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Brett Sroka

Brett Sroka is a composer, musician and sound artist for film, dance, installation and has released five records with his electro-acoustic jazz trio Ergo, and melodronoise duo Cherubim.

His first record, Hearsay (from Fresh Sound - New Talent Records) featured then newcomers Jason Moran, Avishai Cohen and Eric Harland, but being a trombonist in jazz engendered an outsider's perspective on the idiom, inspiring Sroka to begin exploring electronic music as well. His process has subsequently been an effort to reconcile these disparate fields: to develop an organic, improvisational approach to computer instruments, and to seek out dynamic, technological possibilities in music.

In early 2014, at Roulette Intermedium in Brooklyn, Sroka premiered Sine Qua Non, a generative sound installation that grows out of a live improvisation. At the Arteles Center in Finland, he began an electro-acoustic, cross-millennial collaboration with Rauno Nieminen, a renowned luthier and performer of kantele, jouhikko, and other traditional instruments of Northern Europe. With As subtle as tomorrow, Ergo's forthcoming release on Cuneiform Records, a suite of acoustic pieces are transformed into electronic reflections of themselves.

Continuing to explore alternative contexts for audience and composer alike, Sroka will visit Alfred University's Institute for Electronic Arts in 2015 to develop Syllable from Sound, a participatory installation that integrates the voices of it's visitors into a modular composition.

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Album Review

Brett Sroka: Hearsay

Read "Hearsay" reviewed by Dan McClenaghan


Brett Sroka's trombone moans in alone; the trumpet follows, then the tenor sax. The rhythm section sneaks in there on the sly, and the opener, Duke Ellington's “Hearsay" (from The Deep South Suite), churns into a rumbling, channeled cacophony of Jazz--capitol 'J'.This is trombonist Brett Sroka's debut, and it bears out liner notes author Gary Sisco's assertion that jazz in the last decade has been experiencing an extremely fertile and creative period. Hearsay is an ensemble ...

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"...into completely new horizons similar to nothing you've heard before... captivating, hypnotic, and attractively exotic music" - All Music Guide

"... has a deft touch when it comes to molding silence and drones into rich celestial balladry. The subtleties of the new multitude, solitude are a nifty confluence of George Lewis's dreamscapes and Miles's Lonely Fire, and while it's a record that invites you to watch the embers glow, it does its fair share of shooting off sparks." - The Village Voice

"each song appears to sound like it has its own story to tell... and the album as a whole has direction, not stuck sounding like an “electrazzic” album because putting one out is the new fangled thing to do." - Jazz Times

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Photos

Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

If Not Inertia

Cuneiform Records
2013

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Multitude, Solitude

Cuneiform Records
2010

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Quality...

Self Produced
2005

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Hearsay

Blue Moon
2003

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She Haunts Me

From: Multitude, Solitude
By Brett Sroka

Happy-Go-Lucky-Ism

From: Hearsay
By Brett Sroka

Videos

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