Saturday, Nov. 22 at 7:30 p.m. — BRANDON — On Saturday, Nov. 22, Brandon Music welcomes back The John Funkhouser Quartet, a band of Musicians without Borders, at 7:30 p.m. With influences as wide ranging as Woody Guthrie, Thelonious Monk, Frank Zappa, Frederic Chopin, and Ravi Shankar, the Quartet “employs complex rhythms, deep soulful moments, rock and passion and sensitivity” (Bebop Spoken Here). Each of Funkhouser’s expansive compositions inhibits a unique universe, while the band seamlessly integrates composed music with improvisation into “a whirling dervish of sound and light” (Bop-n-Jazz.com).
The Quartet began to take shape in 2000, soon after Funkhouser moved back to Boston from New York City to take a teaching job at Berklee College of Music. Funkhouser, (playing bass), met Mike Connors and they immediately understood they had a common musical vision. They soon became the rhythm section in the Pierre Hurel Trio, Jerry Sabatini’s Sonic Explorers and other bands. Soon after Greg Loughman moved to town in 2001, he became the bassist with the Sonic Explorers and Funkhouser moved to keyboards. This musical friendship was a match made in heaven. The rhythm section formed a new Boston incarnation of the John Funkhouser Trio, and began playing all over the Northeast to enthusiastic audiences. After playing for several years and recording the CD Time as a tightly knit trio, Funkhouser invited another good friend, Sonic Explorers guitarist Phil Sargent, to make it a quartet. Bonded by years of friendship as much as by shared music, the quartet now feels like a single organism more than a band of individual virtuosos.
“The John Funkhouser Quartet is often wildly inventive and great fun to watch and listen to – they can also play with grace and sweetness,” says Middletown Eye.
The John Funkhouser Trio/Quartet has headlined the Jazz In June festival in Oklahoma City and played at major music festivals nationwide, including the Riverbend Festival in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the Mellon Jazz Festival in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Jazz In The Sangres in Westcliffe, Colorado. While concentrating mostly on the Northeast, Funkhouser’s trio has mounted two national tours, performing in nineteen cities including New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Kansas City and Denver. The band has played in such New York clubs as the Knitting Factory, Small’s, and Cornelia St. Café.
The band has four CDs of original material to its credit: Still (2013), Time (2010), FunkHouse II (2003), and FunkHouse, (1998).
Concert tickets are $15. Venue is BYOB. Brandon Music is located at 62 Country Club Rd., Brandon.
For more info, call 802-465-4071 or visit www.brandon-music.net.
