A factory, a foundry. Focussed on developing a sound by processing all their impressions and shaping them into their own. Resulting in interrelating elements that likewise are innovative.
The result, which despite micro-tonal structures and interwoven grooves, doesn’t loose track of it’s focal point: the beauty in music.

Jonas Engel - saxophone
Florian Herzog - double bass
Anthony Greminger - drums

One marker of bassist Michael Formanek's creativity and versatility is the range of distinguished musicians of several generations he's worked with. While still a teenager in the 1970s he toured with drummer Tony Williams and saxophonist Joe Henderson; starting in the '80s he played long stints with Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Fred Hersch and Freddie Hubbard. The bassist has played a pivotal role on New York's creative jazz scene going back to the '90s when he notably led his own quintet and played in Tim Berne's barnstorming quartet Bloodcount. Nowadays Formanek's in the co-op Thumbscrew with Brooklyn guitarist Mary Halvorson and drummer Tomas Fujiwara.  
 
Formanek is also a composer and leader of various bands. His principal recording and international touring vehicle is his acclaimed quartet with Tim Berne on alto saxophone, Craig Taborn on piano and Gerald Cleaver on drums, which records for ECM; 2010's The Rub and Spare Change and 2012's Small Places both earned coveted five-star raves in Down Beat. Formanek writes, and the quartet plays, compositions of great rhythmic sophistication that unfold in a natural sounding way – challenging music the players make sound like lyrical free expression.  His occasional groups include the 18-piece all-star Ensemble Kolossus, roping in many New York improvisers he works with. Ensemble Kolossus recorded their first CD of all Formanek originals for the prestigious ECM in late 2014. That CD, The Distance, will be released in January 2016. 

Composer and bassoonist Katherine Young creates acoustic and electro-acoustic music that uses curious timbres, expressive noises, and kinetic structures to explore the dramatic materiality of sound, constantly shifting ensemble energies, and the tension between the familiar and the strange. 

Recent projects include "slam creak bzzz" for amplified string quartet and electronics, a premiere by Talea Ensemble of "The Life You Save May Be Your Own" for mixed ensemble and 8-channel playback, and a commission from the String Orchestra of Brooklyn. Katherine also wrote the music for choreographer Daria Fain’s TARGET: Furnace for solo dancer and three musicians. The piece had a week-long run at the Chocolate Factory, and The New York Times described the work as “full of absorbing elements...a lushly spare aural landscape...marvelously charged.”  

Katherine has documented her work on numerous recordings, including the 2012 debut of her quartet Pretty Monsters (Public Eyesore), which, according to Neil Tesser "threatens to upend any comfortable divisions between music and noise." Her 2009 solo bassoon release, Further Secret Origins garnered praise in The Wire (“Bassoon colossus”) and Downbeat (“seriously bold leaps for the bassoon”).   

As an improviser, Katherine has toured with Anthony Braxton, recorded with Hans Joachim Irmler from Faust and F.M. Einheit from Einsturzende Neubauten. Over the years she has shared bills with John Zorn and Zeena Parkins and performed with musicians such as Peter Evans, Guillermo Gregorio, Mary Halvorson, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Jeff Parker, Jessica Pavone, Dan Peck, Sam Pluta, Tomeka Reid, and Weasel Walter. Katherine’s active projects also include the duo Architeuthis Walks on Land with violist Amy Cimini and the chamber music collective Till by Turning, who has a recording forthcoming on Klangbad in 2013. 

Sound Underground is a compact trio with an expansive imagination. Their inquisitive approach is guided by words of wisdom from jazz legend Wayne Shorter: "You've got to go down in the basement and visit every note.” Composed of saxophonist David Leon, trumpeter Alec Aldred and guitarist Jonah Udall, the collective steers through inventive textures far beyond the limits of its unconventional chamber instrumentation.

“Saxophonist Jon Irabagon is a subverter of the jazz form,” declares Martin Longley in his Irabagon feature in the August issue of The New York City Jazz Record. “He’s a revolutionary who’s secretly messing with the changes. He might be dismantling the music’s mechanics from the inside, but from the outside he can frequently persuade a crowd that he’s an old- school practitioner. There are few players who can so deftly stride from postbop to free improvisation, avant country to doom metal and then wander from chaotic collage-spraying to sleek-blowing fluency.”

The winner of the 2008 Thelonious Monk Saxophone Competition, Irabagon has since topped both the Rising Star Alto Saxophone and the Rising Star Tenor Saxophone categories in the DownBeat Magazine Critics’ Poll and been named one of Time Out New York’s 25 New York City Jazz Icons. Jon was also named 2012 Musician of the Year in The New York City Jazz Record. An integral member of such high-profile ensembles as Mostly Other People Do The Killing and the Mary Halvorson Quintet, as well as an established bandleader in his own right, his list of current projects includes the bands Bryan & The Haggards and Mike Pride’s From Bacteria to Boys as well as a longstanding partnership with legendary drummer Barry Altschul and Dave Douglas’ new quintet.

Jon’s own record label, Irabbagast Records, has currently released five of his efforts, including I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues Volume 2: Appalachian Haze (with Mike Pride and Mick Barr), Outright! Unhinged (with Ralph Alessi, Jacob Sacks, John Hebert and Tom Rainey), It Takes All Kinds (featuring Mark Helias and Barry Altschul), and 2015's latest releases:  Behind the Sky (with Tom Harrell, Luis Perdomo, Yasushi Nakamura and Rudy Royston) and Inaction is an Action (an experimental solo sopranino saxophone recording).  


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