TATSUYA NAKATANI and GREAT ARCHITECT and DIALECT STUDIOS' ARTISTS

We enjoyed an intriguing Dialect Night Special this Sunday at our studio gallery. Brent Bagwell had organized a performance by his free improv Jazz ensemble Great Architect and a musical percussion-sound-performance by Tatsuya Nakatani. Meanwhile the artists creatively working in our studios displayed their work.
All their efforts formed into a magical night with a lot of wonders and creative energies overlaying themselves to a sexy fabric.
Great Architect played for the third time this evening at Dialect and this time calmly and groundedly found a rhythmic base and creative interplay that showed a comfort and trust in the space and their creativity. it was their best performance yet.


Tatsuya Nakatani, meanwhile, filled the place with reverberating deep bellows and changing rhythmic overtones with gongs of different size and tonality. He squeezed and gently tickled a cacophony of sounds out of them with mesmerizing artistry. He moved on to a toolbox full of collected percussion toys and found objects that he had dance on a snare drum in an acrobatic frenzy, creating magical sounds, drawing unimaginable sound images out of his instruments, while finding percussionist vibrations with various mallets and a smoothly vibrating fluttering right foot on a base. It was mesmerizing.


If that wasn't enough, Taryn Rubin, Amy Bagwell, and Rae LeGrone showed off their visual and poetic artistry with a carefully crafted exhibition. Their work was playful, meticulous, and searching for questions unasked.
We walked away invigorated, tossed about, and greatly inspired.
Thank you!

Charlotte's appetitie for avant-garde jazz at Dialect Design is juiced up - Read the Article!

From the Charlotte Observer's pages - an article by Courtney Devores last Friday:

>>Experimental avant-garde jazz isn't necessarily popular with mainstream audiences, but local musician Brent Bagwell (Great Architect, the Eastern Seaboard) says there's a market for it in Charlotte.
"There are probably 500 people in Charlotte that would like this (music) if I could reach them consistently," says Bagwell, who has booked fringe jazz and improv artists at The Milestone, Lunchbox Records and Century Vintage since moving to Charlotte from Brooklyn in 2004.

His latest venture is a monthly Modern Music series at NoDa's Dialect Design, which kicked off in October with Chicago Luzern Exchange, a collaboration between American and Swiss musicians. Trumpet and bassoon soloists Jacob Wick and Katherine Young will perform Wednesday. Japanese percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani ends the three-month series on Dec. 19. Great Architect will also perform at each event, and Bagwell hopes to book more shows there in 2011.

"I'm a hopeless optimist," says Bagwell, an S.C. native who studied English at the University of Georgia before turning to an intense, self-guided private musical instruction program and playing in bands while living in New York.

"It's unfamiliar music. It reflects things that are happening right now. Anyone I could coerce into coming to see a show, they're going to be into it when they leave. I was not so sure about things a few years ago. Now I feel like there is this influx of people in their early twenties... they know everything from the Internet," he says of young audiences that are as familiar with John Coltrane's later catalog as they are with Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore.

"There is also the McColl fellowship art sorts who love it, too."

The NoDa art space's cork floors, exposed brick and intimate setting make it a great place to hear soloists like Nakatani, whose work he describes as "riveting." Of Wick he says, "I think he likes to do this solo thing as a test of his own mettle. I set him up with a house show. He wanted to play something super-intimate with 20 people. By the end of his set, everyone was paying attention - and that's some serious authority for someone in his early twenties to yield." <<

you can pick up the whole article at the observer

"Great Architect" presents Modern Music at Dialect

This fall jazz innovators "Great Architect" are teaming up with dialect design to bring some of the best players of the national and international improvised music scene to Charlotte. In a series of three concerts, we are presenting musicians from New York, Chicago, Switzerland, and Japan. It is our hope that the intimate environment of the dialect space will provide an up-close chance to see these folks working out the sounds of the future.

We couldn't be more excited about the three nights of music we have lined up. These are some of the heaviest hitters on the scene. Now is the time to catch them at the height of their game(s).

