Sunday, May 31
Stein/Smith/Shead Trio
with Dave Hurley El-magharbel Duo
$12-20 suggested
Stein / Smith / Shead Trio is a long-standing working ensemble featuring Jason Stein (bass clarinet), Damon Smith (double bass), and Adam Shead (drums). The trio is dedicated to extended collective improvisation, long-form development, and a deep commitment to listening, allowing form and structure to emerge organically through duration, density, and group decision-making. Their work has been featured in The Wire, Point of Departure, Free Jazz Collective, All About Jazz, The Chicago Reader, and The New York City Jazz Record.
Across four albums, the trio has developed a sustained practice rooted in continuity rather than isolated projects, cultivating a shared language that privileges risk, restraint, and structural clarity. This approach is especially evident in their ongoing collaboration with NEA Jazz Master Marilyn Crispell, which has resulted in two acclaimed recordings. The trio has also worked with Roscoe Mitchell, situating their work within a lineage closely connected to the Midwest’s history of creative music while maintaining a distinctly contemporary voice.
At the center of the ensemble’s sound is Jason Stein’s bass clarinet, marked by physical engagement with the instrument, an expanded timbral palette, and the ability to sustain narrative over extended durations. Damon Smith and Adam Shead complete the trio with a rhythm section defined by elasticity, precision, and acute responsiveness to subtle shifts in time, texture, and density. Together, the Stein / Smith / Shead Trio creates music that reflects a commitment to exploratory practice, lineage-aware experimentation, and artist-driven music-making.
Jason Stein is an internationally recognized bass clarinetist and composer and is among the handful of jazz musicians who play the bass clarinet exclusively. Stein leads the acclaimed trio Locksmith Isidore as well as his own quartet, and he is an indispensable contributor to several of the leading bands on Chicago’s jazz and improvised music scene. Stein has been named on both the Downbeat Critics Poll and the El Intruso International Critics Poll, having won the latter from 2017-2020. Stein’s playing showcases an extraordinary expertise on the bass clarinet, ranging from powerful post-bop lines to ear-grabbing wails in the altissimo range. Stein is based in Chicago and has recorded for such labels as Leo, Delmark, Not Two, Atavistic, 482 Music, Clean Feed, Astral Spirits, Sunnyside, Eremite, and Northern Spy.
“Stein is the most emotionally present bass clarinet player since Eric Dolphy.” —THE WIRE
Damon Smith has collaborated with a wide range of musicians, including Cecil Taylor, Marshall Allen (of Sun Ra’s Arkestra), Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, and Peter Brötzmann including many other significant artists. After many years in the San Francisco Bay Area, and six great years in Houston, Texas Smith moved to the Boston area in the fall of 2016 and began working with Jeb Bishop, Pandelis Karayorgis, Joe McPhee and Ra-Kalam Bob Moses and many others. He has run Balance Point Acoustics record label since 2001, releasing music focusing on transatlantic collaborations between US and European musicians.
Adam Shead is an accomplished percussionist, composer, improviser, and performance curator based in Chicago. He frequently performs with the Stein/Smith/Shead trio, microplastique, and Cellular Chaos, and is a sought-after percussionist in the Chicago jazz and improvised music scene. Shead is the founder and composer of the Adiaphora Orchestra, microplastique, and Adam Shead Quintet and works regularly as a sideman in such groups as Ben Zucker’s Fifth Season, the Jake Wark Quartet, and Undisclosed Sims.
TICKETS NOW ON SALE
Tuesday, June 2
Marisa Anderson
Hot Bananas
Doors 7:30 pm
Marisa Anderson channels the history of the guitar and stretches the boundaries of tradition. Her playing is fluid, emotional, and masterful, featuring compositions and improvisations that re-imagine the landscape of American music. The New Yorker calls Anderson “one of the most distinctive guitar players of her generation,” and NPR refers to her as among ‘this era’s most powerful players’. Her music has been featured in Rolling Stone, NPR, The New York Times, Pitchfork, the BBC and The Wire. Festival appearances include Big Ears, Pitchfork Midwinter, Le Guess Who and the Copenhagen Jazz Festival. Anderson is the recipient of the 2025 Spark Award for Oregon Artists presented by the James F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation.
In addition to her solo work, Anderson is sought after as a collaborator and composer. Swallowtail, her second record in duo with drummer Jim White was released May 2024 on Thrill Jockey Records. 2024 also saw the release of the feature film score ‘ A Perfect Day For Caribou’, as well as appearances on records by Charlie Parr, Myriam Gendron and Big|Brave. In addition to multiple solo releases, past projects include 2021’s Lost Futures with guitarist William Tyler, and contributions to recordings by Matmos, Tara Jane O’Neil, Beth Ditto, Sharon Van Etten and Circuit Des Yeux, among others.
