Text by John Pietaro
Matt Lavelle – trumpet, cornet, flugelhorn, pocket trumpet, alto clarinet; Jack DeSalvo – cello, mandola, guitars, banjos; Tom Cabrera – dumbeq, rik, frame drums, bass drum, percussion.
Other-world art music. Improvisations through space and time. The soundtrack of twilight. These phrases have all been used to attempt to describe this trio known as Sumari. The channeling of free improvisation and global folk culture with a boundless sense of the new are the path Matt Lavelle, Jack DeSalvo and Tom Cabrera course to conjure the sounds heard on their eponymous release on Unseen Rain Records. Each member of Sumari is a veteran of international New Music and Free Jazz, with roots in NYC’s “downtown sound”:
JACK DESALVO, hailed in THE WIRE magazine as “masterful”, joined Ronald Shannon Jackson’s Decoding Society in the 1980s and has toured the world with many artists in his own musical-spiritual journey. A graduate of the Berklee College of Music, DeSalvo also studied classical guitar and composition before taking private tutelage with Bill Connors. His pianistic, wholistic approach to performance practice on guitar led to committed doubling on such instruments as cello, alto guitar and various members of the ukulele, mandolin and banjo family. DeSalvo’s credits beyond Ronald Shannon Jackson include Peter Brotzmann, Karl Berger, Chris Kelsey, Vic Juris, Tony Malaby, Pat Hall, D3 and many more.
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