Fri., 10/29
@ dialect design
3204-C N. Davidson
8pm
Chicago Luzern Exchange
...
Working on nearly five years of collaboration across an ocean, the four players in (the incredibly literally-named) Chicago Luzern Exchange are a pure force of improvisational communication. The three Chicago components - cornetist Josh Berman, reeds player Keefe Jackson, and drummer Frank Rosaly - first met Swiss tuba virtuoso Marc Unternahrer when a grant from the Swiss government provided a cultural exchange opportunity with Chicago's incredibly vibrant jazz scene. This band works the history of jazz - from the heyday of the '20s (cornet and tuba, after all!) to the outer fringes of modern composition - into their inimitable improvisations. It is no exaggeration to say that these individuals are among the finest living players of their instruments. When that personal skill is coupled with the communication they have developed through many tours of the US and Europe, the group is frighteningly taut and brimming with ideas.
http://chicagoluzernexchange.blogspot.com/
http://www.delmark.com/delmark.561.htm


Wed., 11/17
@ dialect design
3204-C N. Davidson
8pm
Jacob Wick - solo trumpet
Katherine Young - solo bassoon
...
Jacob Wick is part of Jason Ajemian's HighLife band (among several others) and has been to Charlotte several times, both with that group and twice to perform his solo trumpet pieces. Easily one of the most accomplished trumpet players working today, his solo work is technically jaw-dropping. Much more importantly, however, is the passion and purpose with which he conveys his ideas in this stark, demanding setting. His own remarkable endeavors include a trio collaboration with two Irish players that recently toured India, a Brooklyn-based group called Hungry Cowboy that utilizes graphic scores to explore the fictional world of Cormac McCarthy, and a powerful curatorial presence in NYC's New Music scene.
www.myspace.com/jacobwickmusic
www.jacobwick.info/
...
Katherine Young is a bassonist of incredible range. A Wesleyan graduate, she studied composition and improvisation with Anthony Braxton (who tapped her to be a member of his astonishing Falling River Quartet) and legendary American composer Alvin Lucier. She has been commissioned to write string quartets, plays in a number of NYC's best improvised music ensembles, and regularly contributes to a terrific pop band in Chicago....! Her duo with violist Amy Cimini, Architeuthis Walks on Land, is a masterful combination of sounds and ideas. Her solo bassoon work is nothing short of amazing.
http://katherineyoung.info/
http://katherineyoung.blogspot.com/
www.myspace.com/oneyoungbassoon


Sun., 12/19
@ dialect design
3204-C N. Davidson
8pm
Tatsuya Nakatani
...
One of the most engaging and inventive musicians out there, Tatsuya Nakatani creates a world of sound during his solo percussion performances. Drawing on jazz, traditional Japanese music, and even Johnny Cash, his work with bowed cymbals and unconventional percussion instruments is a marvel. His ceaseless touring and commitment to collaborate with musicians of every stripe from all over the globe make Tatsuya a one-man unifying force in the New Music and jazz scenes. Never less than completely enthralling, his solo performances leave every listener (literally!) ringing with possibility.
http://www.hhproduction.org/TATSUYA_NAKATANI_WORKS.html

All shows are donations-based. With a suggested donation of $5. Needless to say, this is a steal for music of this caliber!
Locals Great Architect will also play on each bill - often in different configurations and instrumentations....!
www.myspace.com/hellogreatarchitect

Openhouse at Schönberg Residence with art by Regine Bechtler, Andreas Bechtler, and jazz by Great Architect

We enjoyed a great get-together at the Schönberg Residence, the modern addition we designed and built in Charlotte.

The home owners, Caroline and Matthias, invited us and a large crowd for a wonderful late summer evening. We toured folks through the modern home and received a lot of compliments and positive comments.

The most lasting words were from Andreas Bechtler, the Swiss art collector, who has worked with the world famous architect Mario Botta on Charlotte's new museum of modern art. He shared with us that our architecture was "most exquisite, even for European standards". This was after he studied all our details at length and discussed his Bechtler Museum by Botta and compared it with our work.

He showed his own personal art during the evening as well, but mostly his wife and artist Regine Bechtler with some breathtaking sculptures and paintings.

We were also happy to enjoy live jazz by Brent Bagwell and his drummer from Great Architect.

Take part in the wonderful evening trough the images below by Armando Bellmas.