This pass gets you into the Friday performances, featuring some incredible jazz, classical, and shoegaze, along with the first night of Sunburned Hand of the Man’s Thing residency!
Presented with our friends in Monadnock Music!
Josh Johnson is a saxophonist, composer, multi-instrumentalist, and Grammy Award-winning producer. His second solo album, Unusual Object, a striking work of futuristic jazz and modern composition, was recently released on Northern Spy Records. This spare work for processed saxophone and subtle samples shows Johnson further sharpening his unique compositional voice. Unusual Object, Johnson says, “is a development and documentation of a more personal world of sound. What’s it like for me to create the context for my sound, to frame it myself?”
His solo debut Freedom Exercise (Northern Spy) was featured in Rolling Stone’s Best Music of 2020 and Bandcamp’s Best Jazz Albums of 2020. Pitchfork called the record “excellent, daringly melodic” and PostGenre praised it as “a songwriting marvel”.
Johnson is a regular collaborator with some of contemporary music’s most innovative artists, including Jeff Parker, Makaya McCraven, Nate Mercereau, Marquis Hill, and Kiefer. Parker’s widely-acclaimed 2022 record Mondays at the Enfield Tennis Academy features Johnson on saxophone and effects as part of the longstanding quartet. This is the most recent in a series of Parker’s records to highlight Johnson, with the latter also contributing saxophone and synths to 2016’s The New Breed and 2020’s Suite for Max Brown. Johnson is a member of the quintet, SML who recently released their debut album, Small Medium Large, on International Anthem Recording Company to wide acclaim.
Between 2018 and 2022 Johnson held the role of Musical Director for soul singer Leon Bridges, with whom he also played keyboards and saxophone. During his time with Bridges, Johnson performed throughout Europe, North America, Asia and Australia, with performances at the Hollywood Bowl, Glastonbury and the Sydney Opera House. Along with Nate Walcott (Bright Eyes), Johnson arranged 14 of Bridges’ songs for a performance with London’s Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, also contributing a choral arrangement and directing the concert.
Johnson produced and appears on Meshell Ndegeocello’s 2023 album, The Omnichord Real Book, which was awarded the 2024 Grammy for Best Alternative Jazz Album. He can also be heard on wide-ranging records by artist such as Harry Styles, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, Moonchild, Broken Bells, Miley Cyrus, Louis Cole and Carlos Niño, among others. He currently resides in Los Angeles.
The Argus Quartet’s “vivacious foursome” (The New Yorker) is committed to bringing thoughtful and personal programs to both seasoned listeners and audiences new to classical music. The Quartet enjoys projects that celebrate collaboration, community, and risk-taking in venues of all shapes and sizes.
Praised for playing with “supreme melodic control and total authority” and “decided dramatic impact” (Calgary Herald), Argus has quickly emerged as one of today’s most dynamic and versatile ensembles. Formed in Los Angeles in 2013, the Quartet has performed in some of the country’s most prestigious venues and festivals, including Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, Chamber Music Society of Detroit, the Ravinia Festival, the Albany Symphony’s American Music Festival, and Music Academy of the West. In 2017, Argus won First Prize at both the M-Prize Chamber Arts Competition and the Concert Artists Guild Victor Elmaleh Competition.
Recent highlights include two appearances at Carnegie Hall, a return to Columbia University’s Miller Theatre for its PopUp Concerts series, and the launch of a new program consisting of works by Indigenous composers. This program features a new composition by Pulitzer Prize finalist Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti, commissioned as a National Performance Network Creation & Development Fund Project. The Quartet premiered the program in San Diego, Long Beach, Denver, and Tucson.
Central to the Quartet’s work is close collaboration with living composers. In 2022, Argus premiered Jessica Meyer’s “Of Being,” commissioned by Chamber Music America, at the Morgan Library. Past commissions include works by Katherine Balch, Donald Crockett, GRAMMY nominee Eric Guinivan, Hermitage Prize winner Thomas Kotcheff, and Guggenheim Fellowship recipient Juri Seo. Argus’ recording of Seo’s works for string quartet was released in May 2019 on Innova Recordings; December 2022 saw the release of Christopher Cerrone’s “The Air Suspended” with pianist Shai Wosner on New Focus Recordings. The Quartet has received grants from the Koussevitzky Foundation, Concert Artists Guild, and the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts in support of their commissioning efforts.
