Earprint is a four-part chordless creative collective with an aggressively melodic, shamelessly youthful approach to making music. A chordless quartet—free of the confines of piano or guitar—has a uniquely open, stripped-down sound, perhaps most often associated with Ornette Coleman’s quartets or the Gerry Mulligan/Chet Baker group of the early 1950s. Earprint draws plenty from these touchstones, but their influences range across the chordless canon, paying homage to the likes of Steve Coleman, Happy Apple, and Dave Holland. Saxophonist Kevin Sun, trumpeter Tree Palmedo, bassist Simón Willson, and drummer Dor Herskovits merge burning swing, knotty grooves, and anthemic themes into a spare sort of kitchen-sink minimalism.
Watch ListenAdam O'Farrill is a Brooklyn-bred trumpeter and a “rising star as a player and composer” (PopMatters). O'Farrill comes from a rich musical legacy of Afro-Cuban composers, Grammy winners, and pianists. He has performed with Mulatu Astatke, Vijay Iyer, Christian McBride, Samora Pinderhughes, Onyx Collective, and JIL. Adam and his band, Stranger Days, will release a new album, El Maquech, soon on Biophilia Records, which covers everything from traditional Mexican music to covers of Gabriel Garzon-Montano and Irving Berlin. O'Farrill also received the 2016-2017 Jazz Gallery Residency Commission, for which he wrote “I'd Like My Life Back”, a song cycle about various environmental issues, and the moral quandary which surfaces from them.
General Inquiries: ampersandseries@mit.edu
