Dennis Rea celebrates his 50th year in Seattle with his groups Moraine, Tempered Steel, and Reaven Trio, plus the first reunion of his hometown (Utica, NY) band Zuir - the group he moved to Seattle with in 1975 - in more than 40 years.
Dennis Rea's adventurous guitar playing blends rock, jazz, experimental, and world music in a personal vocabulary marked by lyricism, agile improvisation, enigmatic textures, and the raw dynamism of rock.
Active since the mid-1970s, Rea has led or contributed to Moraine, Iron Kim Style, Land, Savant, Flame Tree, Earthstar, Stackpole, and sundry other collaborative projects. He's been graced to partner with sonic trailblazers Hector Zazou, Stuart Dempster, Cui Jian, Albert Kuvezin (Yat Kha), Klaus Schulze, Steve Fisk, Jeff Greinke, Nik Turner and Michael Moorcock, Han Bennink, and members of King Crimson, Hawkwind, R.E.M., Soundgarden, Ministry, Santana, the Sun Ra Arkestra, and Heilung. He has played widely in the U.S. and in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Russia, Germany, the UK, Mexico, and Bosnia.
Rea appears on more than 60 releases on MoonJune Records, his own Nunatak imprint, and other labels and has opened for the likes of Soft Machine, Tony Levin, Fred Frith, Bill Frisell, Percy Jones, and Sting. His book Live at the Forbidden City: Musical Encounters in China and Taiwan chronicles his pioneering adventures as a progressive Western musician in China, while the subsequent Tuva and Busted relates his further musical wanderings in Central Asia. Rea's work personalizes planetary musical traditions and open improvisation, as shown on his signature albums Views From Chicheng Precipice and Giant Steppes.
Rea founded longstanding instrumental sextet Moraine and plays in chamber-jazz unit Reaven Trio, mutant kalimba trio Tempered Steel, ephemeral international cabal Terrane, Nik Turner-inspired Flame Tree, Don Berman's Threshold, and Ben McAllister's Guitar Cult, plus solo acoustic work. He is a core organizer of Seattle concert presenter Seaprog and for many years helped steer the treasured Seattle Improvised Music Festival and Seattle's Other Sounds and Zero-G concert series.
Dennis Rea is represented by MoonJune Music
Upcoming Shows
At long last Moraine plays in the Methow Valley - Dennis' second home - kicking off this year’s edition of wide-ranging community gathering Guaranteed Fresh Fest.
Video
Audio
Black River Transect captures all of one concert, and part of another, by the “Tanabata” ensemble occasionally convened by guitarist/composer Dennis Rea with his friend and mentor, the internationally heralded trombonist Read more
Black River Transect captures all of one concert, and part of another, by the “Tanabata” ensemble occasionally convened by guitarist/composer Dennis Rea with his friend and mentor, the internationally heralded trombonist and didgeridu player Stuart Dempster. The selections presented here are a blend of Rea's compositions and improvisations based on loose organizational devices, impeccably performed by some of the most adept and sensitive players then active in the Pacific Northwest. Both concerts were expertly recorded on the fly by audio genie Steve Kennedy-Williams.
-
ASJ (septet version) 8:150:00/8:15
-
Black River Transect 12:380:00/12:38
-
Swaylone's Island 3:210:00/3:21
-
Harmoniker 12:280:00/12:28
-
0:00/6:21
Stackpole was a turn-of-the-millennium free-jazz quartet made up of prominent Seattle improvisers Dennis Rea, Wally Shoup, Geoff Harper, and Gregg Keplinger. Their eponymous album was named the Pacific Northwest's "Best Outside Jazz" release of 2000 by Earshot Jazz.
-
Wheelhouse 10:020:00/10:02
-
Catbird Seat 4:310:00/4:31
-
0:00/4:01
-
Krummholz 5:240:00/5:24
-
0:00/9:03
-
Spindrift 8:060:00/8:06
-
Polynya 6:340:00/6:34
-
Impasto 5:540:00/5:54
Interviews
about
Dennis Rea's musical trajectory 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 Earthstar (produced by electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze), perhaps the only American unit to participate in that country's "kosmische musik" scene at its height. In the early 1980s he collaborated with composer K. Leimer in the vanguard Seattle-based experimental music group Savant. In 1983 he moved to New York City, where he was involved with the Downtown new-music community. Since returning to Seattle in the late 1980s, he has performed or recorded with such accomplished musicians as Hector Zazou, Stuart Dempster, Cui Jian, Albert Kuvezin, Klaus Schulze, Steve Fisk, Han Bennink, Hawkwind members Nik Turner and Michael Moorcock, Jeff Greinke, and members of King Crimson, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Santana, Ministry, and the Sun Ra Arkestra.
Between 1989-96 he spent several years in China and Taiwan, playing more than 100 concerts at cultural centers, universities, conservatories, expat bars, religious celebrations, and underground happenings; on radio and television; and in sports arenas with the Chinese pop star Zhang Xing. His 1990 solo album for the state-run China Record Company, Shadow in Dreams, sold 40,000 copies and was cited among the year's best releases by Party organ China Youth Daily. While abroad he organized three of the earliest below-the-radar concert tours of China by progressive Western bands, with more than 40 concerts in Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, Kunming, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and Macau, plus a performance at the 1991 Sichuan China International TV Festival viewed by a TV 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 written extensively about Chinese and other Asian music in popular and academic publications including CHIME, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Contemporary Chinese Culture, and the Routledge History of . In 2005 he toured Taiwan with international expat bands Jetlegrs and Chekov, followed by 2008 Identity Crisis reunion concerts and gigs with international jazz-rock quartet Ting Bu Dong.
Rea has been awarded grants for his musical activities by the U.S. State Department (Fulbright-Hays program), 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 support 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 East Asia. He has been profiled in Guitar Player and numerous print and online publications; interviewed by NPR and other nationally syndicated radio programs; and acted as a panelist or consultant for the Experience Music Project, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle Asian Art Museum, Jack Straw Productions, and the Seattle Center ArtsEdge Festival. He has presented dozens of the world's finest progressive, experimental, and improvising musicians to Northwest audiences as a former co-director of the (now 34-year-old) Seattle Improvised Music Festival and Other Sounds concert series, and current co-director of Seaprog, Seattle's annual festival of progressive and psychedelic music. From 1997-2001 he was co-editor of the Tentacle journal of Northwest creative music.
Recent
Giant Steppes + Tuva and Busted
Dennis Rea continues his series of “musical travelogues” with Giant Steppes, a boldly unconventional exploration of Central Asian music that follows on from his acclaimed 2010 MoonJune Records release Views from Chicheng Precipice. The album also comes with Rea's companion book Tuva and Busted, available as a free download from Blue Ear Books.
"I'll jump up on my kitchen table and proclaim that 'Wind of the World's Nest' is a stone-cold power anthem that the entire planet should hear." - Terminal City
Giant Steppes review by Raffaella Berry (Prog Archives)
Giant Steppes Review by Cesar Inca Mendoza Loyola (Spanish)
Now available from Blue Ear Books, a newly updated edition of Dennis Rea's Live at the Forbidden City: Musical Encounters in China and Taiwan. (purchase ebook edition)