IVY ROOM PRESENTS
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WEDNESDAY NOVEMBER 25TH
partially seated show
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Gretchen Menn
Daniele Gottardo
Michael Manring
& Scott Amendola
aka Ghost Engineers
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Doors 7:00 pm / Show 7:30 pm
Advance Tickets Available / $25 Door
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IVY ROOM
860 San Pablo Ave, Albany • 21+
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Sometimes when four musicians get in a room and just let the music happen, magic happens. That’s the case with Gretchen Menn, Daniele Gottardo, Michael Manring, and Scott Amendola.
Going into the first time playing together, they all held deep respect and admiration for each other. The concept was clear and open: let’s just play.
While all accomplished and passionate composers, with each other they found a chance to explore something different and immediate. From the first note, the listening and chemistry moved the music into uncharted territory. Each player is used to both accompanying and soloing, so blending into the fabric of what was happening was natural. Stepping out and generating movement and motion in the music was also easy. But what was happening was something rare and beautiful, thoughtful and joyful: music created for this moment. And the journey that Gretchen, Daniele, Michael, and Scott will take you on is a unique adventure.
Gretchen Menn
Gretchen Menn brings a musical voice shaped by her love of rock, metal, jazz, prog, classical, and concert hall music. She studied classical guitar with Phillip de Fremery, and she recently completed an MFA in professional composition and orchestration through Arts University Bournemouth. She tours extensively with her original trio and Zepparella, the latter honoring the music of Led Zeppelin.
As the winner of Guitar World’s No-Limits Challenge, she appeared on the September 2022 cover, and has been featured in guitar magazines: Guitar Player, Guitar World, Vintage Guitar, Premier Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, and others, celebrated for her versatility, virtuosity, and depth of her original compositions.
In 2024, Menn premiered Grammy-winning composer Steven Mackey’s Aluminum Flowers with the Utah Symphony, under the direction of David Robertson. The five-movement, virtuosic guitar concerto showcases both classical and electric guitar and an extensive array of extended techniques.
Recently she joined a new project, Six String Symphony, as the fourth in a quartet of classical guitarists joined by the London Symphony Orchestra in their debut album, A Six String Odyssey
Gretchen’s original music blends both modern and classical instruments as heard on her albums Hale Souls (2011), Abandon All Hope (2016). instruments as heard on her albums Hale Souls (2011), Abandon All Hope (2016).
Daniele Gottardo
Italian guitarist and composer Daniele Gottardo has developed a reputation both for his versatility and the imagination of his compositions. A wondrous technician and creative force, Daniele has the ability to make the guitar do things one has not heard. As a solo artist, Daniele has produced three albums: Frenzy of Ecstasy (2010), Non Temperato (2014), and his latest release, INkBlot (2023). Gottardo draws influence from sources as diverse as the early 20th Century Russian school, modern jazz, rock, metal, and electronic music. His Concertino for Electric Guitar and Orchestra (2024) was premiered with the Utah Symphony, conducted by David Robertson.
Michael Manring
Hailed by many as the world’s leading solo bassist, Michael Manring has been pushing back the boundaries of what’s possible on the bass guitar for decades. As editor Tom Darter wrote in Keyboard magazine after seeing one of Michael's solo concerts, "Forget his astounding technique and musicality; forget his absolute command of his instruments; forget how seamlessly the musical ideas and the performance of them were wedded together...The enlightenment came most from feeling (seeing, hearing) the joy Michael felt to be playing...his brand of transcendental chops and musical understanding...was all in the service of the final outcome, the joy of making music."
Building on the conceptions of his teacher, the late bass legend Jaco Pastorius, Michael has developed an approach to the instrument that includes unorthodox tunings, techniques and methodologies. Michael has worked with a diverse collection of musicians from New Age keyboardist Suzanne Ciani to avant-improv guitar innovator Henry Kaiser to celebrated folk troubadour John Gorka to experimental post-metal rockers Tim Alexander (Primus) and Alex Skolnick (Testament) to electro-pop pioneer Thomas Dolby. His long-term collaboration and close friendship with the late acoustic guitar genius Michael Hedges led to a lengthy stint as house bassist for Windham Hill Records; a label for whom he also worked as a solo artist, releasing four recordings under his own name: Unusual Weather (1986), Toward the Center of the Night (1989), Drastic Measures (1991) and Thonk (1994). These, along with his 1998 release The Book of Flame on the Alchemy record label earned him an international reputation as "a master of the fretless bass without rival." (Guitar Club Magazine, Italy). His two solo bass recordings, Soliloquy (2006) and Small Moments (2020) showcase the approach to the bass that lead one writer to conclude, "Manring can do more with a bass than even the most creative individual could imagine" (L. Pierce Carson, Napa Valley Register). He has garnered three gold records, Grammy and Bammie nominations, a Berklee School of Music Distinguished Alumni Award, three Just Plain Folks Awards and numerous Bass Player Magazine Readers' Poll awards including 1994 Bassist of the Year. He was also the subject of a PBS TV documentary, “The Artist's Profile: Michael Manring” and a Youtube video of him playing his iconic solo piece “Selene” has well over 1.5 million views. "Do not miss your next opportunity to discover the bassist with the most fresh and inventive playing today.”
Scott Amendola
For Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn’t so much an instrument as a musical portal. An ambitious composer, savvy bandleader and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians, Amendola applies his rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His closest musical associates include guitarists, Nels Cline, Jeff Parker, Charlie Hunter, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, violinists Regina Carter and Jenny Scheinman, clarinetist Ben Goldberg, players who have each forged a singular path within and beyond the realm of jazz.
No project better displays Amendola’s big ears and musical ambitions than “Fade To Orange”, an orchestral piece commissioned as part of the Oakland East Bay Symphony’s Irvine Foundation-funded New Visions/New Vistas initiative. The roiling work premiered to critical acclaim at Oakland’s Paramount Theater on April 15, 2011.
As a sideman, Amendola has performed and recorded with a vast, stylistically varied roster of artists, including Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Mike Patton, Mondo Cane, John Scofield, Cibo Matto, John Dieterich from Deerhoof, Wadada Leo Smith, Bruce Cockburn, Madeleine Peyroux, Joan Osborne, Jacky Terrasson, Shweta Jhaveri, Phil Lesh, Sex Mob, Kelly Joe Phelps, Larry Klein, Carla Bozulich, Wayne Horvitz, Johnny Griffin, Julian Priester, Sonny Simmons, Pat Martino, Jim Campilongo, Bobby Black, Larry Goldings, Paul McCandless, Rebecca Pidge
