May 20, 2016

Friday night live at Transistor: mixed-medium ensemble Strange Frontiers, experimental violin-saxophone duo Irine Røsnes & Thom Caminito and jazz from the Black Diamond Quartet. Sound by Jon Monteverde. 

Strange Frontiers is a project created by Chicago saxophonist Hunter Diamond in collaboration with his father. Psychologist and poet Eric Diamond released a collected works in the summer of 2015 by the same name. This project aims to evoke the powerful and cunning imagery of Eric's poetry through new original music. A mix of melodic text setting and spoken word, Strange Frontiers serves as a colorful challenge and intrigue for both mind and spirit.

More about Hunter Diamond: Attending Indiana University on scholarship, Hunter studied with the legendary Dr. David Baker, Tom Walsh, and the entire highly esteemed jazz faculty at IU. While in school Hunter performed, toured and recorded with The Latin Jazz Collective under the direction of seven-time Grammy Nominee Michael Spiro. Upon graduating, Hunter was hired by Celebrity Cruise Lines as a musical director and multiple winds player. Hunter has toured North America as a featured performer with The Main Squeeze and the  Media Noche Trio, whose 2012 tour culminated with a performance at the famed Catalina Club in Los Angeles, CA. as part of their on-going Young Artists Jazz Series. In the spring of 2014, Hunter toured with The Sammy Figueroa (Miles Davis, Sonny Rollins) Grammy Experience Band aboard the Norwegian Getaway. In the fall of 2014, Hunter headlined the Amelia Island Jazz Festival with trumpeter Randy Brecker. Since moving to Chicago, he has been playing venues and performance spaces around the city with The Black Diamond Quartet, The Hunter Diamond Quintet, Justin Boyd’s Stereo Genius, and the Alan Gresik Swing Shift orchestra every Thursday at the Green Mill Lounge. Hunter will be completing a master’s degree from the Depaul University School of Music this summer.

Visit Hunter Diamond's website. 

On this evening the duo of Irine Røsnes & Thom Caminito presented two world premieres at Transistor! They performed Jonathan Hannau’s  "TV SQUeCNe" for violin, tenor sax and radio, as well as Owen David’s "N2."

Irine Røsnes is a versatile violinist based in Chicago. Since moving to Chicago in 2014, she became an active orchestral and chamber music performer, improviser, music educator and ensemble administrator. She enjoys working in different genres and is a passionate advocate of new music. She has given numerous premieres, including, among others, the U.S. premiere of Augusta Read Thomas’ "Of being is a Bird," and has also commissioned and premiered works of many contemporary composers and sound artists.  Fascinated by the aesthetics of the Historically Informed Performance Practice Movement, Irine has had many baroque violin engagements, and between 2012 and 2014 she closely collaborated with the baroque flautist and oboist Åsa Moræus.  Irine holds performance degrees from University of Bergen (Norway), Robert Schumann Musik Hochschule (Germany), Utrecht Conservatoire (Netherlands) and DePaul University (USA). She has studied under numerous sought-after pedagogues, including Ilya Kaler, Elisabeth Perry, Mikhail Zemtsov, Ricardo Odriozola, Isaak Shuldman, and Antoinette Lohmann.

Thomas Caminito is a Chicago-based jazz saxophonist specializing in free-form and contemporary improvisational music. After beginning his saxophone studies in middle school, he continued onward to obtain a bachelor's degree in jazz composition from the highly esteemed Berklee College of Music in Boston. While at Berklee, he studied jazz performance and composition under the tutelage of numerous prolific musicians and educators, including George Garzone, Greg Osby, Ayn Inserto, Hal Crook, Dave Santoro, Scott Free, and Terri Lyne Carrington. Thomas is currently an active performer in the Chicago area pursuing a Master of Music degree at the DePaul University School of Music.

Also available: a previous Irine Røsnes and Thomas Caminito Transistor performance from June 19, 2015.

Originally formed in Bloomington, Indiana, the Black Diamond Quartet is an adventurous jazz group that features the music of saxophonists Artie Black and Hunter Diamond.  The group's instrumentation (two tenor saxophones, bass guitar and drums) creates a space for high-energy improvisation and unequivocal melodic material.  For this performance, the quartet performed a set of original compositions by Black and Diamond.

Personnel:
Artie Black: tenor saxophone
Hunter Diamond: tenor saxophone
Kitt Lyles: bass
Neil Hemphill: drums

Visit Artie's website.   

Also available: a previous Black Diamond Quartet Transistor performance from November 7, 2014.
Also available: a previous Artie Black Transistor performance (as Dad Knows Best) from May 1, 2015.