Saturday, October 26, 7:30pm
Nevada Theatre, Nevada City, California
$30 premium reserved seating
$20 general admission
The Northern California-based group Tumble celebrates the release of its new CD Dragonfly at the Nevada Theatre with special guest Murray Campbell joining them on violin and oboes. Tumble weaves the trancey bell tones of the African mbira with driving guitar riffs and edgy single reed melodies to create an intricate, hypnotic whole.
Formed in 2014, the trio is Robert Heirendt on the kalimba-like mbira, Sean Kerrigan on electric guitar, and Randy McKean on clarinets and tenor saxophone. Drawing inspiration from world-meets-free-jazz musics of Oregon, Codona, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and composer/performers Wayne Shorter and Thomas Mapfumo, Tumble has mesmerized audiences throughout Northern California and beyond. Dragonfly, their third album of original compositions and arrangements, will be released by Cure-All Records in October 2024.
Robert Heirendt, mbira
Sean Kerrigan, electric guitar
Randy McKean, tenor sax; Bb, bass & EEb contralto clarinets
w/guest
Murray Campbell, violin/oboes
Mei Lin Heirendt, violin
Tumble, the Nevada City, CA-based chamber jazz trio centered around the unique sound of Robert Heirendt’s mbira (a/k/a the African thumb piano), announces the release of its third CD, Dragonfly. This latest offering on Cure All Records builds on the intricate, trance-like groove of their previous releases with injections of driving guitar work and a more open free jazz sensibility.
Dragonfly was recorded over two days in November 2023 at Nevada City’s Ancient Wave Studios by renowned engineer Oz Fritz. Inspired by Fritz’s innovative work with Bill Laswell, Henry Threadgill, and Tom Waits, Tumble was thrilled to have him at the helm, capturing every twist and turn live in the studio.
Guitarist Sean Kerrigan’s micro-suite Surrounded by Dragonflies launches the album with a dose of classic rock riffage and prog rock mellifluence. Kerrigan continues the Tumble tradition of innovative arrangements of Wayne Shorter classics with the bumping three-feel funk of Shorter’s Juju. With his composition Flow and Eddy, horn man Randy McKean attempts to imitate mimcs the looping patterns of the traditional Zimbabwean mbira tunes that Heirendt often brings to the group. The piece steers the trio through a free-improvisational stream of events with concise rhythmic gathering points along the way.
The centerpiece of the album is Heirendt’s soaring Bloodthirsty Wiles, inspired by Zara Houshmand’s translation of poems by the Sufi mystic Rumi, and featuring special guests, Robert’s daughter Mei Lin Heirendt (currently making waves with her band Broken Compass Bluegrass) on violin, in duet with Murray Campbell, McKean’s colleague in the band Beaucoup Chapeaux, on the oboe-like cor anglais. An understated elegy for the Heirendt’s family cat Jadey prefaces the bass clarinet intro to 3:32, a kinetic foot-stomper that materialized during one of Heirendt’s bouts of insomnia and which was named after its time of conception. Kerrigan’s The Gatekeeper ends the collection with a beginning of sorts, a free exploration of melodic links in a chain that heralds a new direction for the trio.
Drawing inspiration from the groups Oregon, Codona, the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and musicians such as John Coltrane and Thomas Mapfumo, Tumble has brought its delicate interplay of form and freedom to venues throughout Northern California, including Nevada City’s Nevada Theatre, Sacramento’s Side Door, San Francisco’s Make Out Room, and the Nebraska Mondays and Col. McCaw Magical Cure-All music series.