Joe Morris Quartet

OPEN TO THE PUBLIC | The Bennington College Carriage Barn Music Series presents a concert by the Joe Morris Quartet.  Bassist Joe Morris and a stellar ensemble of musicians including David Bindman on tenor saxophone, Hidemi Akaiwa on piano and Bennington music faculty member Michael Wimberly on drums will perform a concert of improvised music to celebrate the centennial of pioneering free jazz trumpeter, composer, and educator Bill Dixon. A longtime member of the Bennington Music faculty (1968-1995), Dixon founded the college's legendary Black Music Division in 1974. This concert honors his legacy as the organizer of the October Revolution in Jazz in 1964, a transformative series of concerts that propelled the jazz world into new artistic directions including free improvisation and collective action.

Joe Morris, Bassist/Guitarist/Conductor, has performed and/or recorded with many of the most impactful contemporary artists in improvised music including, Anthony Braxton, Wadada Leo Smith, Evan Parker, John Zorn, Ken Vandermark, Barry Guy, Mary Halvorson, Tyshawn Sorey, William Parker, Dewey Redman, Marshall Allen, Matthew Shipp, Tomeka Reid, Ikue Mori, John Butcher, Agusti Fernandez, David S.Ware, Peter Evans, Joe Maneri, Joe McPhee, Joelle Leandre, Nicole Mitchell, etc. He is featured leading his own groups as a sideman or collaborator on more than 170 recordings on the labels ECM, ESPdisk, Clean Feed, Hat Hut, Aum Fidelity, Avant, OkkaDisk, Not Two, Soul Note, Leo, No Business, Rogue Art, Relative Pitch, Incus, RareNoise, Fundacja Sluchaj, Mahakala Music, his own labels Riti and Glacial Erratic and others. Morris has toured extensively throughout North America and Europe as well as in Brazil, Korea and Japan. He has lectured and conducted workshops on his own music and on improvisation throughout the U.S, including at Princeton University, Dartmouth College and Harvard University as well as in Canada, Korea, Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, Belgium and Ireland. Since 2000, he has been on the faculty in the Jazz and Contemporary Musical Arts Department at New England Conservatory of Music. Morris is the author of the book, Perpetual Frontier: The Properties of Free Music (Riti Publishing 2012).

Hidemi Akaiwa is a Japanese pianist, composer, and free improvisation artist living in Boston. She received a full scholarship to the renowned Berklee College of Music, where she studied with well-known musicians such as Danilo Perez, Kenny Werner, and Billy Childs. Today, she is best known as the microtonal keyboardist for David Fiuczynski’s jazz-punk fusion band “The Screaming Headless Torsos.” In her current project, Akaiwa combines traditional Japanese music and Zen principles with microtonality and a variety of influences from contemporary classical music, free jazz, funk, and fusion. Her music is an innovative blend of different styles and cultures, which she has presented at international festivals and prestigious museums like MoMA in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

David Bindman is a multi-reed player, composer and improviser who graduated from Wesleyan University in 1985 and received an MA in World Music from Wesleyan in 1987. A recipient of grants from the Brooklyn Arts Council, the Queens Council on the Arts, the Puffin Foundation, Meet The Composer, and The Aaron Copland Fund for Music Performing Ensembles, David has taught in the New York City school system, Bennington College, LaGuardia Community College, and The New School in NYC. David has conducted or assisted in master classes throughout the USA and in Canada, Sweden, China, the Philippines, Ghana, and Trinidad. In addition to his work in music, he designs curriculum and teaches union members in NYC through the Consortium for Worker Education. David co-led the Brooklyn Sax Quartet with Fred Ho for a decade, recording two CDs, The Way of the Saxophone (innova, 2001) and Far Side of Here (Omnitone, 2005). He has self-released two CDs by the David Bindman Sextet, Sunset Park Polyphony (2012) and Ten Billion Versions of Reality (2017). David has performed, toured or recorded with Blood Drum Spirit, Adam Lane’s Full Throttle Orchestra, Stephen Horenstein’s Lab Orchestra, the Relative Motion Trio, Kevin Norton, Ehran Elisha, Joe Fonda, Scott D. Miller, Wadada Leo Smith, Anthony Braxton, and many others.

Michael Wimberly is a percussionist, composer, improviser, and educator. Wimberly has performed with funk legends George Clinton and the Parliament Funkadelic, The Boys Choir of Harlem, Paul Winter Consort, rock icons Vernon Reid, Henry Rollins, and Blondie. R&B royalty Dionne Warwick, Valerie Simpson, D'Angelo, Angie Stone and Alyson Williams. Additionally, Wimberly has been a featured artist with Berlin’s Rundfunk Symphony, Vienna’s Tonkunstler Symphony, Leipzig Symphony, and International Region Symphony Orchestra performing compositions of Daniel Schnyder, as well as his own orchestral compositions performed by Yakima Symphony Orchestra, and Sage City Symphony of Vermont. Broadway shows include The Lion King, The Wiz, and Ntozake Shange’s “For Colored Girls” at the American Place Theatre. His album, Afrofuturism (TMR), 2021, and percussion books "Getting Started on Cajon", "Getting Started on Djembe" - Hudson Publishing, have all received exceptional praise and reviews. Michael joined the music faculty at Bennington College in 2012.

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