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Michael Foster’s The Ghost with McNeill/Weissman Duo
$15 general admission
Tickets available at: https://www.hallwalls.org
Michael Foster - saxophones, compositions
John Moran - bass
Joey Sullivan - drums, percussion
photo: Peter Gannushkin
"The Ghost was formed as both a tribute to my disparate influences in free jazz, harsh noise, and the gay underground community, and as a middle finger to the suffocating heteronormative establishment of improvised music. "Vanished Pleasures" stands as a new direction for this project, utilizing overt compositional frameworks to convey the anxieties of aging, sexual freedom, and the power relations inherent in the sax-bass-drums format. The title comes from Derek Jarman's "The Garden," referring to the vanished pleasures of untethered, youthful sexuality and the friends whose lives were cut short." -Michael Foster
Michael Foster is a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist working in the fields of free improvisation, noise, free jazz, graphic & video notation, performance art, and other forms of weird music. Foster utilizes extensive instrumental preparations, augmenting his saxophone with amplification, objects, balloons, drum heads, vibrators, tapes, and samples as a method of subverting and queering the instrument’s history and traditional roles.
In addition to his work as a performer he is also active as a curator throughout New York City, co-founding "Queer Trash," a curatorial collective focusing on providing visibility to LGBTQIA+ performers engaged in experimental performance practices. In 2018, "Queer Trash" was the Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow for Issue Project Room, producing a year's worth of performances that ranged from harsh noise to fashion.
His current ensembles include duos with cellist Leila Bordreuil, percussionist Ben Bennett, poet/vocalist Lydia Lunch, Richard Kamerman (as The New York Review of Cocksucking), Ted Byrnes, Dane Rousay, The Ghost (with Zach Rowden & Derek Baron), Barker Trio (with Tim Dahl, & Andrew Barker), While We Still Have Bodies (with Sean Ali, Ben Gerstein, & Flin van Hemmen), Weasel Walter Large Ensemble, and many others. In addition to these longstanding projects he often collaborates with Sarah Hennies, Marina Rosenfeld, Weasel Walter, Han Bennink, Joe McPhee, William Parker, Luke Stewart, Brandon Lopez, Dave Rempis, Katherine Young, Michael Zerang, James Ilgenfritz, Pascal Niggenkemper, Mette Rasmussen, and many others.
more info at: https://michaelfoster.bandcamp.com/album/vanished-pleasures
McNeill/Weissman Duo:
Michael McNeill - piano
Katie Weissman - cello
Michael McNeill is a pianist, improviser, and composer from Western New York. Since returning to Buffalo in 2023, he’s appeared frequently in chamber music settings, with Tediyra Barton-Harris, Evan Courtin, Megan Kyle, Katie Weissman, and others. Also active in the area’s jazz scene, he can be heard around the city with Alex McArthur, John Bacon, Griff Kazmierczak, Dave Phillips, and the Buffalo Jazz Composers Workshop. His quartet Allegories — featuring pedal steel guitar innovator Susan Alcorn, trumpet virtuoso Dave Ballou, and exploratory percussionist Shelly Purdy — toured in 2022 and 2023 and will release an album in mid-2024.
Katie Weissman is a prolific cellist in myriad projects in Western New York and beyond. She works with the Little Cake Cover Band, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, contemporary music ensemble Wooden Cities, the composition think-tank Evolution of the Arm, free jazz group Root Cellar, folk-rock bands TEOA and Birddog, and various other chamber music outfits in the Western New York area. She has toured at home and abroad and has lent her playing to many recording projects in the studio, including multiple albums and stage performances by Buffalo's own Goo Goo Dolls. She teaches privately in her own studio and currently lives in Williamsville with her dogs, rabbits, and parakeet.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, 341 Delaware Ave,Buffalo,NY,United States