Trevor Watts & Jamie Harris Duo + Kevin Diehl's Ashé Mystics

Trevor Watts & Jamie Harris Duo:

Trevor Watts is the only founding member of The Spontaneous Music Ensemble still alive. He also founded Amalgam (which included Keith Rowe) and his 1980s Moire Music Group which included Veryan Weston & Peter Knight as well as Phil Minton/Pinise Saul/Lol Coxhill many more and The Drum Orchestra (1980-1997), which involved musicians mainly from Ghana (ECM 1449 CD “A Wider Embrace”). He instigated the 35 piece collaboration with the Drum Orchestra and Teatro Negro de Barlovento (Venezuela) which toured here and also in Venezuela in the 1990’s and around the World on every continent. Other prominent musicians he’s played with include Don Cherry, Archie Shepp, Steve Lacy, Kent Carter, Rashied Ali, Steve Swallow, Bobby Bradford, Cyro Baptista ,Stan Tracey and Veryan Weston.

Watts is featured in "Jazz Brittanica" (a BBC4 film on British jazz and improvised music, 2005. He is featured in many other films on jazz/improv music, some for ARTE TV including filming of two visits to the Roaring Hooves Festival.

Major Jazz Festival appearances include Womad, Glastonbury, San Francisco Jazz Festival, Monterey Jazz Festival, Freedom of the Plaza Festival July 4th in Washington DC, Singapore Arts Festival, Beijing & Shanghai Jazz Festivals, Berlin Jazz Fest, London Jazz Fest, Cervantino Festival, Mexico, New Zealand Festival of Arts, Wangaratta and Darling Harbour Festivals in Australia

Watts is listed in the Who’s Who in the World of Music dictionary

In 1999 JAMIE HARRIS organized a group made up of young musicians for a concert where Trevor Watts was musical director. This group continued to rehearse after that concert and it was during that first rehearsal with no drummer  in attendance that Watts handed Harris a drum and asked him to bang it. The group eventually became “Trevor Watts and the Celebration Band”, where Harris served as percussionist. The Celebration Band toured USA / Canada as well as playing several concerts in the UK and Europe. In 2003 Watts and Harris began performing as a duo, taking this project to Mongolia, USA/Canada, Mexico, The Dominican Republic and Brazil among other locations. Since July 2021, Watts /Veryan  Weston and Harris formed the group “Eternal Triangle”, who have since played concerts all over the UK and EU performing Trevor’s compositions.

Kevin Diehl's Ashé Mystics:

The Ashé Mystics are Kevin Diehl, Julius Masri & Joshua Marquez. They create a world of sound with electronic circuitry, improv and percussive underpinnings.

Kevin Diehl is a Musician, Composer, Arts Organizer, Drummer, and Percussionist. Among his current projects is a new trio featuring Chad Taylor and Joe Chambers. Their eponymously titled debut record, Onilu, is due for release in Fall 2023. It features compositions by all three multi -instrumentalists. Onilu is a Yoruba word meaning “drummers.” Another project is Justice: The Vocal Works of Oliver Lake. A vocal trio joins his ensemble Sonic Liberation Front in performing the works of this widely acclaimed composer.

Julius Masri is a Philadelphia based multi instrumentalist, and performer/composer for the city's  dance  community at large. His  music focuses on improvisatory methods and syncretic / linguistic  exchanges  within  various  musical languages including Jazz, Metal, AfroCuban, Experimental Noise, and Arabic music. Born in Tripoli, Lebanon, he moved to the States in 1990 and picked  up drumming a year later. He studied with Philadelphia instructors Carl Mottola, Elaine Hoffman-Watts, and as an  undergraduate  at Bard College, with AACM's Thurman Barker, Richard Teitelbaum, and Joan Tower. Julius plays drums, circuit modified Casio keyboards, Oud, Kamancheh  (aka Rabab, Spike Fiddle), and various other instruments.

Joshua Marquez is a Filipino-American composer and activist whose award-winning music explores the liminal space between tone and noise as a means to investigate the complexities and duality of Asian American identity. Searing a sonic imprint of cultural identity, his tranquil investigations of the noise spectrum represent the internal conflicts of multiculturalism and the struggles of alienation and assimilation through the fusion and fission of disparate timbres. Hailed as "cutting-edge" (The Gazette), "haunting" (The Daily Iowan), and "creepy" (Fanfare Magazine), Marquez's polemic deconstruction of sound is consumed by ever-evolving rituals of disintegrated perspectives from a postcolonial lens.

venue is wheelchair accessible

This event supported by a sponsorship grant from Penn Treaty Special Services District