User:Invisiboy42293/Dan Blacksberg

Dan Blacksberg is an American trombonist, composer, and music educator. He is known for his work in klezmer and avant-garde jazz, often drawing from contemporary genres such as heavy metal and hardcore punk, both solo and with ensembles like Deveykus and Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird. His 2017 solo album, Radiant Others, was noted for its unprecedented use of the trombone as the lead instrument in a klezmer setting.

[1]

Early life

• • A native of Philadelphia, Blacksberg first discovered klezmer through his parents, who saw Itzhak Perlman's In the Fiddler's House project perform at the Mann Center in the mid-'90s and returned home with CDs including The Klezmatics's Jews with Horns album.
  • attended Boston’s New England Conservatory, where passion for jazz and klezmer was cemented
  • fellow students included klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd and Klezmatics drummer David Licht

• • grew up playing classical and jazz, then discovered the avant-garde forms of both those genres in his late teens/early 20s
  • studied both at New England Conservatory
  • At the same time, got really deep into the most traditional klezmer music and learning all the trombone parts off of old recordings from the 1920s
  • After school, moved back to my hometown of Philadelphia, where he spent a lot of time playing klezmer in New York and Europe with folks like Frank London and Michael Winograd, then coming home and playing free jazz and improvised music.
  • "Somehow in all this I missed almost the entire history of rock and pop music. I didn't even listen to rock when I was a kid. I probably couldn't have told you what Nirvana sounded like until I was 25, let alone the Melvins or Black Flag. But while I came to rock late, it definitely had a strong impact on me. I think it really provided me with a bunch of different kinds of bridges that let me bring different parts of my musical world together."
  • grew up going to synagogue
  • "I was raised in a mainstream Jewish family. We celebrated most holidays, but we didn't really keep kosher. We went to services about once a month. I did the whole Hebrew school thing and even the obligatory Israel trip. I got into klezmer starting with a random CD that my parents had, and then from studying with people at klezmer workshops in the US and Canada."
  • "I was already pretty disillusioned by religious ideology by the time I started getting in to klezmer. Once I found that, then that was a lens that I could use to as a way to look at the rest of the tradition, religious and otherwise. There's a lot to like in Judaism, but I'm not into dealing with the religious practice."

• • "Blacksberg, a trombone virtuoso ensconced in the Jewish music scene, klezmer guru, and student of the late Bob Brookmeyer, Joe Morris, and Joe Maneri, had no punk or rock lineage; the influx of new sounds introduced to him by Millevoi altered his aesthetic."
• • Attended Julia R. Masterman School for high school with Nick Millevoi (also )
  • "It was in high school that he started exploring adventurous jazz after hearing trumpeter Cuong Vu on J. Michael Harrison’s long-running WRTI-FM show The Bridge; around the same time, he started obsessively listening to Jews with Horns, the 1995 album by pioneering American klezmer band the Klezmatics."
  • "Blacksberg discovered echoes in other places, as well, most notably in the music of jazz legend Ornette Coleman, whose harmolodic theory has been key to Blacksberg’s own sonic experiments."
• • "Blacksberg, a graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music and a student of jazz trombonist Bob Brookmeyer, guitarist Joe Morris, and trumpeter John McNeil"

• Traces lineage back to klezmer clarinetist Naftule Brandwein

Career

• • "He first started experimenting with klezmer in 2002; by 2005, he had become a scene staple, playing bar mitzvahs and weddings and ultimately becoming a regular on the tour and teaching circuit."
• Blacksberg and Millevoi began playing around Philadelphia in the mid-2000s, discovered local experimental music scene

