Manitoba Live Music Event

About

Acclaimed Toronto-based drummer and composer, Nick Fraser, continues to celebrate the release of “Starer” with a North American tour from September 30th to October 9th, 2016.

Fraser leads this outstanding jazz quartet featuring New York saxophonist Tony Malaby, "one of the most distinctive artists of his time" (All About Jazz). The quartet is rounded out by two exceptional string players, Andrew Downing and Rob Clutton. Their critically acclaimed debut, Towns and Villages, was released in 2013.

The quartet's music is deeply rooted in the jazz tradition, and comprises a series of Fraser's compositional sketches, points of departure for the inspired group improvisation at which these players excel. Tony Malaby's sinewy, impassioned tenor and soprano saxophone improvisations are practically without peer in contemporary jazz, and display a rhythmic imepetus that is complemented beautifully by Fraser's deft drumming. Clutton and Downing provide, by turns, a thick, shifting field of harmonic support and melodic invention. The work of this group is a high water mark in Canadian jazz and creative music.

Nick Fraser (leader, drums, compositions) has been an active and engaging presence in the Toronto new jazz and improvised music community for over twenty years. He has performed with a veritable "who's who" of Canadian jazz and improvised music and with such international artists as Donny McCaslin, Marilyn  Crispell, Anthony Braxton and David Binney. For ten years, he co-led the group Drumheller, who released four critically acclaimed recordings.