Classically trained, Anderson honed her skills playing in country, jazz and circus bands. Her current work is focused on a mid-20th century archive of recorded music from the Islamic world, Southeast Asia and the Soviet Union.
“One of the best emotional mediums in the field of solo guitar, Anderson is a master of lovely melancholy.” –Pitchfork
Friday and Saturday, June 5 – 6
Northwoods Improvisers’ 50th Anniversary
2026 will mark 50 years since the first iteration of the collective in 1976.
Doors 7:30 pm both nights
The Northwoods Improvisers first came together in 1976. Early versions of the band played collective electro-acoustic improvised music. In 1980 the band switched to an all acoustic instrumentation which has remained to this day. Mike Gilmore and Mike Johnston were founding members of the ensemble. Nick Ashton joined in 1986. The Northwoods Improvisers Sextet consists of Mike Johnston on bass, Nick Ashton on drums, Donovan Boxey on saxophones, Dominic Bieringa on saxophones, Jack O’Brien on cello and Mike Khoury on violin.The Northwoods Improvisers have performed with several key musicians in their field, including Bill Smith, Eugene Chadbourne, Danny Spencer, Eddie Gale and most notably, working with the late Detroit composer Faruq Z. Bey formerly of Griot Galaxy. The group has released several CDs on the UK’s ARC label as well as on Entropy Stereo and Sagittarius A Star records based in Italy.This most recent version of the sextet included the long standing rhythm section of bassist and drummer Mike Johnston and Nick Ashton, both very accomplished musicians with decades of collective history between them. Donovan Boxey and Dominic Bierenga bring a double saxophone attack with the two switching to different wind instruments between them. Together, they exceed the sum of their parts. Mike Khoury and Jack O’Brien along with Mike Johnston comprise a string section and bring the lushness of arco strings to the mix along with Eastern sensibilities.
The Northwoods Improvisers Sextet bring together through composed pieces with collective improvisation, eastern modes, and Native American elements to create music with references to indigenous sounds and the music of those who have been historically underrepresented in history.
Tuesday, June 23
Setting
Doors 7:30 pm
[$18 at entry]
The North Carolina Piedmont-based trio of Setting bring together their substantial collective skills as musicians and their collaborative, explorative mindsets from groups such as Mind Over Mirrors, Califone, Black Twig Pickers, Pelt, Peeesseye, Sylvan Esso, and Jake Xerxes Fussell to bear in their inventive and rich improvisations. Multi-instrumentalists Jaime Fennelly, Nathan Bowles and Joe Westerlund subvert expectations while creating a sense of ease and wonderment. Their intricate interplay of synthesizers, cassette loops, banjo, keyboards, electronics, zithers, and a litany of percussive instruments form a tactile amalgam of celestial transcendence and terrestrial rhythm, a loamy pulse fluidly guiding every minute fluctuation in feel. Dedicated improvisers with years working together, the band has developed their own idiosyncratic vernacular and sense of flow. Setting’s self-titled album (Thrill Jockey) is a definitive statement of their improvisational acumen meeting compositional rigor, a robust wellspring of hypnagogic grooves and mosaiced textures. Setting harnesses the euphoria of communal creation.
Wednesday, September 30
Horse Lords
Doors 7:30 pm
or $20 at entry
Horse Lords were founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 2010. They evolved from the experimental collective Teeth Mountain and began as a trio with drummer Sam Haberman, guitarist Owen Gardner, and bassist Max Eilbacher, soon adding alto saxophonist Andrew Bernstein to the core ensemble. Though Horse Lords grew out of the fertile Baltimore noise and leftfield rock scene, a storied environment for artists and weirdos that has nurtured many an influential outsider band (Lungfish, Matmos), their approach is more omnivorous than the stippled rhythms of instrumental electric rock would indicate.
Across sixteen years of frequent touring, Horse Lords have released ten studio, live, and collaboration albums in addition to a split EP with fellow Baltimoreans Lower Dens, a handful of singles and compilation tracks. For RVNG’s FRKWYS series, the band collaborated with Berlin-based composer Arnold Dreyblatt, a one-time student of La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros whose just intonation chamber music was a crucial part of the post-Fluxus Downtown New York City environment.
With the relocation of three of the four members to Germany beginning in 2021, the potential for more further creative exploration, and performance opportunities including the Moers Festival (with an 11-piece lineup, interpreting Julius Eastman’s music as well as their own), the interdisciplinary phases of the band’s music was poised for fascinating new directions. The band observes “We are always trying to balance working within the limitations of the quartet and pushing beyond them.