By the time Irish musician Maria Somerville started writing Luster, her landmark label debut for 4AD, she had lived away from her native Connemara for quite some time. Having grown up amongst the wild, mountainous terrain of Galway’s rural west coast, she later relocated to Dublin, where she patiently developed an atmospheric dream pop signature inspired by the landscape of her youth – a spellbinding soundworld of gusting ambient electronics, etherealguitar strums, sparse percussion, and hushed lyrical vignettes. In 2019, this culminated in All My People, a self-released LP steeped in reverb, nostalgia and a yearning for home that won praise from discerning press and listeners alike.
Listeners have had a window into Somerville’s world every Monday and Tuesday morning since 2021 via her beloved Early Bird Show on NTS Radio, where her dawn chorus selections range from blissful ambient and shoegaze to traditional Irish folk songs. Since signing to 4AD that same year, Somerville has toured with her label mates Dry Cleaning, and released two covers for the label’s 40th anniversary celebrations – taking on Nancy Sinatra’s ‘Kinky Love’ and Air Miami’s ‘Sea Bird’. With the release of Luster, she has signaled the arrival of a new era that will see her play around the world in 2025 accompanied by a live band. Rest assured though, no matter where Somerville goes, she’ll take a piece of home with her – a living, breathing, timeless essence you can sense in every note, as clear as the air by the Corrib.
Sunburned Hand of the Man (aka "Sunburned") are a loose knit gang of musical artists born around 1994 in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded as a way to let off steam from years of obsessive weirdo record collecting and perversely decoding the hand jive of wanton talents from the psychedelic and punk rock hardcore scenes in the Boston zone, Sunburned was born to be awesome. The nucleus, [now based in the Western Mass.] of the group is a small ragtag contingent of fascinants completely focused on the idea of spontaneous composition within the framework of religious experience: the rock n roll EVENT. Taking it to the stars to see where exactly the light comes from then surfing that beam straight to the O-mind where the kick drum becomes it's own sentient nature's heartbeat. Through the years many a legend has passed time dusting their select broom in the delectable maelstrom grooves brought forth by the Sunburned van. They eat the road UP and leave the stage in ashes. Warriors, lovers - they get it "on".
- Thurston Moore
Roger Clark Miller is a guitarist, pianist, composer, bassist, singer, percussionist and occasional cornet player. He has been a band leader since 1967. His recordings have appeared on Cuneiform, Matador, Fire, Ace of Hearts, SST, New Alliance, Forced Exposure, Feeding Tube, World in Sound, Atavistic, Sublingual and Fun World. He has toured nationally since 1979 and internationally since 1998. His career officially began in 1979 when he co-founded the influential post-punk band Mission of Burma on guitar and vocals. They have a chapter in the
bible of indie rock history “Our Band Could be Your Life”, and their documentary “Not a Photograph” was listed in Huffington Post's 18 must-watch documentaries. They folded in 1983 due to his tinnitus. He formed Birdsongs of the Mesozoic on piano in 1981 and continued in it until 1988. The group blended minimalism, classical, and rock. From 1983-1989 he created his Maximum Electric Piano work, utilizing prepared piano and loops. From 1989 until 1998 he released numerous records as leader, all quite different from each other, on guitar or keyboards.
In 1998 he joined the silent film accompanying ensemble Alloy Orchestra on keyboards which continues to the present under the new name The Anvil Orchestra. Roger Ebert said “Alloy Orchestra is the best in the world at accompanying silent film”. From 2002-2015 Mission of Burma reformed to high acclaim, and Roger split his touring time between Burma and Alloy. During this time he composed many soundtracks for documentary films, four which premiered at Sundance. In 2010 he began composing chamber music again and his compositions have been performed at the New England Conservatory, Tufts University and elsewhere, continuing to the present. His art installation, "Transmuting the Prosaic", showed at the Brattleboro Art Museum in 2020 and 3S Artspace in Portsmouth, NH, in 2022. He continues working in multiple formats, and plans to do so into the far distant future.
Led by Massachusetts artist Chloe Deeley, Sailor Down is set to release the new EP Maybe We Should Call It A Night later this Summer which confidently explores new waters on the first fully collaborative collection. Here Deeley and co. lean into influences that may previously have been overlooked as bedroom pop or folk but at this tempo and volume are clearly Kinsella inspired. Lead single “vacation (forgive me, evan)” wastes no time as alternately tuned Fenders lure in and ricochet across an earnest chorus of “happy to be here over-analyzing/I don’t wanna let you down”. The self recorded six song EP showcases a modest tasting menu of indie rock genres be it twee, emo, or the synth-pop detour of “Just Asking” - however the tracklist is once again bound together with consistently poignant lines like “some of us were made to melt into water/but that’s a heavy thing to say when we’re out on a Friday”. The latest release from the New England four-piece feels like a celebration in finding their footing and being okay with not always being okay.