Kenny Warren, Liberty Ellman, and Gerald Cleaver are all accomplished composers and performers in the jazz and improvised music world. Ellman has worked extensively as a side man with the likes of Vijay Iyer, Myra Melford, and Henry Threadgill. His latest release Last Desert is available on Pi recordings. Cleaver, one of the most on-demand drummers in NYC for decades has recorded a variety of his own records and worked with luminaries like Roscoe Mitchell and Muhal Richard Abrams. Warren has made a dozen records of his music, and recently recorded as a sideman with Angelica Sanchez, Stephan Crump, and Tony Malaby. His trio with Christopher Hoffman and Nathan Ellman-Bell comes out on Out of Your Head Records in spring 2024.

Kenny Warren

He grew up in Denver CO, where he was inspired at a young age by local trumpet greats Ron Miles, Al Hood, and Greg Gisbert. In 2002 he moved to New York to study jazz at SUNY Purchase where he met collaborators like Bobby Avey and JP Schlegelmilch. After graduating in 2006, he moved to Brooklyn and quickly became an active member of the improvised music scene. He has performed with a who’s who of improvisors from his generation as well as with luminaries like Tony Malaby, Chris Speed, Angelica Sanchez, Stephan Crump, and Brad Shepik.

Joining the brass band Slavic Soul Party in 2008 began the expansion of Warren’s melodic concept to include Roma music and Arabic maqam language. As a composer, Warren’s music was first featured on 2 albums by the instrumental rock collective NOOK. In 2010 Warren formed Laila and Smitty, named after his great aunt and uncle. That band which started out playing country-blues standards and Warren’s folksier compositions, evolved into a singular avant-song-writing outfit that Bird is the Worm calls “massively genuine and unabashedly heart-on-the-sleeve open and honest”. Laila and Smitty have released 3 LPs, most recently in 2019 on happylucky records. Meanwhile, Warren continued to develop as a free improviser, recording records in 2014 with the collective ZhirtZ n ZkinZ (Sulde) and in 2015 with The Sandra Weiss Quintet (Leo Records).

In 2017, The Kenny Warren Quartet released Thank You For Coming to Life (Whirlwind Recordings) which highlights Warren as a jazz composer and soloist. The album was heralded as “Boldly creative and superbly orchestrated…A masterful album… Stunning.” by Radio REC. In 2018 Warren released YLA (promnight), a solo cassette that resulted from a series of home recording experiments done on a creative retreat to California that winter. In April 2020 Whirlwind released Warren’s trio record called In The Heat, featuring Matthias Pichler on bass and Nathan Ellman-Bell on drums.

His latest projects include a trio with Christopher Hoffman and Nathan Ellman-Bell called Sweet World, and a duo with Bobby Avey, both of which will be recording new albums in 2023.

https://www.kennywarrenmusic.com/

Liberty Ellman

Based in Brooklyn New York, guitarist/composer Liberty Ellman has performed and or recorded with a host of stand-out creative artists including Joe Lovano, Myra Melford, Wadada Leo Smith, Butch Morris, Vijay Iyer, Steve Lehman, Greg Osby, Rudresh Mahanthappa, Nels Cline, Somi, Matana Roberts, Ledisi, JD Allen, Michele Rosewoman, Adam Rudolph, Mary Halverson, and Okkyung Lee. Mr. Ellman is perhaps best known for his long tenure in Henry Threadgill’s groundbreaking ensemble, Zooid. The group has recorded several critically lauded albums. Their most recent recording “In For A Penny, In For A Pound” earned a Pulitzer prize for Mr. Threadgill. Ellman has released 4 of his own critically acclaimed albums: Orthodoxy, Tactiles, Ophiuchus Butterfly, and Radiate on Pi Recordings. His compositional style has been described as “At once highly controlled and recklessly inventive,” and the Wall Street Journal said: “Ellman, along with his peers, is helping to define post-millennial jazz.” Voted #1 Rising Star Guitarist in the 2016 Downbeat Critics Poll, he was also honored in the 2015 Jazz Times expanded critics poll, as one of the four guitarists of the year alongside Bill Frisell, John Scofield, and Julian Lage.

https://www.libertyellman.com/

Gerald Cleaver

Drummer Gerald Cleaver was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and is a product of the rich music tradition found there and also in his home. Inspired by his father, John Cleaver, also a drummer, he began playing the drums at an early age. He also played violin in elementary school and switched to trumpet during junior high and high school. While in his teens, he gained early working experience with Ali Muhammad Jackson, Lamont Hamilton, Earl Van Riper, and Pancho Hagood and later with Marcus Belgrave, Donald Walden, Rodney Whitaker, A. Spencer Barefield, and Wendell Harrison. Cleaver earned a B.A. in music education from the University of Michigan. During his studies, he was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Study Fellowship to study with drummer Victor Lewis. After graduating he began teaching in Detroit and later joined the jazz faculty at the University of Michigan and Michigan State University. He relocated to New York in 2002.

Cleaver has worked with Roscoe Mitchell, Henry Threadgill, Jacky Terrasson, Hank Jones, Tommy Flanagan, Mario Pavone, Charles Gayle, Matthew Shipp, Reggie Workman, Joe Morris, Craig Taborn, Ralph Alessi, Eddie Harris, and Miroslav Vitous, among others. In 2002 “Adjust”, recorded for the Spanish label Fresh Sound New Talent, was nominated in the Best Debut Recording category.