Jen Baker

Time Phase Trio - features dynamic and nimble playing from Jen Baker, Ty Citerman and Shayna Dunkelman in a provocative ensemble of trombone, guitar, electronics and percussion. Across six pieces (five by Citerman and one by Baker), these three seasoned improvisers have whimsical conversations, at times delicate, cerebral, provocative and growling. Rhythms erupt or unfurl, texture and mood are key elements, groove is fleeting. Multiphonics, electronic blips and whirrs, percussive hums - all of this moves lyrical melodic sketches into strange and refracted territory.

October 2022

SO THRILLED to share the news of this latest release!

I composed Fire in the Dark for Olivia for this New Music USA funded project, highlighting mother artists! In this project, I returned to improvisational generation to create the solo Olivia recorded. It reminded me to see the inherent of perfection of the cosmos in the moment, trusting the initial sounds, then developing them into concrete form.

It was a great experience and collaboration with Olivia, and it highlights another moment in defining my Composer-Performer identity.

Jen Baker enlivens the spirit in you!

Biography

Jen Baker, NYC-based trombonist/composer has pioneered a widely diverse career based in redefining the role of trombone in contemporary music and traditional performance settings. Featured on numerous record labels including the soundtrack to Werner Herzog's Oscar-nominated Encounters at the End of the World, she performs locally and internationally as contemporary trombonist and improviser. Her book, Hooked on Multiphonics, fills the gap for trombonists and composers looking to understand this extended technique for her instrument.

Baker starts out this season performing with Vinny Golia's Large Ensemble at Roulette, Bang on a Can's Festival Orchestra at Carnegie Hall, Tod Machover's Brain, Body and Breath at MIT's Museum Grand Opening, the Annual Le Poussin Rouge performance of Terry Riley's in C, the John Cage Award recipient Petr Kotik's 6-hour Many Many Women, Randy Gibson's Infinite Structures Visual/Sound Exhibit, and the Anna Webber/Angela Morris Big Band.

Hailed for her "formidable sensitivity” (New York Times), she has “performed with brilliant mastery and virtuosity” (San Francisco Classical Voice) at festivals worldwide, as Guest Artist at International Trombone Festival, American Trombone Workshop, Complete Trombonist Workshop, Ostrava Days (Czech Republic), Edgefest, Electro-Acoustic Improvisation Summit, International Society of Improvised Music, and others. Other performance highlights include a world tour with Bananabag and Bodice Beowulf (a thousand years of baggage) and the final performances with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company at Park Ave Armory.

Her compositions have been performed nationwide partly through commissions by members of Mivos Quartet, The Fourth Wall, loadbang, Asphalt Orchestra, Wavefield, and with solo and collaborative projects as composer/performer. She was a featured soloist on Chicago's Experimental Sound Studio in their Quarantine Concert Series. Her Silo Songs, recently presented by Edgefest!, blends site-specific field recording (realized with 4+ surround speakers) with live performance soloist. New multiphonics pieces were recorded in a massive concrete grain silo - a naturally reverberant, cylindrical space, using bassoon reeds, harmonicas, incidental birds, and the silo itself. Her earlier solo album, Blue Dreams, is similarly based on vibration of multiphonics. She authored Hooked on Multiphonics: Multiphonics and other Extended Techniques Demystified, the first and only book that comprehensively deals with the technique of singing through the trombone, and has been internationally appreciated in composer and trombonist circles alike!

Currently, Jen Baker is fascinated with exploring human consciousness and has incorporated aspects of it along with philosophies of sound healing in all her recent compositions.