Nate Wooley

Nate Wooley was a native of Clatskanie in Oregon in 1974. It is a small town of 2,000 residents in the Pacific Northwestern corner of the U.S. At the age of 13, he began playing professionally on trumpet with his father, who was a big-band saxophonist. Nate began playing trumpet professionally at the age of 13 with his father, a big band saxophonist. Nate, who moved to New York in 2001 has been a highly-respected trumpet player in Brooklyn’s burgeoning jazz, improv and noise scenes. John Zorn and Evan Parker were among his many musical influences. He also collaborated with some of the most prominent musicians of his generation, including C. Spencer Yeh and Peter Evans. Wooley’s solo playing is often credited with being part of the international revolution in improvised trombone. Wooley, along with Greg Kelley and Peter Evans, is considered to be one of the most important figures in the American movement that redefined the physical boundaries for the trumpet. He also helped destroy the perception of trumpet in an historical context still dominated by Louis Armstrong. One reviewer called his solo recordings “exquisitely hostile” because of the combination of vocalization and extended technique, noise and drone aesthetics as well as amplification, feedback and compositional rigor. Wooley’s unique trumpet language has won him international praise over the past three years. Time Out New York called him an “iconoclastic trumpeter”, while Downbeat’s Jazz Musician-of-the Year Dave Douglas said that Wooley was “one of the most unusual and interesting trumpet players alive today.” His work was featured on the SWR JazzNow stage in Donaueschingen, as well as the WRO Media Arts Biennials in Poland, North Sea, Music Unlimited and Copenhagen Jazz Festivals. He was the artist in residence at Issue Project Room, Brooklyn, NY, and Cafe Oto, London, England in 2011. He will be performing at the Walker Art Center in 2013 as a solo artist. Nate is the curator of the Database of Recorded American Music (www.dramonline.org) and the editor-in-chief of their online quarterly journal Sound American (www.soundamerican.org) both of which are dedicated to broadening the definition of American music through their online presence and the physical distribution of music through Sound American Records. Pleasure of the Text is also run by him. It releases music from composers of experimental music as they begin their careers in raw and ready medias. from http://natewooley.com

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