Actual/Actual showcases jazz improvisation with an orientation towards thematic music and spontaneous composition at its core. Their wide swath of performative expression taps swing, ballads, freejazz, modal and other musical genres. It's all “grist for the mill” as they create a new context for these elements where improbable connections are made when you least expect them to.
Front person and saxophonist Rent Romus whose performative history started in the late eighties, originally hails from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and has made it a point to engage and collaborate with musicians throughout the Midwest region. This band represents an important part of his “talent reconnaissance” and is truly a multi-generational affair.
Press Quotes:
"Spectral moments surface throughout as a bit of other-worldliness emerging from brassy cacophony. Raucous, delicately haunting, and most definitely coy, the album has a kind of nonchalant majesty to it." - Elise Mills, White Crate
"Baptismal is the group's debut and presents a band with high energy, lots of creativity, close interplay, subtlety, and plenty of fire" - Richard Gilman-Opalsky, Activator Magazine
"This is free jazz - you might think, well yeah, 70ies style Milt Jackson - but somehow these chaps keep an edge to things. There is a continuous presence of free improvisation lurking around the corner, as well as a more 'rock' style approach to playing..." RSW, Vital Weekly
Ensemble:
Rent Romus•alto saxophone Gerard Cox•keyboards Josh Strange•vibraphone, trumpet Troy Kunkler•drums
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