Tiger Trio is the inspired combination of pianist Myra Melford and Joelle Leandre, as well as Nicole Mitchell, flutist. They bring a rare clarity to spontaneous composition. Their 2016 album Unleashed (RogueArt) shows a style of interplay that is “remarkably focused and disciplined, with an emphasis… mutuality that gives every track a cohesive feel” (freejazzblog.com). The trio was formed by Melford’s Doris Duke Building demand for the Arts Residency at the Yerba Buena Center of the Arts (2013-15), which was intended to help the center build an audience for its jazz and improvised music programs. The New Frequencies Fest: jazz@YBCA was the result of this effort in February 2015. Melford invited Mitchell and Leandre to perform at the festival. Their duo Sisters Where (RogueArt), and other collaborations have demonstrated a strong simpatico. They had a great chemistry and decided to keep performing together at YBCA. The full trio’s chamber-like sound is the dominant, but Tiger Trio considers all possible options, including solo interludes, duo combinations and even solo interludes. Mitchell says that she watches Myra climb into her piano and Joelle take the wood out of Joelle’s bass, and then sees herself squeeze through the flutes silver holes. We soar through the triangle, fiercely committed towards the rapture and instrumental sound.” Melford funded Melford’s Doris Duke residency at YBCA. Mitchell also received the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alpert Award for the Arts, and the Doris Duke Performing Artist Award. She is a professor at the University of California Berkeley and one of the most renowned pianist-composers of our time. “An explosive player, a genius who shocks, soothes, and virtuoso,” she said (San Francisco Chronicle). Mitchell, a Chicagoan who is also a professor of music at University of California-Irvine has been praised for her “Afrofuturist vision”. She was also credited by The New York Times as “probably most inventive flutist in jazz’s past 30 years.” Her diverse projects and leadership as the first woman chair at the AACM have broadened the scope of improvised musical expression. France’s Leandre was the Darius Milhaud visiting professor at Mills College, Oakland. It was there that Melford and Leandre first met and performed together. Leandre was also awarded the DAAD grant to Berlin for two-years and a Villa Kujoyama Kyoto residency. Before that, she was a Creative Associate at Center for Performing Arts in Buffalo NY, where she worked with John Cage and Morton Feldman. Heard on more than 180 CDs, she has been likened by fellow bassist William Parker to “a sculptor carving and shaping musical poems from large blocks of sonic matter.” from https://p-upload.facebook.com