• Jan 2012; appeared on Alan Bern's The Other Europeans' live album Splendor, performing a badkhones (Yiddish wedding declamation) on the track "Klezmer/Lautar Suite #2"
• Awarded Pew Fellowship in the Arts in 2012
• Sep 2012; performed at Roulette Intermedium with Anthony Braxton's quartet on trombone and euphonium, alongside Ken Filiano on bass and Szekely on drums
• • "In his native Philadelphia, trombonist Dan Blacksberg is probably best known in avant-garde jazz and improvised music circles, as the leader of his own trio and the Hasidic doom metal band Deveykus, co-leader of the new-music duo Archer Spade, and a restless and inventive experimentalist who has collaborated with many of the city’s most adventurous artists."
  • "But when he ventures outside the city, it’s more often in the context of traditional klezmer music, which he performs and teaches at festivals, camps, and schools across the country and around the world. "
  • "one of the most in-demand trombonists on the modern klezmer scene"
  • celebrated Hanukkah 2015 with two Philly shows, one at Philadelphia Museum of Art and one at the University of Pennsylvania's Rotunda theater
  • "Blacksberg’s dual interests in traditional klezmer and more avant forms"
  • “It really relates to me in the sense of improvising, since I get to improvise all my parts,” Blacksberg says of the links between his passions. “There’s also so much room for expansion for the trombone. I’m developing new ways of approaching the trombone, and that’s something I’m always really committed to and excited by. But the bottom line is I just really love the sound of the music”
  • In Jan 2015, began monthly "Klezmer in the Afternoon" program of workshops in West Philadelphia to help encourage local musicians to approach the music with the same broad-mindedness that he finds in other cities.
  • “Klezmer draws together musicians from every kind of background,” Blacksberg says, “including people with really experimental bents and people who come from more mainstream classical or folk music backgrounds. We have a shared love of something that opens me up to a community that’s a lot wider than I would have gotten if I just did one of the things that I do.”

• • Performed on Liturgy's The Ark Work (2015) and The Body's No One Deserves Happiness (2016)
  • "But what separates Blacksberg from the klezmer pack—a style historically dominated by strings, namely violin, and clarinet—is his fusion-minded sensibilities, and his unconventional instrument of choice, at least as far as klezmer is concerned."
  • “Back in the old, old days, there was just no trombone anywhere,” he says. “It was strings, and then the clarinet came in, and for whatever reason those two instruments became sort of the emotional vessels of the melody in an historical content. The other thing is that trombone has a very specific role in a traditional klezmer band, which is to be this middle voice. I felt like with that instrumentation, it would be harder to punch through and really fit on top of it. Acoustically, I was thinking about providing a place for myself where I could be comfortably on top of things.”
  • "Blacksberg actually foresaw trombone and guitar meeting head on on a klezmer set. After all, building those kinds of improbable links is in his M.O. “For me, I like a little more of a folkie mentality, and I like to look for a different way to create fusions,” he says. “It’s never been about clearly identifiable signifiers of a genre as much as finding ways in which different kinds of sounds can interact and coexist really easily.”"

(Radiant Others)

