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Current and Recent Projects | Compositions | Writing
Audio sample: "India," from LAND
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More audio clips on Dennis Rea's Myspace page
NOW AVAILABLE: Dennis Rea's book, Live at the Forbidden City: Musical Encounters in China and Taiwan, has been published and is available at the following online booksellers:
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Purchase online from iUniverseUpcoming Shows
Saturday, July 19, 2008: Moraine
Seattle, Floating Leaves Tea House, 2213 NW Market Street, 6 pm, Donation
A farewell party for the soon-to-be-relocated Floating Leaves, featuring several musical acts that have performed there regularly over the past two years.
Seattle, Chapel Performance Space at Good Shepherd Center, 649 Sunnyside Ave. N in Wallingford, 7:30 pm, $5-15 donation
Nonsequitur presents an evening of music by Dennis Rea with three ensembles:
Tempered Steel features Ffej, Frank Junk, and Dennis Rea playing a variety of amplified, electronically processed thumb pianos. The group sounds like no other thumb piano ensemble you've ever heard, conjuring otherworldly percussion instruments, phantom harpsichords, and echoes of musique concrete.
View a performance clip of Tempered Steel on Youtube.
Dennis Rea, Elizabeth Falconer (koto), John Falconer (shakuhachi), Jim DeJoie (reeds), Greg Campbell (percussion), and Paul Kikuchi will perform an arrangement of the ancient Naxi (an ethnic group native to southwest China) piece "Eight Trigrams."
Dennis Rea, Tom Baker, and Brian Heaney will perform improvised music for three electric guitars.
Seattle, The Mix, 6004 12th Avenue S in Georgetown, 8 pm, Donation
With the Rik Wright Quartet.
Seattle, Egan's Ballard Jam House, 1707 NW Market Street, 9 pm, $5
News
January 2008
November 2007
May 2006
Purchase online from iUniverse
Purchase online from Barnes & Noble
Purchase online from Amazon.comMarch 2005
December 2004
April 2004
Dennis Rea's adventurous guitar playing blends modern jazz, creative rock, experimental music, and world musical traditions into an approach that is uniquely his own, encompassing haunting lyricism, enigmatic textures, agile improvisation, and the raw dynamism of rock. He has performed on three continents at such prestigious venues as the WOMAD Festival, Beijing International Jazz Festival, Sichuan-China International TV Festival, Bumbershoot Arts Festival, Columbia Gorge Amphitheater, Northwest Folklife Festival, Earshot Jazz Festival, On the Boards, Seattle Art Museum, and Henry Art Museum. Over the years Dennis has led or been a key contributor to numerous innovative groups, including Land, Stackpole, Axolotl, Savant, Earthstar, Fred, Catabatics, the Vagaries, Color Anxiety, Ink, Identity Crisis, the Hyperbaric Chamber Trio, the Gang of Formosa, and Ting Bu Dong. He has performed or recorded with such prominent creative musicians as European free jazz legend Han Bennink, Chinese rock megastar Cui Jian, acclaimed French composer Hector Zazou, German electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze, and trombone virtuoso Stuart Dempster, as well as members of King Crimson, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Ministry, and the Sun Ra Arkestra. His activities have spanned film, theater, radio, and modern dance, and he has appeared on nearly two-dozen recordings to date.
Dennis' music career began in the early 1970s when he formed the eccentric progressive rock group Zuir in his hometown of Utica, New York. In the late 1970s he made a series of albums in Germany with Craig Wuest's proto-electronica group Earthstar. In the early 1980s he collaborated with composer K. Leimer in the acclaimed Seattle-based experimental music group Savant. In 1983 he moved to New York City, where he was involved with the downtown improvisers community. Since returning to Seattle in the late 1980s, he has performed or recorded with such innovative musicians as Jeff Greinke, Fred Chalenor, Wally Shoup, Eric Apoe, Gregg Keplinger, Bill Horist, Lesli Dalaba, India Cooke, Trey Gunn, Lori Carson, Toshi Makihara, Elizabeth Falconer, Amy Denio, Tucker Martine, Bill Rieflin, Roland Barker, Michael Monhart, James Whiton, Jessica Lurie, Eyvind Kang, Craig Flory, Jim Knodle, Geoff Harper, Lynette Westendorf, and Olli Klomp.
