Transparent Productions welcomes back William Hooker (drums) with a trio featuring David First (guitar) and James Ilgenfritz (bass).

Friday November 14th at 7:00PM at Rhizome DC.
Admission: $20-$25, sliding scale.

William’s latest releases are A Time Within: Live at the New York Jazz Museum, January 14, 1977 and archival recording with Alan Braufman and David S. Ware and The Ancients with Isaiah Collier and William Parker.

“Recognized as an iconoclast, and one of the most innovative musicians and drummers of his generation, William knows no genre bounds and ceaselessly searches for new forms of music, always with the intent to inspire.” - THE WIRE

William Hooker (drummer, composer and poet) has created works that range from jazz and "new" music to experimental genres. He has released over 80 CDs as a leader. Mr. Hooker has performed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The Atrium at Lincoln Center, Wadsworth Atheneum, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Walker Art Center,MTV, The Kitchen, Roulette, Real Art Ways. He has also presented his work at the JVC Jazz Festival, Montreal Jazz Festival, Vancouver Jazz Festival, CMJ Music Festival, Vilnius Jazz Festival, Experimenta Argentina, The Knitting Factory and the Victoriaville Music Festival.

Hooker has received commissions and support from the New York State Council on the Arts, Meet the Composer and colleges and universities such as Oberlin, Fordham, Columbia, New York University, Boston University, Princeton, Dartmouth and many more. Accompanying musicians have included Billy Bang, David Ware, William Parker, Thurston Moore, David Soldier, Roy Campbell, DJ Spooky, Steven Bernstein, Zeena Parkins, Lee Ranaldo, Jason Hwang, Sabir Mateen, Elliot Sharpe, David Murray, Ted Daniel, JD Parren and many more.
https://www.williamhooker.com/

David First has always been fascinated by opposites and extremes. At 20 he played guitar with renowned avant-jazz pianist Cecil Taylor in a legendary Carnegie Hall concert. Two years after that he was creating electronic music on a Buchla 100 analog synth in Princeton University’s EMS. (released in 2014 on Dais records) and leading a Mummerʼs String Band in Philadelphia parades. He has played in raucous drunken bar bands, semi-legal DIY basements and in pin-drop quiet concert halls with classical ensembles. As a composer First has created everything from finely crafted pop songs to long, severely minimalist droneworks. His opera, The Manhattan Book of the Dead, was staged at LaMama’s Annex Theater (NYC) in 1995 and in Potsdam, Germany in 1996. His 2011 song and video, We Are (with vocals by TV on the Radio’s Kyp Malone), was released to much acclaim in the Occupy Movement and was officially released on the compilation Occupy This Album which also featured tracks by Patti Smith, Jackson Browne, Willie Nelson, Yo La Tengo, Yoko Ono a.o. First’s performances often find him sitting trance-like without seeming to move a muscle, unless he is playing with his psychedelic punk band, Notekillers, at which time he is a whirling blur of hyperactive energy. He has been called a fascinating artist with a singular technique in the NYTimes, and a bizarre cross between Hendrix and La Monte Young in the Village Voice.
A 45 single released in 1980, The Zipper, by Notekillers, was cited by Sonic Youthʼs Thurston Moore as one of the songs he played for the rest of the band when they were starting out. Moore called it a "mind-blowing instrumental single" in the British rock magazine Mojo and “a big influence” in the Philadelphia Inquirer. He has had music released on Mode records (TBR fall 2025) Important Records, Ecstatic Peace, Phill Niblock’s XI, Dais, Ants, Jajaguar, CRI, and Homestead. His most recent project, The Light On, is a long-form sound meditation project existing as monthly recordings and live performances lasting up to three hours. Other recent projects include SWATi (Spherical Waveform Audio Trance Induction) – a collaboration with acupuncturist Isobeau Trybula at Worksong Chinese Medicine in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. SWATi is an outgrowth of his Operation:Kracpot which was an internet collaboration with geophysicist Dr. Davis Sentman of the University of Alaska (Fairbanks). Both involve the sonification of the atmospheric phenomena known as the Schumann Resonances and human brainwaves. He has led The Western Enisphere an audio/visual exploration of just intonation psycho-phenomena, and the AM Radio Band, which incorporates the repurposing of vintage signal generators, audio oscillators and transistor radios. He is also the proprietor of Dave’s Waves – A Sonic Restaurant installation that has been presented in Lier, Belgium (2002), Berlin (as part of Sonambiente in 2006), Leeuwarden, the Netherlands (2013), Moscow (2018), and Brooklyn (2018-present).

First was recently awarded a 2025 recording grant from the New Music USA. He was also a recipient of the Herb Alpert/Ragdale Award for Music Composition and a NYFA/NYSCA Fellowship. First has also received the prestigious Grant to Artists from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts, as well as grants and commissions from the NEA, the Copland Foundation (2010 & 2024) , the Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust and the Meet the Composer Commissioning USA program. He has written articles for New Music Box and Leonardo Music Journal, receiving the Leonardo Award for Excellence Honorable Mention for his article, The Music of the Sphere: An Investigation into Asymptotic Harmonics, Brainwave Entrainment, and the Earth as a Giant Bell.
https://www.davidfirst.com

Composer and bassist James Ilgenfritz is recognized in the New Yorker for his “characteristic magnanimity” and his “invaluable contributions to New York’s new-music community." His 2019 album You Scream A Rapid Language collects recent chamber works, and features Pauline Kim Harris, Conrad Harris, William Winant, Thomas Buckner, Kathleen Supové, Margaret Lancaster, and Joseph Kubera, and was noted in The Wire for its "glint of mischief" and ability to "foreground the performative and gestural elements of music making."

James presented residencies at John Zorn’s The Stone in 2015 and 2017. In 2019 James performed in Anthony Braxton’s Composer Portrait concert at Columbia University’s Miller Theater (with Either/Or and the JACK Quartet), and premiered his second opera, I Looked At The Eclipse. Recent projects include his trio Hypercolor (released on John Zorn’s record label Tzadik with Lukas Ligeti & Eyal Maoz) and his recent solo CD Origami Cosmos (featuring works by Annie Gosfield, Miya Masaoka, Elliott Sharp, & JG Thirlwell). In June 2018 James presented his second residency at John Zorn’s venue The Stone, with premieres for the Momenta Quartet, flutist Margaret Lancaster, The New Thread Saxophone Quartet, and the Kathleen Supové/James Moore/Jennifer Choi trio, as well as solo bass works by John King, Anthony Donofrio, and Lucie Vitkova.

James has performed throughout the US, Canada, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Indonesia, Italy, Poland, and Switzerland. James’s notable performances include work with composer/improvisers Pauline Oliveros, Roscoe Mitchell, Rufus Reid, Anthony Braxton, “Blue” Gene Tyranny, and many others. James has received grants from New Music USA and American Composers Forum. He holds degrees from University of Michigan and University of California San Diego. James began New York’s first Suzuki Bass program at Brooklyn Conservatory of Music in 2011, and continued there until 2019, when he left to pursue a PhD in music composition at University of California Irvine. James splits his time between Brooklyn, NY and southern California.
https://www.james-ilgenfritz.com