Ron Samworth

Audio Samples & Notes: Ron Samworth

1. Strathcona (a short walk) – (2007) (7′)
Danbau, Zheng, World Percussion

Composer’s Notes:
This composition is constructed around a piece of original text of mine evoking my experience of walking through Strathcona on a spring day. The juxtaposition of beauty and decay gradually reveals a poetical wholeness – everything belongs as it is.

Ron Samworth is known on the Canadian improvised/contemporary music scene as an inventive textural improviser and a strong fluid soloist inspired by a variety of traditions including jazz, rock, contemporary and world musics. He leads the Vancouver-based quartet Talking Pictures and co-directed the acclaimed NOW Orchestra from 1993-2003. He is also a member of The Unexpected, a Montreal-Vancouver collective, the Peggy Lee Band, DarkBlueWorld, François Houle’s electro-acoustic quartet and the Hard Rubber Orchestra. He has appeared at all the major Jazz Festivals across Canada, the Festival International de Musique Actuelle de Victoriaville, at New York’s Knitting Factory, and the New York Improvisation Festival, New Music America, Vienna’s “Let’s Cool One” Chamber Jazz Festival, Chicago and Berlin jazz festivals, and other leading venues in Europe. He has performed with many of the leading voices in contemporary music such as John Zorn, Dave Douglas, Evan Parker, Barry Guy, George Lewis, Wayne Horvitz, Kuzuhisa Uchihashi, Yasuhiro Otani, Butch Morris, Han Bennink, Barre Phillips, Marilyn Crispell, Claude Ranger, René Lussier, and Jean Derome.