Home » Jazz Musicians » Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber

Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber

Founded by Vil­lage Voice icon Greg Tate and co-led with mon­ster bassist Jared Michael Nick­er­son since 1999, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Cham­ber is a sprawl­ing band of musi­cians whose prodi­gious per­son­nel allows them to freely jug­gle a wide swath of the exper­i­men­tal soul-jazz-hip hop spectrum.

Burnt Sugar was orig­i­nally con­ceived as a forum for the New York area impro­vi­sa­tional musi­cian to com­pose, record and per­form mate­r­ial which reflects the breadth and depth of Amer­i­can dias­paran music in the 21st cen­tury. The intent of the Arkestra Cham­ber, through the deploy­ment of Butch Morris’s con­duc­tion sys­tem, is to make every per­for­mance a fresh inter­pre­ta­tion of its con­stituent parts.

Rather than limit our­selves to the straight jack­ets that the com­mer­cial record­ing indus­try uses to mar­ket con­tem­po­rary Black Music, Burnt Sugar freely moves amongst many styles, eras and gen­res to devise its own excit­ing hybrids. These hybrids are based on a solid foun­da­tion of var­i­ous musi­cal tra­di­tions and the use of cutting-edge music tech­nol­ogy. In this sense the group mis­sion hon­ors its deep­est inspi­ra­tions, the first post-modernists of Amer­i­can music – Duke Elling­ton, Sun Ra, Par­lia­ment Funkadelic and The Art Ensem­ble of Chicago.

This very accom­plished crew has play­ing cred­its that range from Melvin Van Pee­bles, Toshi Reagon, DJ Logic, Gary Lucas, TV On The Radio, Tamar Kali, Phish, William Parker, Liz Wright, The Holmes Broth­ers, Wadada Leo Smith, The The, David Mur­ray and Joseph Bowie.

Arkestra Con­duc­tor Greg Tate says, “Burnt Sugar got the nerve to claim Sly Stone, Mor­ton Feld­man, Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Jimi Hen­drix and Jean Luc Ponty as prog­en­i­tors. Our player-ranks include known Irish fid­dlers, AACM refugees, Afro-punk rejects, unre­pen­tant bebop­pers, fem­i­nist rap­pers, jit­ter­bug­ging doowop­pers, frankly loud funk-a-teers and rodeo stars of the dig­i­tal divide.”

Tags

292
Album Review

Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber: Making Love to the Dark Ages

Read "Making Love to the Dark Ages" reviewed by Chris M. Slawecki


Composer Greg Tate leads Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber through melodic and harmonic structures, using a unique repertoire of physical gestures and expressions known not as conducting but as conduction. Tate christened this ensemble to honor the communal exploratory nature of Sun Ra's Arkestra and the Wu Tang Clan's 36 Chambers: “I wanted to conflate those two mystical generations. Both are in the tradition of mystic composers. Their sound comes from these ideas about science and art and ...

530
Album Review

Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber: Making Love to the Dark Ages

Read "Making Love to the Dark Ages" reviewed by Glenn Astarita


This band partly signifies the New York City downtown aura that resides as a major genre-slashing musical force, spanning several decades. Led by bandleader Greg Tate who lifts a few pages from conductor/composer Butch Morris' conduction modus operandi, where hand gestures, eye contact and motion serve as the guiding light.With structured song forms and hefty doses of improvisation amid translucent harmonic evolvements, the band captures some of bandleader Sun Ra's off-kilter large digressions and spacey breakouts. And there's ...

416
Album Review

Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber: Live 01: Not April in Paris

Read "Live 01: Not April in Paris" reviewed by Rico Cleffi


There are live albums where you just had to be there, and there are ones that take you there. This documentation of a 2001 Burnt Sugar performance is of the latter variety. It's nice to see somebody putting their money where their mouth is. Cultural critic Greg Tate isn't content to just judge other peoples' art. In Burnt Sugar he conducts a fine group of musicians. But to call this Tate's project would be unfair to these excellent ...

Read more articles
172

Interview

Greg Tate / Burnt Sugar Interview

Greg Tate / Burnt Sugar Interview

Source: Michael Ricci

Greg Tate/Burnt Sugar Interview - Sun Ra & Superheroes. Greg Tate/Burnt Sugar Interview - A village voice. This interview is part of the book project “under your skin" which includes Interviews with: Anthony Braxton, Ornette Coleman, Chuck D - Public Enemy, Taj Mahal, Yusef Lateef, Melvin Gibbs, Bob James, Skip Mcdonald, Erika Stucky, Living Colour, Rhonda Smith, Dj Rob Swift, Marilyn Crispell, Dick Griffin, Billy Bang, ...

133

Recording

Burnt Sugar: Dadaist Shapeshifting Improvisers

Burnt Sugar: Dadaist Shapeshifting Improvisers

Source: rock paper scissors, inc.

Burnt Sugar The Arkestra Chamber turns music inside out Bandleader Greg Tate “plays the band" using a technique called conduction, which gets its name from the field of physics, and which was developed by jazz conductor Butch Morris. In Tates hands, Burnt Sugar combines sounds together with a funky twist, snagging idiomatic metaphors from film editing techniques and hip hop culture. When the band plays live, they often do so with little more than a concept or melody in mind, ...

Photos

Music

Videos

Get more of a good thing!

Our weekly newsletter highlights our top stories, our special offers, and upcoming jazz events near you.