• • "Dan Blacksberg’s new project Radiant Others is the first klezmer project to feature the trombone as lead instrument."
• • "From traditional klezmer workshops to daring experimental performances with his duo Archer Spade (not to mention his recent Double Decker Music Series engagement), Philly’s Dan Blacksberg covers a impressive expanse of territory with his trombone."
  • Radiant Others released on Sep 27, 2017
  • Band includes Millevoi on electric and acoustic guitar
  • opening track is called "Doina"
  • songs are all traditional pieces arranged by Blacksberg
  • "We hear some frenzied runs of notes over its course, but warm Fender Rhodes holds a mellow, measured center, as well as a cinematic harmonized fanfare at the intro."
  • "it sounds from “Doina” like Blacksberg aims to infuse the fearless avant garde with timeless sounds and techniques, and vice versa."
• • "On Radiant Others, Blacksberg has put the beefy and emotionally-wrought gale-force blows of his trombone in its first-ever lead role on a klezmer record, accompanied only by Millevoi’s Neil Young-ish desert rock-meets-Jewish music-melodious guitarscapes."
  • "Despite its un-klezmer-like sparse trombone/guitar instrumentation, the hodgepodge of originals and traditionals Blacksberg and Millevoi attack on Radiant Others exude the music’s rollicking euphoria while its meditative dirges offer a modern facelift to the old-world genre. File it under minimalist post-klezmer for new music seekers, although it certainly wouldn’t be out of place at a Jewish wedding. After revisiting Deveykus territory on the towering metal-ish hum of the opening elegiac track “Doina,” the duo go on to give a clinic on conversational back and forth as they chug, waltz, and boogie through its 11 shapeshifting pieces."
  • Though the pair mostly take an experimental approach, klezmer is rooted in dance music, and Radiant Others reflects that jubilance. “I went with a smorgasbord approach to this,” says Blacksberg. “This is like ‘Hey, look what the trombone can do in Jewish music.’ You have a very wide range of styles within klezmer. There’s tunes from like 1907 in Europe, those tunes in the mid-century in America, and then all the original stuff, which is written in a really traditional manner. The point is, most of this is dance music, so it’s still written to be danced to in a modernized, traditional way.”
  • "While inspired by klezmer godfathers like the Klezmatics, Klezmer Conservatory Band, Brave Old World, David Krakauer, Naftule’s Dream, and New Klezmer Trio, Blacksberg is on a mission to help breathe new life into klezmer with Radiant Others. “I really identify most with klezmer music, especially right now,” he says. “This was a really important record for me because I felt like it was such a statement of, ‘Here’s this new way of playing trombone and this new way of playing klezmer music that you could do,’ as opposed to like, ‘Here’s a sound idea I had.’” Maybe this is arrogant, but I felt this was something I was giving to a community or to a group of people as a resource even as a record and also trying to push traditional music beyond this comfort zone sound-wise took a while to figure out how to do.”
  • "Blacksberg is also itching to help recapture the late 1980s-through-early ’00s glory days when downtown New York City played host to the klezmer rage. “There’s something coming back; it’s definitely on the rise again,” Blacksberg says about klezmer’s resurgence. “I’m not sure what that means yet because it’s in the early stages but maybe there’s a little bit of a ‘revival revival’ and I’m trying to ride the wave.”
• • "busy schedule teaching at international festivals like Klezkanada and Yiddish New York
  • "Encounters @ the Mothership will feature four nights of concerts, each with a different ensemble of invited guests playing new music that ranges from solo chamber pieces to songs that border on pop music to all-out free jazz chaos. The lineup includes 94-year-old Sun Ra Arkestra bandleader and saxophonist Marshall Allen, pedal steel guitar improviser Susan Alcorn, and Temple University’s Boyer College Electroacoustic Ensemble Project, in addition to frequent local collaborators like drummer Mike Szekely, vibraphonist Ashley Tini, and guitarist Nick Millevoi, who has been playing with Blacksberg since the two were at Masterman High School together.
  • "At the same time, Blacksberg is in the initial stages of composing a new piece for the Kimmel Center’s annual Jazz Residency program, to be premiered in June. Undertaken in collaboration with cantor Yosef Goldman, the project will explore the connections among Jewish, Arabic, and non-Jewish musical cultures. At a kick-off concert for the residency in January, Blacksberg offered a packed audience at SEI Innovation Studio, the intimate room tucked away in the Kimmel’s basement, a fairly exhaustive overview of the varied ways that jazz and klezmer have intertwined in his music throughout his career."

• More on Kimmel Residency
• He performed on the 2021 album Wellsmussoweston, a collaboration with Jair-Rôhm Parker Wells, Robert Musso, and Lounge Lizards drummer G. Calvin Weston.

(claims in artist bio, looking for sources)

[2]

• Performed at the Jewish Culture Festival in Kraków
• Gave classes at KlezKamp, Alan Bern's Yiddish Summer Weimar. Has given workshops and master classes at University of Pennsylvania, Temple University, Yale University, and University of Virginia where he is artist-in-residence
• Has performed with Frank London, Elaine Hoffman Watts, Anthony Braxton, George E. Lewis, Joe Morris, Adrienne Cooper
• Was a featured jazz soloist with the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia
• has received grants from American Composers Forum Philadelphia Chapter, 2014 composer fellow at Ucross Foundation

Psychotic Quartet

• • free improvisational group
  • 2012 album Cordyceps is a recording of two live performances from fall 2011
  • "Trombonist Dan Blacksberg coaxes strange vibrations"
  • "Blacksberg’s trombone-white-noise simulation"

Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird

Main article: Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird

• present and "especially notable" on first album (2009)
• band member (2011)
• member as of third album

Dan Blacksberg Trio

• • performed with John McNeil and Jeremy Udden's group Hush Point at ShapeShifter Lab in Brooklyn in January 2015
  • members were Blacksberg on trombone, Matt Engle on bass, and Mike Szekely on drums
• "He’s tackled firebreathing jazz with his Trio as well as in Haitian Rail"

Electric Simcha

• • was a month old when they for Omar Souleyman on his "Jazeera Nights" American tour in November 2010
  • "Hasidic punk outfit"
  • Daniel Blacksberg: "We play Hasidic music, in a punk rock way. Right now we’re doing more or less a wedding set that could easily be heard on any Orthodox or Hasidic bandstand. We don’t start with “Od Yishama,” but we’re basically starting on the third tune of that medley. But we’re going for a loud and fast, hardcore punk aesthetic — bands like Black Flag and the Minutemen come into the picture. It’s a distorted, agressive, heavy kind of sound."
  • Other band members are Nick Millevoi on guitar, Travis Woodson on bass, and Julius Masri on drums
  • Blacksberg knew band members from playing in rock bands and jazz and experimental music around Philly
  • band came about "in a performable way" in September 2010, played their first show as a band on October 5
  • Masri and Millevoi had seen Souleyman perform in New York, Masri reached out for the band to open for him
• mentioned by The Forward in 2011 as part of a new wave of klezmer artists
• • billed as “Hasidic Punk Rock”
  • "Electric Simcha was a band to play all the fast, raucous nigunim that I like, again, trying to tie it together with a genre that could bring it outside of it's natural habitat."
  • started in 2010
  • influenced by reading Michael Azerrad's book Our Band Could Be Your Life and listening to hardcore punk like early Black Flag, Minutemen, and Hüsker Dü
  • "That hardcore energy and the Hasidic party energy seemed so close together to me, that I just got some friends together who had expressed interest in playing Jewish music, and just did it."
  • "My two main motivations for both Deveykus and Electric Simcha were to play Jewish music on trombone as a lead instrument in some kind of personal way and to make music that drew on the strengths of the musicians around me. "
  • "So even with the music we did in Electric Simcha, which was definitely celebratory, if it's embracing a positive nature, it's always tinged with a little darkness, or at least the understanding that things might not be okay once you leave the wedding."
• • Millevoi gave Blacksberg the Azerrad book, inspiring hardcore punk listening
  • Blacksberg had not listened to punk beforehand

• Joy release; Millevoi described band's sound as a “Black Flag-meets-Piamenta take on Hasidic wedding music”

Superlith

• (Superlith II)
  • duo with Julian Masri
  • "Dan Blacksberg blurts hurricanes through his trombone and Julius Masri spouts flames from his circuit-bent Casio keyboard."

Deveykus

Main article: Deveykus

Haitian Rail

• • "equal parts avant-garde jazz soundbomb, bruising noise rock, and spiderweb-intricate prog"
  • joined Millevoi and Edward Ricart's Haitian Rail group circa 2014, alongside Kevin Shea on drums
  • "So, with the space eaten up by the rhythm section, Millevoi and Blacksberg hang back. Millevoi again covers a lot of miles with his tone. He starts out swishing around a Duane Denison twang and then spits corrosive skronks upon whatever Shea and Ricart are constructing. Blacksberg, on the other hand, mops things up with comparatively melodic legato sweeps, also adding in percussive periods and commas when required."
• • "fringe metal-jazz"
  • "Blacksberg is the wild card in this whole thing, playing an instrument that is even less associated with the clamorous sounds of loud, fretted and amplified instruments, but he carves out his own niche by remaining true to himself. And you know what? It fits."
  • "Blacksberg’s trombone offers a sharp contrast to Millevoi’s staccato attack, and occasionally, he happens upon a pattern with the guitarist"
  • "Millevoi and Blacksberg making random noises over a barren soundscape before a figure is introduced, played slowly."
  • "Blacksberg emits creepy sounds from his trombone."
  • "Millevoi and Blacksberg play in and out of unison, leading to an extended spotlight for the trombonist who makes sharp jabs while Ricart is playing like a madman underneath."
  • "Blacksberg’s presence assures that they hold up the jazz part of the experimental metal-jazz equation, losing none of their ferocity along the way."
• "He’s tackled firebreathing jazz with his Trio as well as in Haitian Rail"

