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Michael Dessen

Michael Dessen is a composer-improviser who performs on the slide trombone and computer. Active in a variety of ensembles as leader or collaborator, he creates music for improvisers and engages new technologies of telepresence and digital networking. His music has been praised by critics in numerous jazz and contemporary music publications, and recorded on labels such as Clean Feed, Cuneiform, and Circumvention. Dessen's teachers include Yusef Lateef, George Lewis, and Anthony Davis, and he has also been schooled through extensive freelance experiences ranging from salsa bands to avant-garde new music ensembles. He has published writings on music and culture, and is a graduate of the Eastman School of Music, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of California, San Diego. In 2006, he joined the music faculty of the University of California, Irvine, where he co-founded a new graduate program in Integrated Composition, Improvisation and Technology (ICIT).

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7
Album Review

Warriors of the Wonderful Sound: Soundpath

Read "Soundpath" reviewed by Mark Corroto


If we alter President John F. Kennedy's 1962 moon spaceflight speech just a bit, it easily fits the big band adaptation of Muhal Richard Abrams' magnum opus Soundpath, “We choose to perform this composition not because it is easy, but because it is hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept." Accepting the challenge was band leader Bobby Zankel and ...

2
Album Review

Warriors of the Wonderful Sound: Soundpath

Read "Soundpath" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


Nel 2011 il sassofonista di Filadelfia Bobby Zankel, leader della big band The Warriors of the Wonderful Sound e promotore di laboratori di musica contemporanea, propose a Muhal Richard Abrams un lavoro compositivo che avrebbe dovuto essere affidato alla band, con la direzione dello stesso pianista. Operazioni di questo tipo erano già state realizzate da Zankel negli anni precedenti con le musiche per big band di Julius Hemphill, dirette da Marty Ehrlich, poi con composizioni di Rudresh Mahanthappa e Steve ...

10
Extended Analysis

Soundpath

Read "Soundpath" reviewed by Victor L. Schermer


Muhal Richard Abrams (1930-2017) was a revered pianist, composer and teacher of great capability and range who, in addition to his own achievements, inspired and influenced many jazz musicians in both the mainstream and avant-garde categories. Largely self-taught as a result of a personal decision to follow his own path, and early on pursuing church music, big band, blues, bebop and avant-garde jazz in his home city of jny: Chicago, he grasped music from its roots, and so was able ...

1
Album Review

Michael Dessen: Somewhere In The Upstream

Read "Somewhere In The Upstream" reviewed by Giuseppe Segala


L'organico di trio con trombone, contrabbasso e batteria non è particolarmente diffuso, ma può annoverare tra gli esempi più significativi la lunga, formidabile esperienza di Bass Drum Bone, in cui Ray Anderson, Mark Helias e Gerry Hemingway hanno scandagliato modalità espressive e dialogiche ad ampio raggio. Il trio guidato dal trombonista e sperimentatore di suoni Michael Dessen si inserisce con profitto su quella traccia, vista la vitalità e la già discreta longevità, con il primo dei quattro CD pubblicati dall'etichetta ...

73
Album Review

Michael Dessen Trio: Somewhere In The Upstream

Read "Somewhere In The Upstream" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


Ace trombonist Michael Dessen is an imaginative technologist when incorporating artistically focused computer-generated sounds into his works as he once again disavows the tried and true with this all-star rhythm section. Complete with unorthodox flows and changeable rhythmic progressions, Dessen's zany and otherworldly live electronics permutations, along with some cosmic interference, offers an extra layer of excitement and curiousity. Essentially, the trio adds a phantasmagoric nuance to various movements throughout this program dedicated to the memory of jazz great, Yusef ...

9
Album Review

Michael Dessen Trio: Resonating Abstractions

Read "Resonating Abstractions" reviewed by Robert Bush


Michael Dessen is a slide-trombone virtuoso and computer musician of the highest order, and the music his trio crafts on Resonating Abstractions showcases his work as a composer in compelling fashion. Key to this success are the contributions from singular double-bassist Chris Tordini and the multi-rhythmic drums of Dan Weiss. Together they realize and expand the structures of Dessen's vision, aided by the live-sampled or algorithmic electronics on roughly half the tracks. “Grid After Grid," opens ...

298
Album Review

Michael Dessen Trio: Forget The Pixel

Read "Forget The Pixel" reviewed by Robert Bush


Trombonist Michael Dessen once studied with George Lewis, hung with Ray Anderson, and has ascended to their level on the creative improvising scene. Dessen has his own distinct style, one that values nuanced gestures as highly as it does exuberance; therefore his music creates a micro world of detail and organically developed themes. The music for this album was actualized over the course of a year of experimentation. Dessen's trio-mates live in NYC, and he would visit ...

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78

Recording

Michael Dessen Trio: "Forget the Pixel" Puts a Personal Stamp on New Jazz

Michael Dessen Trio: "Forget the Pixel" Puts a Personal Stamp on New Jazz

Source: Gapplegate Music Review by Grego Edwards

Michael Dessen, trombonist-improviser-composer-bandleader. California based. Basic facts. His newest album Forget the Pixel (Clean Feed 222) brings his trombone, straight horn and electronically enhanced, into orbit with two excellent players: bassist Christopher Tordini, with a bold sound, a smart manipulation of composed motifs, a fluid ensemble presence and a soloist of Zen-like space arrangements. Then there's Dan Weiss, to my mind one of the luminous young drummers on the scene today. He doesn't glow in the dark, but his sense ...

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Recording

Michael Dessen Trio - Between Shadow and Space (Clean Feed, 2008) ****

Michael Dessen Trio - Between Shadow and Space (Clean Feed, 2008) ****

Source: All About Jazz

I have been checking how many trombone-bass-drums trios I know, and there aren't many, but that has probably says more about my knowledge than about their existence. Steve Swell has a few, so does Julian Priester, Jeb Bishop has one and there is of course BassDrumBone, with Ray Anderson, with several CDs. Now there is the Michael Dessen Trio, and one which can stand its ground in the list of the above bands. The trombonist has a great sense of ...

"Michael Dessen is, according to a frequent employer, the contrabass virtuoso Mark Dresser, 'a black-belt trombonist.' .... Dessen's music is so fresh and innovative that there are few precedents with which to compare it. He does not use chords and harmony in any traditional sense, yet there was a deep harmonic connection between the trombone and bass for every note and idea transmitted.... Despite the extended length of the suite, the audience was hardly given the chance for its attention to waver�"Dessen's music was too full of information for that to be possible.... Once sure it was over, the enthusiastic audience erupted with supportive whistles, shouts and sustained applause. A stunning example of creative, adventurous music, utterly devoid of cliché, stretching even the frontiers of free jazz beyond recognition." - All About Jazz, Robert Bush

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Music

Recordings: As Leader | As Sideperson

Soundpath

Clean Feed Records
2020

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Somewhere In The...

Clean Feed Records
2018

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Resonating...

Clean Feed Records
2014

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Nourishments

Clean Feed Records
2013

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Forget The Pixel

Clean Feed Records
2011

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Between Shadow and...

Clean Feed Records
2008

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