Encounters #6

Dan Blacksberg presents ENCOUNTERS New Music Series
with Dan Blacksberg (trombone), Tessa Ellis (trumpet)
Joey Sullivan (drums), and Michael Foster (saxophone, et al)

West Philly trombonist Dan Blacksberg presents a Sunday evening series of experimental music to get you energized for your week! Dan brings together musicians from across Philly’s musical spectrum and beyond for new improvised Encounters in Studio 34’s comfy and intimate space. Bring your ears and settle down into a couch and experience the exciting unknown of the music, anchored by the expansive dexterity of Blacksberg’s trombone. 

This will also be the final night of our art show, Landscapes on the Edge of Abstraction, and last change to take home paintings, encaustics, and books by Philip and Deborah Zuchman.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Tessa Ellis has been fascinated by the sound of the trumpet since she was a four-year-old hearing the instrument for the first time. Her work as a Philadelphia-based freelance trumpeter and teaching artist is inspired by her lifelong drive to create new and nuanced sounds. Tessa is a founding member of the Arcana New Music Ensemble and the Opus 5 Brass Quintet and has enjoyed genre-bending performances with Hanson, Amos Lee, Square Peg Round Hole, and Caracara. She studied with David Bilger at the Curtis Institute of Music and earned a Bachelor’s of Music (2017) and a Community Artist Fellowship Diploma (2018). As an orchestral musician, she has performed with the Rochester Philharmonic, the Lancaster Symphony, Orchestra 2001, and Symphony in C. Tessa was a finalist in the 2016 Ellsworth Smith International Trumpet Solo Competition and she has won first place in two divisions of the National Trumpet Competition. 

Joey Sullivan is a drummer, improviser and organizer based in Philadelphia. Holding a degree in jazz performance from temple university, his drumming is equally influenced by conversational rhythms of jazz, the wide sound palette and playfulness of improvised music as well as the minimal propulsion of rock music. He is a member of touring bands, Bark Culture (led by Victor Vieira-Branco), The Ghost (w/Michael Foster and John Moran) and the Old-School country rock band Florry. He has performed with Joe McPhee, James McCain and many others.

Michael Foster is a saxophonist and multi-instrumentalist working in the fields of free improvisation, noise, free jazz, graphic & video notation, performance art, and other forms of weird music. Foster utilizes extensive instrumental preparations, augmenting his saxophone with amplification, objects, balloons, drum heads, vibrators, tapes, and samples as a method of subverting and queering the instrument’s history and traditional roles.