For their second studio album on RVNG Intl., Demand To Be Taken To Heaven Alive!, Horse Lords have followed this notion and augmented the instrumentation, expanding the format slightly to include bass clarinetist Madison Greenstone (TAK Ensemble), trombonist Weston Olencki (Nate Wooley, RAGE Thormbones) and vocalists Nina Guo (Departure Duo) and Evelyn Saylor (Holly Herndon, Caterina Barbieri) across a program of twelve original compositions.
Thursday, October 8
Hayden Pedigo
Doors TBA
Hayden Pedigo: man, myth, master of disguise; un-picker, finger-picker, absurdist, perfectionist. The unorthodox contender for Amarillo City Council, subject of the film Kid Candidate, and creator of the acclaimed Letting Go (2021) and The Happiest Times I Ever Ignored (2023) now embarks upon the release of his new album I’ll Be Waving as You Drive Away. An innovator of the instrumental genre, challenger of the stereotypical, son of a truck-stop preacher, he backs up a cherry red Silverado under his own smiling, Brylcreemed and Nudie-Suited billboard. His foot hesitates above the gas pedal as a cloud of dust rises. Where between beaming advert and disillusioned entertainer might his truest self lie? On this intentionally maximalist, genre-resistant work of warped instrumental Americana — an exclamation point at the end of an accidental trilogy of records — we, and Hayden, might just be about to find out.
Unlike its predecessors in ‘The Motor Trilogy’ (tied together by their vehicular Jonathan Phillips artwork) — which offset the clarity of sparse acoustic compositions with a carousel of personas and outfits — I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away sees Hayden turn his practice inside out, set fire to the dressing up box, throw all other modern acoustic guitar records to the flames, and trip on the fumes. Solidly honing in on his technical craft after two years of non-stop touring with the likes of Jenny Lewis, Devendra Banhart and Hiss Golden Messenger, Hayden Pedigo is ready to peel back the curtain and let the world in. His most emotionally candid record, “there’s something really human” about this final installment, Hayden professes. “No face paint, no blue skin, the character on the front is no longer a character — it’s actually just me. I’m trying to tell the audience, I actually want you to meet me, I want you to know who I am.”
Taking cues from John Fahey’s weed-and-whiskey infused, tape-loop-heavy 1966 record The Great San Bernardino Birthday Party, I’ll Be Waving As You Drive Away is, Hayden reflects, not a straightforward solo guitar record, but in a sense “a micro-dose psychedelic album. I wanted it to be this tangible feeling, as if somebody had cut up a tab of LSD and put on a Fahey record.” Unafraid to push the parameters of American primitive, the walls of the album’s world are fuzzed-up and glimmering. Pedigo’s trademark, highly skilled guitar compositions, more intricate than ever, are augmented by influences he’s never been able to achieve on previous records. There are whispers of the prog-rock mellotrons of King Crimson and the heavy phasers and bass of Led Zeppelin; all helped along nicely by the psychedelic sensibilities of producer Scott Hirsch [Hiss Golden Messenger, The Court & Spark, William Tyler]. However it is vital and natural, says Hayden, to also be influenced by contemporary modern music in order not to make an esoteric, rambling solo guitar record. For example, Bladee’s Cold Visions — “a masterclass of experimental rap music” — inspired some similarities in approach, despite the artists’ distinctly different genre backgrounds. “There are so many records buried within this record…there’s a lot of micro-sampling going on, like a rap album,” he concludes (though this manifests in echoes and phrases, rather than direct lifts).
RECURRING SERIES
Every Tuesday
Zekkereya El-magharbel presents “Tuesdays at Trinosophes”
Doors 7:30 pm | Sliding scale, prices vary. Please pay what you can to fund this series.Detroit Trombonist Zekkerya El-magharbel present four different series on a rotational basis, every Tuesday at Trinosophes ...
- 1st Tuesday: Maqam Workshop "Detroit Maqam Workshop," which features studying and learning classic Arabic melodies.
- 2nd Tuesday: Community Art Jam Art supplies provided by Arts and Scraps. Come hang with friends and make art.
- 3rd Tuesday: Meet the Composer(s) Concert/interview series. The first iteration features @taqsim.live as our subject for this "Meet the Composer" session.
- 4th Tuesday: Tuesday Nights Showcase Zekkereya's first monthly residency in the city, with a rotating ensemble of Detroit's finest, curated by the artist.
Trinosophes Projects is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization in the state of Michigan that supports, documents, facilitates, presesrves and furthers the arts and culture of Detroit. We are an independent, artist-operated entity located in the city’s Eastern Market district. 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, exhibitions, publishing, media manufacturing, archival work, artist commissioning, project collaborations, educational work and regranting in the form of artist prizes, awards and emergency assistance. We believe that now more than ever, this 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.