Between 1989 and 1996 Dennis spent several years living in China and Taiwan, where he gave more than 100 concerts at cultural centers, universities, music conservatories, and clubs, on radio and television, and in sports arenas with the Chinese pop star Zhang Xing. His 1990 solo album for the China Record Company, Shadow in Dreams, sold 40,000 copies and was cited among the year's best releases by China Youth Daily. While abroad he organized three of the earliest unofficial concert tours of China by Western bands, involving more than 40 concerts in Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau, as well as a performance at the 1991 Sichuan China International TV Festival that was viewed by a television audience numbering in the hundreds of millions. He has performed with such influential Chinese musicians as Cui Jian, Wang Yong, Liu Yuan, Liang Heping, He Yong, ADO, and Cobra. He has also presented lectures on jazz and guitar technique at Sichuan Music Conservatory and has written extensively about Chinese music. In spring 2005 he returned to Taiwan for a two-week concert tour with the international bands Jetlegrs and Chekov.
He has been awarded grants for his musical activities by the Arts International Fund for U.S. Artists Abroad, Seattle Arts Commission, King County Arts Commission, Malcolm S. Morse Foundation, and Jack Straw Foundation, and has received funding and/or encouragement from the Washington State China Relations Council, European Foundation for Chinese Music Research, and New York's China Institute to conduct research for Live at the Forbidden City, a book-length account of his groundbreaking experiences playing music in Asia. He has been interviewed by National Public Radio and other nationally syndicated radio programs, by national research foundation the Urban Institute, and by numerous publications, and has acted as a panelist or consultant for the Experience Music Project, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, and the Seattle Center ArtsEdge Festival. He has also presented dozens of the world's finest experimental and improvising musicians to Northwest audiences as a former co-producer of the 20-year-old Seattle Improvised Music Festival and of Seattle's Other Sounds new-music concert series. From 1997-2001 he was co-editor of the Tentacle journal of Northwest creative music.
Dennis' current and recent projects include the electric string quartet-plus-drums Moraine, explosive improvisational jazz-rock quintet Iron Kim Style, processed thumb piano trio Tempered Steel, and Ting Bu Dong, an international quintet that has performed in Taiwan and Germany.
Press
2007 feature article in Earshot Jazz magazine.
2001 Interview in Exposé magazine.
China Post: Jetleggers Reunite in Tainan
Sichuan Youth Newspaper: Identity Crisis in Chengdu: Music Makes It All Come True
"Dennis is a young, very talented musician who I think will develop into something quite interesting"
—Stan Getz in 1979"A guitarist who seems to have leapt lately from impressive to astonishing .... surely one of the region's most distinctive instrumentalists."
—Earshot Jazz"The first time I heard LAND guitarist Dennis Rea, he was playing the greatest phased guitar solo of all time on Earthstar's 1979 classic of Euro-electronica, French Skyline."
—The Wire (UK)[In an entry on Land] "...a killer combination of Dennis Rea's part abstract, part high-energy guitar and Lesli Dalaba's blurts and liquid runs on trumpet."
—Encyclopedia of Northwest Music"Anybody who can make a guitar sound like my broken radiator is all right by me."
—audience member at a Dennis Rea solo prepared-dobro performance
Current and recent Projects
Moraine
Moraine is an electric string quartet plus drums featuring guitarist/composer Dennis Rea, cellist/composer Ruth Davidson, violinist Alicia Allen, bassist Kevin Millard, and drummer Jay Jaskot. Moraine performs original compositions that draw on influences ranging from math-rock to fractured bebop to Chinese music and are gigging around town with increasing frequency. A recording of Dennis' new composition "Three Views from Chicheng Precipice," featuring the members of Moraine with Will Dowd in place of Jay Jaskot, was recently completed as part of a projected album of Asian-inspired music. Moraine Web page with audio samples
Iron Kim Style is an explosive jazz-rock improv quintet featuring guitarists Dennis Rea and Thaddaeus Brophy, trumpeter Bill Jones, bassist Ryan Berg, and drummer Jay Jaskot. Drawing on influences as diverse as Olivier Messiaen, electric-period Miles Davis, and North Korean martial music, Iron Kim Style creates spontaneous sonic epics that encompass everything from stomping grooves to grinding noise to passages of eerie beauty.
Tempered Steel
Tempered Steel features Ffej, Frank Junk, and Dennis Rea playing a variety of amplified, electronically processed thumb pianos. Tempered Steel sounds like no other thumb piano ensemble you've ever heard, conjuring phantasms of harpsichords, as-yet-uninvented stringed instruments, and musique concrete. Click here for a taste of the group's forthcoming CD.
