Larry Ochs' Fictive Five (Less One Live)

The Fictive Five conjures wildly imaginative stories in sound; a collective music by a group of extraordinary improvising musicians, all framed by the structures composed by Larry Ochs. A founding member of the Rova Sax Quartet, Larry Ochs has worked with many of the greatest musicians in Creative Music: Steve Lacy, Fred Frith, Wadada Leo Smith, Terry Riley, Marilyn Crispell, John Zorn, Nels Cline, Anthony Braxton and countless others. His newest ensemble is an update on the classic New York Contemporary Five and features Larry’s Shepp-tinged tenor sax along with some of the best young players out of New York’s Downtown scene.

With strong, soulful blendings of composition and improvisation, the Fictive Five takes inspiration from not only musicians (pianist Cecil Taylor) but also visual artists (William Kentridge) and filmmakers including Spike Lee, Wim Wenders, Kelly Reichardt and Warren Sonberg.

This special concert at Barking Legs Theater will feature a quartet incarnation of the Fictive Five with Ochs, trumpeter Nate Wooley, percussionist Harris Eisenstadt and bassist Ken Filiano.

In September 2013, Ochs was in artist-in-residence at The Stone in NYC. On two nights that week he premiered this quintet to enthusiastic acclaim. But most importantly, all five musicians were really excited by what happened at The Stone. The music was on fire; the compositions sparked their imaginations and left plenty of room for continued exploration. Because Ochs lives in the San Francisco Bay Area, and busy schedules made it difficult to connect, The Fictive Five did not perform again until December 2014, immediately followed by a really focused recording session. The music from that session released October 2015 on Tzadik, the label curated by John Zorn.  A new recording, Anything Is Possible, was released on Clean Feed in March 2019, in time for the group's 2019 European tour.

Since 1978, Larry Ochs’ professional activities have been primarily centered around the Rova Saxophone Quartet, which has made over thirty-five European tours plus numerous concerts throughout the U.S. and Canada, as well as recording over 30 CDs/LPs as a quartet and/or in collaboration with other artists.

Nate Wooley is one of the most in-demand trumpet players in the burgeoning Brooklyn jazz, improv, noise, and new music scenes. He has performed regularly with such icons as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, Evan Parker, and Yoshi Wada, as well as being a collaborator with some of the brightest lights of his generation like Chris Corsano, C. Spencer Yeh, Peter Evans, and Mary Halvorson. Wooley’s solo playing has often been cited as being a part of an international revolution in improvised trumpet.

Most active in jazz and improvised music, as both a bandleader and in-demand sideman, percussionist Harris Eisenstadt has performed all over the globe, been awarded grants from organizations such as Meet The Composer, American Composers Forum, Canada Council for the Arts, and appeared on more than 50 recordings since 2000, including 15 as a leader. Recordings of his compositions since 2002 often appear on the Songlines, Clean Feed, and 482 Music labels, and are consistently included on critics’ best-of lists.

Active since the early '80s, bassist Ken Filiano has since contributed to dozens of albums, most of them pertaining to creative jazz -- from post-bop to free improvisation. Based in Brooklyn, Filiano keeps strong ties with the West Coast. He has recorded for Nine Winds, CIMP, Knitting Factory, and Clean Feed, among other labels.

"...it's consistently fresh. It breaks new ground while working through the deep roots of Ochs’ conception, invoking Archie Shepp and Albert Ayler..." - NYC Jazz Records on "The Fictive Five"