Previous events
Live electro-acoustic performance of Mary Edwards's Arctic soundscape composition/installation in five parts, featuring field recordings of glaciers and oceanographic data taken above the 78th parallel in Svalbard.
Mary Edwards - keyboards, Waterphone, percussion, text, field recordings, electronics Michael Eaton - saxes, flute, clarinet, percussion
Cheryl Pyle - C flute, alto flute Michael Eaton -soprano sax Sylvain Leroux - C flute, fula flute Gene Coleman - bass flut, piccolo Yuko Togami - percussion
Cheryl Pyle - C flute, alto flute, bass flute Gene Coleman - piccolo, bass flute, ney Michael Eaton - soprano saxophone, C flute
Performing all Thelonious Monk compositions. A fundraiser benefitting Church Street School!
Michael Eaton - tenor saxophone Brad Whiteley - piano Daniel Ori - bass Shareef Taher - drums
Duo concert with Mary Edwards, featuring her original music.
Mary Edwards - voice, piano Michael Eaton - saxophones, flute
Michael Eaton - saxophone Max Kutner - guitar Adam Minkoff - bass Nick Anderson - drums
Cheryl Pyle - C flute, alto flute Michael Eaton - soprano sax Gene Coleman- bass flute, piccolo
Michael Eaton - tenor saxophone, C flute Seth Andrew Davis - guitar, electronics Dwight Frizzell - digital wind instrument, electronics Ben Tervort - bass Alan Voss - drums, percussion
Michael Eaton Quintet plays Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy
Westport Coffee House, 4010 Pennsylvania Ave, Kansas City, MO 64111
Music by Ornette Coleman and Eric Dolphy.
Michael Eaton - tenor and soprano saxophones Dave Scott - trumpet Isaiah Petrie - vibraphone Ben Tervort - bass Marty Morrison - drums
Cheryl Pyle - C flute, bass flute Sylvain Leroux - fula flute, C flute Michael Eaton - soprano sax Gene Coleman - bass flute, ney, piccolo Yuko Togami - percussion
Max Kutner's High Flavors (quintet edition)
Bloomingdale School of Music, 323 W 108th S, New York, NY 10025
Original proggy/noise/math rock by Max Kutner.
Max Kutner - guitar Eli Asher - trumpet Michael Eaton - tenor saxophone Kurt Kotheimer - bass Colin Hinton - drums
Cheryl Pyle - C flute, bass flute Michael Eaton - soprano sax Sylvain Leroux - C flute, fula flute Haruna Fukazawa - C flute, alto flute Gene Coleman - bass flute, ney, piccolo Yuko Togami - percussion
Original soft rock and AM Gold songs by Mary Edwards.
Oskar Bonstroke Toy Percussion Orchestra and Friends
Downtown Music Gallery, 13 Monroe Street, New York, NY 10002
Oskar Bonstroke - toy percussion Cheryl Pyle - flute Joey Asal - synthesizer Michael Eaton - soprano sax
Cheryl Pyle- C flute, bass flute Michael Eaton - soprano sax Sylvain Leroux- C flute, fula flute Gene Coleman - bass flute, ney Oskar Bonstroke - toy percussion
Original AM Gold/soft rock "Carole King meets Karen Carpenter" songs by Mary Edwards.
Improvised jazz/hip hop with Ropeadope artist Bright Dog Red.
Ghost Tantras (Davis/Eaton/Quass/Cheli)
The Orbit Room, 107 N College Ave #001, Bloomington, IN 47404
Seth Davis - guitar Michael Eaton - tenor saxophone Kyle Quass - trumpet Kevin Cheli - drums
Quartet free improvisations.
Michael Eaton/Rocky Martin Quartet
Chatterbox Jazz Club, 435 Massachusetts Ave, Indianapolis, IN 46204
Michael Eaton - tenor saxophone Rocky Martin - drums bass - TBA Piano - Aman Almeida Iyer
April 26 in Kansas City: Second Nature Ensemble [quartet] at Englewood Arts Center
Out now! The Transcendental on Steeplechase Records
Available on CD and digital (Amazon) or stream on all major streaming platforms.
Pianist Nicki Adams and saxophonist Michael Eaton push musical boundaries in original jazz and Third Stream music for duo on “The Transcendental”
On their first outing for Steeplechase Records, Paraphrase (SCCD 33148), pianist Nicki Adams and saxophonist Michael Eaton introduced their duo, playing music from celebrated and genre-defining jazz composers: Coltrane, Hancock, Shorter, Monk, Hill, and Hagans. In both their arrangements and original music, they interwove elements and ideas from Western classical music, in large part through Adams’s sparkling piano playing and elegant pianistic textures drawn from Romantic piano literature.
Eaton and Adams are proud now to release The Transcendental, their second album for the Steeplechase LookOut Series, and the next step forward for the duo's developing mix of modern jazz and Third Stream elements.
Composer Gunther Schuller coined "Third Stream" in 1961 to reflect a genre combining "the improvisational spontaneity and rhythmic vitality of jazz with the compositional procedures and techniques acquired in Western [classical] music". On The Transcendental, Adams and Eaton similarly look to classical inspirations, finding them in impressionist harmonic color, twelve tone abstraction, and minimalist rhythmic repetition.
Their signature emerges in full force throughout the titular "Transcendental". Based on the painting of the same name by Richard Pousette-Dart, it flows through a series of musical episodes combining carefully crafted melodic serialism with open improvisations.
Adams cites early 20th-century Eastern European composers Bartók and Khachaturian as influences on the harmonic language of “Myshkin” and “Crying Out in the Wilderness.” Echoing gospel and blues phrasing, the saxophone sings through the piano textures, embracing spiritual undertones.
Minimalism makes its mark on Eaton's "Intrinsic Value" and "The Capitalinian", pitting saxophone and piano against each other in pulsating polyrhythmic and mixed meter atmospheres. Fitting for their environmental emphasis, these pieces contain multiple musical territories in one.
Adams and Eaton also delve once again into music from a jazz master, this time selecting Joe Henderson. They reimagine Henderson’s pensive “Black Narcissus” through the serene but mercurial mood of Ravel’s piano work, "Ondine”. "Afrocentric” recasts the original charging and buoyant Afro-latin tune into a melancholy ballad, and Adams deploys clever displacements of metric emphasis on the classic jazz proving ground, “Inner Urge”.
The Transcendental continues from where Paraphrase left off, a second chapter portraying a thoughtful and musical duo in the process of developing its voice, imagining still closer integrations of jazz and classical music to come.