Expanding the conversation about art in Texas. Founded in 2001, Glasstire is the first Texas Art Digital Media Company. Find features on Texas Artists, News, and the Top 5 Art Exhibits to See Each Week.  The full shebang is at glasstire.com.

Musician and composer Nathaniel Braddock tours internationally and performs an array of different musical styles in venues as disparate as underground arts spaces and Lincoln Center.  Based for years in Chicago and Sydney, he has relocated to Cambridge, MA in 2016.l.

Nathaniel leads the acclaimed Central African soukous group the Occidental Brothers Dance Band International, a collaboration between American, Ghanaian, Zambian, and Congolese musicians including the great Samba Mapangala.  Nathaniel has performed and recorded with a number of indie rock bands, including Jenny Gillespie, Tobin Summerfield’s gigantic band “Never Enough Hope”,  The Zincs (Thrill Jockey), Ancientgreeks (Flameshovel), and others. He also played for years in the Butcher Shop Quartet, performing electric guitar arrangements of Igor Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring and other 20th centurty classical works.  Braddock leads an eight-piece electric guitar ensemble that plays his original compositions.  He has twice been featured in Guitar Player Magazine. Nathaniel teaches privately, at the Old Town School of Folk Music, and was head of the Chicago Waldorf School’s guitar program from 2005-12.   OTS classes include African Guitar Styles, Fingerpicking Around The World, Fingerboard Theory, and British Folk Revival.  He periodically offers more specialized fingerstyle guitar classes such as The Songs Of Leonard Cohen, Nick Drake, Iron & Wine, Sufjan Stevens, Davy Graham, John Fahey and Bert Jansch.  His ensembles include Reggae, Afropop, Instrumental Rock, and “Kill Yr Idols”–a survey of influential punk and underground rock. Nathaniel also teaches fingerstyle, theory, songwriting, jazz, classical, and rock guitar privately.  Braddock also offers workshops and masterclasses in Europe and N. America on African  popular guitar styles and is a guest lecturer at Northwestern University.  Braddock has co-presented workshops with Ghanaian Palm Wine guitarist Koo Nimo, and Tinariwen guitarist Ibrahim Ag Alhabib, and Malian sensation Sidi Toure. Other non-guitar musics that Nathaniel has studied include church bell music, Javanese and Balinese gamelan.  He has presented many new works for dance in collaboration with Khecari, Hedwig Dance and choreographer Asimina Chremos, and with Julie Atlas Muz at the 2004 Whitney Biennial in New York. He is also the recipient of 2002, 2004, and 2005 CAAP grants from the City of Chicago to fund the development of new work, and a 2013 DCASE granting funding music research in Ghana, West Africa. - See more at: http://nathanielbraddock.com/bio/#sthash.PJyBE0ti.dpuf

City Slang is an independent record label founded in 1990 with offices in Berlin, London, Paris and New York. Artists: Caribou, José González, Boy Harsher, Noga Erez, Roosevelt…

Alto saxophonist and improviser François Carrier is definitely going his own way. Carrier singular vision has led him to maintain a wide recorded presence all over the world. His rich, deep playing that blends lyricism with boldness and a sense of surpassing one’s self has earned him a place in the Annual International Critic’s Poll of El Intruso of El Intruso 2018, 2017 as well as 2015 and in the DownBeat’s 2013 Best Alto Sax Players List.

In 2001 he won a Juno Award in the Best Contemporary Jazz Album category for his third album Compassion (Naxos Jazz).

To date, François combines an impressive discography of over 35 internationally acclaimed albums with legendary musicians such as Paul Bley, Gary Peacock, Bobo Stenson, Tomasz Stanko, Uri Caine, Jason Moran, Dewey Redman, Mat Maneri, Sonny Greenwich, Jean-Jacques Avenel, John Edwards, Steve Beresford, Rafal Mazur, etc. Drummer Michel Lambert has been his most faithful collaborator. Together, Michel and François undertook several tours in Europe, Asia and Canada.

His six-month residencies in Rome 2002 and London 2011 allowed him to pursue research and exploration work as a saxophonist composer and he also created bonds with musical circles. Among other things, he composed his Free Opera and organised a good number of recording sessions with several European musicians.

In 2005 he was spotted by British label Leo Records with whom he released five unique albums. Several European avant-garde music labels then join the party such as Creative Sources (Portugal), Ayler Records (Sweden-France), FMR Records (England), Not Two Records (Poland). Following the major international media coverage, the demands keep multiplying.
His recent albums “Elements” and “WIDE” on FMR Records, and NIRGUNA on the Polish label Fundacja Słuchaj have been the subject of several rave reviews.
A new CD titled JAPAN SUITE recorded Live in Japan on December 7, 2019, was recently released on NoBusiness Records. A Japanese and European tour is due in 2021. Francois’ Trio will participate in the Jazzahead of Bremen in Germany on April 29, 2021.

Let’s see what the future holds!

rebrandon is following