Eric Apoe is the proverbial voice crying in the wilderness, daring to tell it like it is in his affecting "songs of love and doom." Eric's arresting lyrics and hoary vocals cut to the heart of the human condition, framed by the imaginative neo-chamber arrangements of his group They. Among Eric's regular collaborators are guitarists Dennis Rea and John Olufs, violinist Alicia Allen, saxophonist Damien Aitken, bassists Fred Chalenor and Tije DeCoster, and drummer Olli Klomp. As a songwriter, Eric has forgotten more genres than most people ever master, with a stylistic breadth spanning folk, rock, jazz, blues, ballads, Celtic music, cabaret tunes, weirdness, and more. Eric's CDs include Songs of Love and Doom (1996), Dream Asylum (produced by Soundgarden's Matt Cameron, 2000), Radioation (2002), and the highly praised Book of Puzzles (2005)
Axolotl disbanded in late 2002 as its members dispersed to focus on other interests. Many thanks to everyone who supported Axolotl during its five-year run in Seattle. Band members continue to work with each other in aggregates such as Iron Kim Style and Jetlegrs, which made a concert tour of Taiwan in spring 2005 along with original Axolotl members still resident in Taiwan.
Active sporadically from 1998–2001, Stackpole was an incendiary free-jazz quartet featuring guitarist Dennis Rea, acoustic bassist Geoff Harper, Northwest drum legend Gregg Keplinger, and alto saxophonist Wally Shoup. Stackpole's totally improvised music ranged from eerie, hovering sonorities to hurtling freebop to hurricane-force sonic gales, as heard on the group's eponymous CD on the First World Music label. Stackpole was the winner of Earshot Jazz's "Golden Ear" award for best Northwest "Outside Jazz" group of 2001.
nt Pr
ojects
From 1993–2000, Jeff Greinke's collaborative project LAND included such imaginative and accomplished instrumentalists as Greinke (keyboards, voice, composer), Fred Chalenor (bass, stick), Lesli Dalaba (trumpet), Greg Gilmore (percussion), Bill Moyer (percussion), Ed Pias (percussion), Dennis Rea (guitar), Bill Rieflin (drums), and George Soler (stick). The various incarnations of the group skillfully interwove electronic music, jazz, progressive rock, and world music influences to create an absorbing blend of composition and improvisation that was both strikingly modern and imbued with primordial mystery. LAND earned critical acclaim for its live performances (including a 1996 tour of China, Hong Kong, and Macau) and its three CDs on the Extreme, Periplum, and First World labels.
Performance
Hundreds of solo and group performances in the U.S., China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, and Germany. Among the artists Dennis has performed or recorded with are Han Bennink, Hector Zazou, Stuart Dempster, Cui Jian, Jeff Greinke, K. Leimer, Wang Yong, Lesli Dalaba, Elizabeth Falconer, India Cooke, Wally Shoup, Amy Denio, Toshi Makihara, Trey Gunn, Fred Chalenor, Tucker Martine, Bill Rieflin, Jessica Lurie, Eyvind Kang, Craig Flory, Bill Horist, Briggan Krauss, Eric Apoe, Gregg Keplinger, Liang Heping, Liu Yuan, Geoff Harper, and Reuben Radding.
Performances of original jazz, progressive rock, electronic music, and improvised music at festivals, concerts, and clubs in the Pacific Northwest and New York, including the WOMAD Festival, Bumbershoot Arts Festival, Seattle Improvised Music Festival , Earshot Jazz Festival, Northwest Folklife Festival, ArtsEdge Festival, Olympia Experimental Music Festival, Columbia Gorge Amphitheater, Experience Music Project, On The Boards, Center on Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum, Henry Art Museum, Egg Lake Faire, Seattle city parks, the Sonarchy live radio hour, and dozens of live music clubs in Seattle.
- Performed in the 1996 Beijing International Jazz Festival with LAND, followed by 10 concerts in Beijing, Hong Kong, Macau, Kunming, and Chengdu.
- Organized a 20-concert tour of Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming, and Guangzhou (Canton) for The Vagaries, including performances televised throughout China and neighboring countries as part of the 1991 China International TV Festival.
- Concert tour of Beijing, Chengdu, and Guangzhou in 1991 with Identity Crisis, including a performance broadcast by Chengdu TV.
These were among the first extensive unofficial concert tours undertaken by Western bands in China.
- Solo concerts at Sichuan Music Conservatory, Sichuan Radio, Chengdu TV, Southwest China Art Institute, Chengdu Workers' Cultural Palace, and several universities.
- Collaborative performances with well-known Chinese musicians Cui Jian, Wang Yong, ADO, Liang Heping, Zhang Xing, Firefly Band, Cobra, He Yong, Huang Qiang, and Zhu Ling.