Archer Spade

• • duo with Blacksberg and Millevoi
  • were among artists invited by Krallice's Mick Barr to perform one of his compositions at Saint Vitus in Greenpoint
  • "acing Barr’s composition by melding finger-hopping precision with fire-breathing mastery"
• • formed in 2010
  • 2012 Commissioning Series featured them performing compositions by Gene Coleman, Dave Soldier, and Johnny DeBlase
  • "their sporadic Performance Series rarely hosted a concert that didn't include Archer Spade or one of the pair's numerous other projects."
  • presented the Spectrum festival in South Philadelphia in July 2015
  • "They began Archer Spade to explore the textural possibilities of their instruments in the context of contemporary classical music."
  • worked with compositional idols like Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder Roscoe Mitchell and multireedist Drew Ceccato
  • started performance series in 2012 to encourage collaborations and offer opportunities to peers
  • festival was named for Spectrum arena in Philly
• "he’s dabbled in minimalist chamber music in Archer Spade"

Personal life

• Celebrated Joe Biden's 2020 win in Philadelphia by playing trombone with the Kol Tzedek Synagogue Simcha Band.

Discography

Solo albums

• 2017: Radiant Others (Illuminent)

With Nick Millevoi

• 2016: Desertion
• 2020: Streets of Philadelphia

With Archer Spade

• 2016: Orbital Harmony (Mulatta Records)
• 2017: Archer Spade & Toshimaru Nakamura

With Haitian Rail

• 2014: Solarists (New Atlantis)

With Deveykus

• 2013: Pillar Without Mercy (Tzadik)

With Superlith

• 2012: Plasma Clusters
• 2021: Superlith II

With Electric Simcha

• 2010: Electric Simcha
• 2020: Joy

With Dan Blacksberg Trio

• 2010: Bit Heads (NoBusiness)
• 2014: Perilous Architecture (NoBusiness)

With Daniel Kahn & the Painted Bird

• 2009: Partisans & Parasites
• 2010: Lost Causes
• 2017: The Butcher's Share

With Psychotic Quartet

• 2009: Gliomas EP
• 2011: Sphaleron
• 2012: Cordyceps

Other credits

Year	Artist(	Recording	Label	Role
2008	Br'er / Drums Like Machine Guns	Archaic Fetishism Volume 1	Edible Onion	Trombone on "Linque Track"
2009	Br'er	Filled With Guilt & Diamonds		Trombone on "Katie Did" (credited as Dan Blacksburg)
2010	Adrienne Cooper	Enchanted: A New Generation of Yiddishsong	Golden Horn	Trombone
2011	Anthony Braxton	Composition No. 19 (For 100 Tubas)	New Braxton House	Tuba
		Trillium E		Trombone
	The Other Europeans	Splendor	Kikiyon
2012	Anthony Braxton	Creative Music Orchestra (NYC) 2011	New Braxton House
	Sonic Liberation Front	Jetway Confidential	High Two
2013	Franziska Seehausen	Spring	Independent
	Michael Winograd	Storm Game	Golden Horn	Producer
2015	Liturgy	The Ark Work	Thrill Jockey	Trombone
2016	Coldair	The Provider	Twelves
	The Body	No One Deserves Happiness	Thrill Jockey
	Solilians	Shin	Goodbye Better	Trombone on "Hine Ma Tov (Space Drone Dreams Mix)"
	Dave Soldier	The Eight Hour of Amudat	Mulatta	Trombone (Wepwawet) on "Satisfying Her Lord & Mysterious Caverns"
2017	The Welcome Wagon	Light Up the Stairs	Tooth & Nail/Gospel Songs	Trombone
2019	Dave Soldier	Zajal	Mulatta
	Upholstery	INGA	Exotic Fever
	Michael Winograd	Kosher Style	OU People
2022		Early Bird Special