Freedom in Contrast

A double feature combining the storied and studious practitioners of Free Music with wild child Philadelphians. Legendary Guitarist Joe Morris leads his group through worlds which beguile and entrance. Aaron Pond's Inverse and Obverse seeks to pierce the veil between the states of being and knowing.

Tickets are $5-20, no one turned away for lack of funds. This concert is co-sponsored by Fire Museum Presents and Philly Music Factory.

Our workshop hosted earlier in the afternoon comes with a free concert ticket.

Joe Morris will be joined by former student and Philly klezmer/experimental crossover star Dan Blacksberg. The always wily Carlos Santiago rounds out the trio. Their set will be played freely.

Joe Morris- Guitar

Dan Blacksberg- Trombone

Carlos Santiago- Violin

Inverse and Obverse is a quartet rooted in a phenomenological approach to creative music. like the great philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty, we are examining the skin of the world, the very nature by which objects and sensations emerge from an interconnected web of being. It is this tenderness to the moment, and each other, which allows us to play poly-idiomatically.

Aaron Pond – Horn, Flutes, Voice, Melodica, Percussion

Bert Harris – Bass 

Mattie McDonnell – Accordion

Max Glazier – Percussion

Bios

Joe Morris is a composer/improviser multi-instrumentalist who plays guitar, double bass, mandolin, banjo, banjouke electric bass and drums. He is also a recording artist, educator, record producer, concert producer/curator and author. His is considered to be one of the most original and important improvising musicians of our time. Down Beat magazine called him “the preeminent free music guitarist of his generation.” Will Montgomery, writing in The Wire magazine called him “one of the most profound improvisers at work in the U.S.”

Aaron Pond is a musician and curator active in Philadelphia. His improvisational  practice is drawn from early atonal music, the playful spirituality of  the AACM, and a South Florida childhood spent in synagogues and swamps. His scholarly pursuits center the universal aesthetic structures of spirit possession and the marking power of ritual. Aaron wishes to find himself in the turbulent seas of sensation.

As a performer and thinker, he has closely collaborated with Thomas Patteson, Toshi Makihara, Melinda Rice, and Dan Blacksberg. Pond leads groups BORBS, Inverse and Obverse, and Argyle Torah, all known for emotionally laden yet highly technical spontaneous composition. His work and scholarship has been showcased at The Kimmel Center, The Discovery Center, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is president of the People’s Music Supply and proud of it.