Tuesday 20 May 2025, 7.30pm
"Since forming in 2013, few working bands in improvised music have served up such fizzy technical rigor and reflected an adventurous spirit on par with Anna Webber’s Simple Trio." – Peter Margasak
Composer, saxophonist, and flutist Anna Webber has been working with Simple Trio, featuring bandmates John Hollenbeck on drums and Matt Mitchell on piano, since 2013. The music of Simple Trio highlights what The New York Times called the “range of the group members: fulminous, intense collective improvisation” in songs that feel like living things and lead the audience in different directions on each listen. Their fourth album, simpletrio2000 (Intakt Records, October 2024), is an exploration of polyrhythm and a celebration of a decade of working together; it additionally functions as a follow-up to their critically-acclaimed release Idiom, which earned Webber the accolade of being named the top composer of the year by JazzTimes in 2021. The band’s other prior releases are Binary (Skirl Records, 2016) and SIMPLE (Skirl Records, 2014).
Anna Webber is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the aesthetic overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. In 2024 alone, Webber received the Herb Albert Award in the Arts, a Chamber Music America New Jazz Works commission, and was voted top of both the tenor saxophone and flute “Rising Star” categories in the Downbeat Critic’s Poll. She is furthermore a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow and a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. A prolific bandleader, Webber is also known for the Webber Morris Big Band, a group she co-leads with saxophonist and composer Angela Morris, and her quintet Shimmer Wince (featuring Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Mariel Roberts on cello, Elias Stemeseder on synthesizer, and Lesley Mok on drums) which explores Just Intonation in a jazz setting. She has additionally performed and/or recorded with projects led by artists such as Dan Weiss, Miles Okazaki, Roscoe Mitchell, Ranja Swaminathan, Jen Shyu, Dave Douglas, Matt Mitchell, Ches Smith, John Hollenbeck, and Trevor Dunn, among others. Webber is originally from British Columbia, Canada.
Matt Mitchell is a pianist and composer interested in the intersections of various strains of acoustic, electric, composed, and improvised new music. He currently composes for and leads several ensembles featuring many of the current foremost musicians and improvisers, including Tim Berne, Kim Cass, Kate Gentile, Ben Gerstein, Jon Irabagon, Travis Laplante, Ava Mendoza, Miles Okazaki, Ches Smith, Chris Speed, Tyshawn Sorey, Chris Tordini, Anna Webber, and Dan Weiss. He is an anchor member of several significant creative music ensembles which integrate composed and improvised music, including Tim Berne’s Snakeoil, the Dave Douglas Quintet, John Hollenbeck’s Large Ensemble, Dan Weiss’s Starebaby, Jonathan Finlayson’s Sicilian Defense, Steve Coleman’s Natal Eclipse, Kate Gentile’s Mannequins, Mario Pavone’s Blue Dialect Trio, Anna Webber’s Simple Trio, Ches Smith’s We All Break, the Dave King Trio, and Quinsin Nachoff’s Flux. He is also among the core performers of John Zorn’s Bagatelles. He is a 2015 recipient of a Doris Duke Impact Award and a 2012 recipient of a Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.
Composer/percussionist and six-time Grammy nominee John Hollenbeck is renowned in both jazz and new-music worlds. He has gained widespread recognition as the driving force behind the unclassifiable Claudia Quintet and the ambitious John Hollenbeck Large Ensemble, groups with roots in jazz, world music, and contemporary composition. He is well known in new-music circles for his longtime collaboration with Meredith Monk and has worked with many of the world's leading musicians in jazz including Bob Brookmeyer, Fred Hersch, and Tony Malaby. John is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship (2007), the ASCAP Jazz Vanguard Award (2010), and a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award (2012). His most notable works include commissions by Bang on a Can All-Stars, Ethos Percussion Group, Melbourne Jazz Festival, University of Rochester, Ensemble Cairn, Orchestre National de Jazz, and Frankfurt Radio Big Band. He joined McGill University Schulich School of Music’s faculty as professor of Jazz Drums and Improvisation in 2015.
