Nels Cline (of Wilco), Larry Ochs, Gerald Cleaver

This incredible trio was created by Detroit native and internationally acclaimed percussionist Gerald Cleaver, in collaboration with Larry Ochs, founder of the legendary Rova Saxophone Quartet. With the addition in 2015 of experimental guitar icon Nels Cline (who belatedly became a pop-guitar icon by joining Wilco) the trio’s lineup was complete.

Guitar explorer Nels Cline (nelscline.com) is best known these days as the lead guitarist in the band Wilco. His recording and performing career – spanning jazz, rock, punk and experimental – is well into its fourth decade, with over 200 recordings, including at least 30 for which he is leader. Cline has received many accolades including Rolling Stone anointing him as both one of 20 “new guitar gods” and one of the top 100 guitarists of all time. Beyond Wilco, Cline performs with jazz guitar prodigy Julian Lage, The Nels Cline Four (with Lage plus bassist Scott Colley and drummer Tom Rainey) and CUP (a duo with wife and musical collaborator Yuka Honda of Cibo Matto) and leads The Nels Cline Singers (featuring Scott Amendola, bassist Trevor Dunn and Cyro Baptista).

Saxophonist Larry Ochs (www.ochs.cc) is best known as a founder of the Rova Sax Quartet, a San Francisco institution that focused right from the start on the application of improvisational strategies within the context of contemporary compositions, beginning in the late 1970s and continuing right up to the present day; 40 years old in 2018. Equally inspired by modernist 20th century composition and the more worldly, abrasive strands of 60s free jazz as well as by fellow pioneers around the globe, Rova and Ochs became widely celebrated for the lengths they would go to stretch the performance parameters of notated music through early collaborations with Henry Kaiser, Anthony Braxton, and John Zorn. Ochs connection with Cline began in the late 1990s and culminated with the Celestial Septet, a band comprised of both Rova and The Nels Cline Singers.

Drummer Gerald Cleaver is a product of Detroit’s rich music tradition. Inspired by his father, drummer John Cleaver, he began playing at an early age and, as a teenager, gained invaluable experience playing with Detroit jazz masters Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper and Pancho Hagood. After serving as assistant professor of Jazz Studies at the University of Michigan and joining the jazz faculty at Michigan State University, he moved to New York in 2002. He has performed or recorded with Roscoe Mitchell, Matt Shipp, William Parker, Craig Taborn, Charles Gayle, Jeremy Pelt, Tomasz Stanko, Charles Lloyd and Miroslav Vitous, among others. Cleaver has released four recordings as a leader and leads the bands Black Host and Uncle June.