"Drummer Ryan Sawyer has been a long time stalwart of NYC's creative music scene, especially in the community centered around Union Pool and the old Max Fish. He has honed his propulsively free style behind the kit by improvising with some of the finest players, poets and dancers in this city (and beyond) while also doing time in the drummer's chair of many of the more intriguing rock outfits of the last couple of decades. Recently, he's found a slightly surprising but no less intense preoccupation: maracas. Gifted a pair of Columbian maracas as a thank you for helping a friend move, Sawyer started finding subtle phasing patterns that caught his ear, and the ears of those he'd have over at his practice space to play. A loose group of players and a practice began to form--instrumentalists playing and singing harmonically dense chords, guided and framed by Sawyer's pulsing and phasing maracas and structures--and things took off from there. At this point the Shaker Ensemble has had a number of public outings, including the excellent and recently released LP For Those Who Wish to Sing Will Always Find A Song on Lobby Art Editions. The group's membership varies from one iteration to the next but it's no surprise that it attracts some of the best improvisers in town. This is trance music though, and it's nice to hear musicians like these opening themselves up this way.

Saxophonist/percussionist Jamal Moore has made some recent appearances in town with Konjur Collective and Luke Stewart's Silt Remembrance Ensemble, but I first heard him when MANAS shared a bill with Mojuba duo (w/ drummer Nik Francis) in Baltimore last year. With a combined battery of gongs, drums and homemade instruments on stage and a general attitude of "going for it", there was an immediate connection between the two groups, though I have to say that Mojuba blew us away. Jamal and I have been talking about doing something together since then and I'm thrilled we'll be doing our first duo at the series.

It's hard to represent vocalist/poet Shara Lunon's emotional/conceptual range in words without sounding ridiculous, but I'd offer History Dog, her collaborative improv group with Chris Williams, Lesley Mok and Luke Stewart, and the full out punk band she fronts, Blasé, as sign posts. She's also a frequent collaborator with jazz heavies like Ches Smith, runs the excellent series Heavy Florals (at Sisters in Brooklyn) and plays solo under her own name, which is what she'll be doing here. A sampler, a microphone and a keen sense of history can be expected."
- CHE CHEN