- Numerous group and solo performances in Taiwan, at venues including the New Phase Arts Center, Tainan Municipal Cultural Center, the Living Room, May Jam Festival, Feelmore Jazz Club, The Wall, Dog Pig Art Cafe, and National Cheng Kung University.
- Concerts in Hong Kong and Macau with the group LAND in 1996.
- Recorded two albums in Germany with Earthstar, in association with electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze.
Grants
- Recipient of grants from the Malcolm S. Morse Foundation, Earshot Jazz, and the Washington State China Relations Council for LAND's appearance in the 1996 Beijing International Jazz Festival.
- Recipient of grants from the Arts International Fund for U.S. Artists Abroad (in cooperation with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation) and the Washington State China Relations Council for The Vagaries' tour of China
- Recipient of Seattle Arts Commission, King County Arts Commission, and Jack Straw Foundation Artist Support Program grants as co-producer of the Tenth Seattle Improvised Music Festival.
- Recipient of a 2007 Artist Support Program residency from Jack Straw Foundation to complete Views from Chicheng Precipice," a CD of adapted East Asian traditional music and original Asian-inspired material.
Mixed Media
- With The Vagaries, represented the United States in the 1991 China International TV Festival
- Subject of two TV specials produced by Chengdu TV, China
- Composed music for the Spectrum Dance Theater production Eyeplay at Broadway Performance Hall, Seattle
- Performed in Cobrew, a music and dance event combining John Zorn's COBRA and Lisa Nelson's Tuning Score, at the 1999 Seattle Festival of Alternative Dance and Improvisation.
- Composed music for gallery installations for painter Daryl Trivieri at Semaphore East, New York City
- Featured on the soundtrack to Robert McGinley's film, Shredder Orpheus, winner of first prize at the Baltimore and New Orleans independent film festivals
- Collaborated with soundtrack composer Steve Cavit on the score for a documentary film to be aired on PBS
- With cellist Lori Goldston, created live soundtracks to classic silent films at Pike Street Cinema, Seattle
Discography
Music Writing
- Author of Live at the Forbidden City, a book-length account of my experiences as a musician in China
- From 1997-2001, co-published The Tentacle, the print and Web journal of Northwest creative music
- Contributor of musician and composer entries to the Routledge Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture
- Music reviewer and contributor, The Improvisor, MusicHound Jazz Guide, Amazon.com editorial reviews, The Stranger, OPTION, Earshot Jazz, and Sound Choice magazines
- Music editor, Arts Focus magazine, 1987-88
- An account of Dennis' musical activities in China was published in CHIME: The Journal of the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research, as well as two further articles on contemporary Chinese music
- Author of the New Directions in Chinese Music series of Web pages on the Sonarchy World Wide Web site
Other
- Former co-director of the 20-year-old Seattle Improvised Music Festival, North America's longest-running festival devoted entirely to free improvisation, presenting such internationally renowned artists (many in their Seattle debuts) as Johannes Bauer, John Butcher, Nels Cline, Axel Dorner, Phil Durrant, John Edwards, Frode Gjerstad, Tristan Honsinger, Francois Houle, Luc Houtkamp, Jin Hi Kim, Carla Kihlstedt, Peggy Lee, Paul Lovens, Rudi Mahall, Toshi Makihara, Bob Ostertag, Barre Phillips, Mark Sanders, LaDonna Smith, Raymond Strid, Gebhard Ullmann, and Fred Van Hove.
- Former co-producer (with Wally Shoup and Matthew Sperry) of Other Sounds, a Seattle-based concert series that presented hundreds of local, national, and international improvising and experimental musicians
- Private guitar instruction in the U.S., China, and Taiwan
- Guitar seminars and lectures on jazz and modern music at Sichuan Music Conservatory and Chengdu University of Science and Technology, China
- Participant in improvisation workshop with saxophonist John Butcher, 1998
- Interviewed by National Public Radio about my involvement in music in China
- Interviewed for the nationally syndicated radio program Echoes: A Nightly Soundscape
- Subject of feature interview in the December 2001 issue of Exposé progressive rock magazine
- Panelist, "Jazz DIY: Taking Control of Your Career as an Independent Jazz Artist," at the Experience Music Project, Seattle
- Panelist, Jack Straw Productions 2004 Artist Support Program, Seattle
- Music consultant, Seattle Art Museum and Seattle Asian Art Museum
- Selection panelist, Seattle Center ArtsEdge Festival
- Interviewed by national research organization The Urban Institute as part of a study of arts funding in the U.S.
Axolotl | Stackpole | LAND | Writing | Live at the Forbidden City
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