Chris Chalfant presents Loooking Through Tree's September 17, 2010

Prolific Pianist and Composer
Chris Chalfant
presents
Looking Through Tree’s
A multi-media exploration into our own true nature
we ask the question what is the reality and what is the illusion?
September 17 & 18
@ Irondale, Brooklyn

Like every important composer in jazz and the classical world, Chalfant has tapped into the essence of song, which never lets the actual composition get in the way of the music.
- JazzImprov

Definite creative statement…exciting and absorbing. - Cadence Magazine

What: Chris Chalfant’s Looking Through Tree’s feat: Joe Giardullo, woodwinds, Ken Yamazaki, drums and percussion, Megan Brooker, choreography, Tim Cyran, lighting, Michael David Gordon, acting
When: September 17 & 18, 8pm
Where: The Irondale Center, Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, 85 South Oxford St., Brooklyn, NY
Cost: $45 (discount codes available at www.irondale.org), (artists, students & seniors $25) to purchase tickets and go to www.irondale.org or call 212.352.3101
Leading composer, musician and artist Chris Chalfant opens the 2010/11 Irondale season with her unique, cutting edge, multi-media vision Looking Through Tree’s. Originating from a paper collage created by Chalfant in the woods at Noyes camp in 2008, Looking Through Tree’s combines original composition, choreography and video to create what Chalfant presents as an exploration into our own true nature, a recurring theme in Chalfants impressive and expressive body of work. Based on a fascinating narrative created by Chalfant, Looking Through Tree’s brings music, performance and visual art together in a stunning premier event.
“Chalfant lays down droning piano lines that mix the grandeur of McCoy Tyner with the expressionism of Cecil Taylor” - One Final Note
Composer, director, pianist, vocalist, artist, author, and poet; Noted for her unique style as a creative artist, Chris Chalfant is a lyrical, rhythmically compelling, and powerful, innovative driving force in the world of jazz, new and improvised music. Her prolific output of composition and improvisation draws largely from traditional music of Africa, Hungary and India, as well as American folk music, jazz and classical music. While critics have compared her music and playing to a wide range of artists: Andrew Hill, Charles Ives, McCoy Tyner, Mal Waldron, Cecil Taylor, Bud Powell, Ahmed Jamal, Schoenberg, Stravinsky, Bartok, Hindemith, Don Pullen, Keith Jarrett, Webern, Meredith Monk, and Thelonious Monk, it is largely the root sources in common with this diverse roster of artists that leads to these assessments. Her work has been performed around the globe and recorded for over twenty years and has more recently been published in magazines and books and has been presented in art shows.
Chris Chalfant draws from nature, poetry and dance with a strong sense of counterpoint and polyrhythm, resulting in non-ordinary phrasings, tonal structures and rhythmic layerings. Her work is both simple and complex at the same time, where she will take a simple children’s tune and create an expressionistic multi-tonal, multi-rhythmic contrapuntal composition or improvisation. Chalfant has a strong melodic sense as well as a feeling of tranquility in much of her work. Her keen sense of moment-to-moment movement in her composition and improvisation is supported by her training in Buddhism and Aikido, where “living under the blade” results in an unshakable fearlessness, confidence and a path of truth. Chris Chalfant currently lives in Brooklyn.
She has many recordings as leader and recently published “Book of Unstandards”. Her improvisations have been on Czech Republic National Radio, in a new film entitled “New Adventures in Folklore”, and as part of a collage on the side of London’s Royal Festival Hall for its grand-reopening. She was recently international fellow at Music Omi. In 1989 and 1990 her improvisatory works were performed at the Leukerbad International Composers Conference, and in 1993 she was in residence at the Atlantic Center with Joan LaBarbara and Morton Subotnic. Chris Chalfant received her BA in Music at Kent State where she studied piano with Margaret Baxtresser and African music and dance with Halim El Dabh. IN 1988 she received her MM at New England Conservatory where she studied with George Russell.
Irondale’s Mission
Through the power of the ensemble process, Irondale creates and presents theater, performance and education programs that challenge traditional assumptions about art, and help us to better understand today’s world. The Irondale Center, our theater, laboratory and classroom, is a home for ensemble artists of all disciplines and cultures, and a resource for our community.

Official Website: http://www.chrischalfant.com