THE FORTUNA QUARTET:
OMAR TAMEZ, ANGIE SANCHEZ, JOE FONDA & HARVEY SORGEN
Back in December, 2011 when the Bop Shop moved, it signaled the end of the Atrium series. It took us a while to get the music back up and running on a regular basis.
But at the end of November 2012, at the first jazz concert in the new store, we introduced a new face to the Bop Shop series: Mexican guitarist Omar Tamez. Tamez dazzled us with his multi-faceted guitar work: melodic lines looping endlessly, feeding back, bracing dissonances and shimmering chordal work. And that's not to mention his work on kalimba. Tamez brought his years of experience playing with Wadada Leo Smith, Herb Robertson, Conrad Bauer (and many others), as well as studying with composers like Helmut Lachenmann, Pierre Boulez and Karlheinz Stockhausen a/o.
Playing in a duet with Tamez was Bop Shop favorite Harvey Sorgen (he's been Fonda / Stevens Group drummer for the past 20 years as well as working with Hot Tuna, Allman Brothers, Paul Simon, Dewey Redman, Dave Douglas a/o). Sorgen is a drummer, comfortable with laying down a driving rhythm for some of rock’s major musicians, as well as playing with the open structures of jazz or playing freely in an intimate improvisatory duo. Together these two wove an improvisatory fabric that was transportive. We knew we had to have them back.
Tamez' latest projects have been in collaboration with pianist/keyboardist/composer Angelica Sanchez. They released a recording as a duo on the Clean Feed label, Twine Forest. And now they have formed the Fortuna Quartet. Since coming to New York from Arizona in 1994, Sanchez has been playing and recording steadily. Her collaborators have included Wadada Leo Smith, Marc Ducret, Tony Malaby, Tom Raney and many, many others. Nate Chinen in the New York Times stated it succinctly when he said "In her piano playing as well as her compositions Angelica Sanchez seeks out the lyrical heartbeat within any avant-garde storm." Long-time Bop Shop attendees will remember when Sanchez played a memorable concert in the atrium and conducted a workshop at Eastman School of Music with her quartet back in 2004. It's been too long and we're glad to have Angelica Sanchez back.
A quartet needs four members so to round out this unit we have the bassist who has appeared at the Bop Shop more times than any other musician (with the possible exception of Paul Smoker): bassist extraordinaire, Joe Fonda. Fonda is well-known to Bop Shop regulars. He's best known as co-leader of Fonda / Stevens Group and a member of co-op bands Conference Call, the FAB Trio with violinist Billy Bang and drummer Barry Altschul. The bassist brings his unique energy and virtuosity to any musical situation and it should be exciting to hear him in this new group.
The quartet has a wealth of experience to draw from and it promises to be a night of great music at the Bop Shop.