Three great bands from Brooklyn and beyond at iBeam!

7-8pm: Julia Chen Quartet Julia Chen - piano David Bertrand - flute Dan Stein - bass Carter Bales - drums

8:15-9:15pm: 8 Bit Aesthetic Michael Eaton - tenor sax, soprano sax Sean Sonderegger - tenor sax, bari sax Shawn Lovato - bass Joe Hertenstein - drums

9:30-10:45: Tenor Triage Michael Eaton - tenor sax Sean Sonderegger - tenor sax James Brandon Lewis - tenor sax Shawn Lovato - bass G. Calvin Weston - drums

Carman Moore conducts the Beyond Group on Saturday, April 21, featuring: Cheryl Pyle (C flute/alto flute), Michael Eaton (soprano sax), Claire de Brunner (bassoon), Claire Daly (bari sax) Gene Coleman (C flute/bass flute), Hill Greene (acoustic bass), Madeleine Yayodele Nelson (African percussion)

Beyond Group (large ensemble version), featuring: Carman Moore (conducting), Cheryl Pyle (C flute, alto flute), Hilliard Green (bass), Gene Coleman (flutes), Claire de Brunner (bassoon), Michael Eaton (soprano sax), Claire Daly (baritone sax), Madeleine Yayodele Nelson (percussion) at Tompkins Square Library.

Individuation recently recorded two of my original compositions at iBeam in Brooklyn. Video coming soon! Photo by Dana Morgan.

On August 10, composer/guitarist Seth Davis and I presented Second Nature Ensemble (formerly called Transition Ensemble) at Kansas City's Westport Coffee House. Second Nature is our KC-based new music and free improv chamber group. We debuted our original works plus classic compositions drawn from the free improvised and modern classical canons: Peter Brotzmann's "Alarm" as well as Terry Riley's "In C". The group is comprised of many of Kansas City's strongest free and new music performers and composers.

I joined Jazz Fables in Bloomington, IN on the evening of Thursday, August 31 to pay tribute to the legendary David N. Baker, a mentor and jazz master. As a band, Jazz Fables celebrated 40 years as an ensemble, but the Jazz Fables concert series celebrated its 28th year. The Fables weekly concert series has hosted literally hundreds if not thousands of jazz artists, including local, regional, national, and international ensembles. I spent many wonderful and formative evenings playing music on this stage. The band included (L to R): David Miller (trumpet), Luke Gillespie (piano), Pat Harbison (trumpet), Michael Eaton (tenor sax), Ben Lumsdaine (drums), and Tom Walsh (alto and tenor saxes). We played a number of Baker's compositions for small group ranging from slow blues to calypso to hard bop to Afro Cuban jazz and more.

The Three Tenors at Rockwood, May 2017. Photo by Dani Gros.

Rest in peace to the great Bern Nix, a one of a kind artist with whom I had the privilege of playing a number of times in the Beyond Group from 2015-2017 as well as in the new Three Tenors. I will not forget our discussions, in particular hanging out with him at a Starbucks in Chelsea this past May. We talked music, the biz, NYC in the past versus today, his concept of "harmonic free association", George Russell, his early teachers, and of course at length about Ornette Coleman. Bern had played in Coleman's electric free jazz group Prime Time for almost 15 years. He told me Ronald Shannon Jackson's saying about being a part of Ornette's universe, that "once you cross the harmolodic event horizon, you never come back." As a musician in the 21st century, you sometimes feel that you've heard virtually every combination of twelve notes possible, but Bern would play ideas and I would have no idea where he got them or how he was moving around. It could be kind of flooring at times, as he bloomed and wafted almost like a harmonic cloud of vapor - abstract, unpredictable, enigmatic. Bern favored a clean, classic jazz guitar sound without electronics (which he liked but felt didn't suit his playing), but his melodic/harmonic rhythmic sense was clearly tied into harmolodics and a harmolodic way of thinking, of which he was a master exponent. Considering how few guitar players there were active in this idiom, his voice and accomplishments become all the more singular. Bern belongs to a long line of jazz musicians who do not receive proper accolades during their lifetimes, and I was struck at how at 69 years old, he was still working to establish himself further as the leader and voice that he was. He came out of a particular period of openness in jazz (the 70s) that, in terms of attitude and creativity, I would like to see revived in the music both socially and culturally. I hope that finally posthumously Bern will receive due recognition for his singular musical ideas, idiom, and artistry.

Playing at The Shrine in Harlem on April 9. From left to right): Bern Nix (guitar), Cheryl Pyle (flute), and Michael Eaton (soprano saxophone).

Dorian Wallace's work, We Are Legion, dedicated to hacktivist collective Anonymous, has been recorded and released! After its debut in December 2015 at The Cell Theater, Tenth Intervention moved into the studio to document the music.

I am proud to be associated with this very artistic and timely work. My playing is on tenor and soprano saxophones in several movements.

For the second year in a row, Grupo Rebolu recorded videos for CongaHead.com. I was guest tenor saxophonist, playing Rebolu's arrangements of Afro-Columbian folkloric music + elements of latin jazz. We had a great time, and this video highlights the band with special guests Jimmy Bosch on trombone. Rebolu traveled to Switzerland in July 2016 to perform for the Montreaux Jazz Festival.

The Individuation Quintet + special guest Lionel Loueke. From L to R: Lionel Loueke, Brittany Anjou, Michael Eaton, Shareef Taher, Daniel Ori, Brad Whiteley. Photo by Dani Gros.

Making notes in the studio, with Brittany Anjou.

Kyle Quass' Special Guests at The Chatterbox in Indianapolis. Photo by David Andrichik.