ivy room presents

FRIDAY JAN 2ND

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The Mike Dillon Band featuring Brian Haas 

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Doors 7:30pm / Show 8:30pm

Advance Tickets Available / $22 Door

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IVY ROOM

860 San Pablo Ave, Albany • 21+

MIKE DILLON

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Mike Dillon’s latest album ‘Rosewood’ musically signifies transition and transformation. The 13-track collection was written and recorded during a period of profound change. Dillon found himself relocating from his fourteen year base in New Orleans to his current residence in Kansas City. This coincided with the beginning a new relationship that would result in marriage. Recorded intermittently between January 2018 and September 2019, its 13 majestic tracks swirl with the tangled and bittersweet emotions of one chapter ending as another began. Dillon created the album solely with vibraphone and percussion instruments and titled the record ‘Rosewood’ after the type of lumber used to make marimba bars.

“I started spending time in Kansas City in August 2017, where I’d previously lived in 1997,” explains Dillon. “My friend of twenty years, Peregrine Honig, invited me to see her beautiful art studio converted from an old church building called Greenwood Social Hall. By December, I brought my marimba there and would play for hours. The songs on this record wrote themselves in that sonically sacred space.”

Furthering this metamorphosis, ’Rosewood’ also finds Dillon, who’s been hailed “a punk jazz provocateur,” shifting from the freewheeling, anything goes aesthetic that informed his primary touring unit, The Mike Dillon Band, to a more conceptual and compositional approach. He’d hinted at this side of his musical personality with the 2016 album release ‘Functioning Broke,’ as well as, three performances with his 23-piece New Orleans Punk Rock Percussion Consortium at The Music Box Village. The introspective ‘Functioning Broke,’ however, relied heavily on outside material, including songs by Elliott Smith, Neil Young and Martin Denny, while the latter performance experiment required the massive energy generated by two dozen musicians on percussion and mallet instruments. On ‘Rosewood,’ Dillon boils down the essence of those two projects into a focused auditory journey, drawing almost exclusively on his own compositions with exception of two additional Elliott Smith songs, “Talking To Mary” and “Can’t Make A Sound,” along with the ghostly take on Johnny Cash arrangement of the classic Trent Reznor / Nine Inch Nails’ song “Hurt.” Dillon performed all of the parts himself with exception of contributions by drummer and frequent collaborator Earl Harvin and the guiding hand of Dillon’s old friend, recording engineer Chad Meise.

“When I decided to record in Kansas City, I immediately recruited Chad. He and I made several Malachy Papers’ records, the Go Go Jungle album ‘Battery Acid’ and the Mike Dillon Band record ‘Urn.’ Our chemistry in the middle of a really bittersweet time for me simplified the process. We layered the songs on 24-track, 2-inch tape. Some songs I would start on the vibes, other times I put on a marimba first before fleshing out the rest. My old pal, the incredible drummer Earl Harvin, visited KC from his home in Berlin during the summer of 2018 and played drum kit on several of the tracks. By recording to tape, we captured the warm relationship of the percussion/mallet family.”

BRIAN HAAS

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Brian Roy Haas is an internationally celebrated, award-winning pianist, composer, producer and arranger with almost 40 albums of original compositions under his name. Starting piano at age 4 and winning his first International Piano Concerto Competition at 16, he knew his life’s mission early on. Haas received a full ride to the University of Tulsa and graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor of Arts in Music. While at TU, he founded Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey. In the last 31 years JFJO has toured Europe 13 times and the Americas on a constant loop, played many of the world’s biggest music festivals such as North Sea, Berlin, Tampere, Montreal and sold out prestigious clubs like Bimhuis, Snug Harbor, Yoshi’s and The Blue Note. His illustrious career has seen Haas touring, composing and recording with Nikki Glaspie, George Porter Jr., Helen Gillet, The Funky Meters, Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Nolatet, Rebirth Brass Band, Johnny Vidacovich, James Singleton, Matt Chamberlain, Les Claypool, Charlie Hunter and Punkadelick, a trio comprised of Haas, Nikki Glaspie and Mike Dillon. Punkadelick’s critically acclaimed album, Inflorescense, was released Winter of 2023 on Sony Red and the 17 month tour sold out multiple venues in America. When off the road, Haas has has worked within public schools as an improvisational music instructor for Arts and Humanities through National Endowment of The Arts.

“Brian Haas paints with his fingers. In a flurry, his joyful digits add color to 88 black and white keys. He plays with the assured abandon of an artist in complete control of his craft.”

– Keyboard Magazine

“His embrace of the Music’s History is undeniable: strains of Ellington, Earl Hines and the post-modernists share space. He is a celebrated composer and fearless musical warrior, pulling together the sound sources of Nolatet with brash clusters, stinging high-register accents and thick, alluring harmonies.”

— New York City Jazz Record

“Brian Haas can play with the finesse of Keith Jarret, but still get across to the ecstasy generation.”

— New Orleans Gambit