When we were in high school, a friend of ours was something of a musical prodigy. He’d learn the piano part for the school musical just by listening to it on his car tape deck on the way to the show and we remember one night sneaking our way into a jazz open-mic jam session at a local bar filled with grizzled old bluesman. After Jamie played, there were suddenly all these old men pressing their phone numbers into his palm, “if you ever wanna jam, man, you give me a call.” That’s him today off the right. The Hasidic look, not quite sure what that’s about. It’s his shtick.
Anyway, we’re not quite sure if Andy Clausen is all that, but from the bio on the Wayward Music Blog, he sounds like he’s something:
Although still a year shy of high-school graduation, Andy Clausen has been making a big splash on the local scene. The Roosevelt High stand-out plays trombone in the school’s acclaimed jazz band, and also composes for his own sextet and performs on laptop in the electro-pop band This Sporting Life. And, he plays bassoon in the Roosevelt orchestra, and subs for big bands around town. His big-band composition “Fly” was honored with the 2009 Gerald Wilson Award for Jazz Composition from the Monterey Jazz Festival, and was included on a KPLU School of Jazz album, performed by the Roosevelt Jazz Band with Cuong Vu on trumpet with electronics.”
This coming Thursday, July 16th, at 7:30 pm, Andy is playing at the Chapel Performance Space in the Good Shepherd Center with his ambient trio, Sjenka:
He performs on laptops using such devices as “musolomo,” a computer program that allows performers to sample and recombine sections of performance. His co-conspirators in provocative creation of the new and the fresh are two fellow Roosevelt students, Corey Dansereau (trumpet, vocals, electronics) and Max Williams (guitar, electronics), along with 2008 Roosevelt grad Xavier McHugh, who is Berklee bound, on percussion. Luke Bergman, 2008 UW grad who performs with Speak alongside Cuong Vu, will join them on bass. The band, says Clausen, “synthesizes diverse musical styles into dynamic layered soundscapes filled with striking juxtapositions of sounds and textures. A gentle trumpet melody might be manipulated and transformed into an eerie wash of shifting harmony and pitch, or might sing over the top of a relentless wall of electronic noise. A simple pop tune might feature jazz-styled solos and then be carried on a driving rock pulse into an apex of cascading synthesizers.
Sounds worth checking out. Sliding scale $7 – $15 admission, presented by Earshot Jazz.
Jamie Saft is bad ass!