various punk outfits she began listening more to pre-war blues musicians as well as Appalachian folk players, eventually leading into the guitar players of the American Primitive genre.

She released her sophomore LP ‘Strange Lights Over Garth Mountain’ at the end of 2020 to a rapturous response. Her debut ‘You Never Were Much Of A Dancer’ emerged on Tompkins Square to the same response in 2018. She has found herself equally embraced by fans of old-west and equally, by left field/experimental audiences. 

Appearances throughout the UK and the EU have established her as one of the leading lights of the scene, and not to be missed under any circumstances.



Click here to visit our Events page for more calender listings



Trinosophes Projects is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in the state of Michigan that supports live programming, exhibitions, research and publishing. We are an independent, artist-operated entity located in the city of Detroit. Contributed and earned income goes directly into the hands of the artists we work with, so if you appreciate our efforts, consider making a donation to support our ongoing mission. Click here for a Paypal link. 

How does your support help? Your donations go directly to our programming, publishing, media manufacturing, archival work, artist commissioning, project collaborations and regranting in the form of artist prizes, awards and emergency assitance. While we prefer to operate mostly anonymously and we’re always hesitant to ask for financial support, we recognize that now more than ever our work is important to the cultral health of our community, both through supporting, highlighting and perserving our region’s cultural legacy and by keeping it in dialogue with devlopments in the rest of the country and the world.