Landline is a multidisciplinary event that connects music and the visual arts through improvisation. The nine-piece group is organized into two quartets: four musicians and four visual artists, with an additional live sound installation artist.
Typically, performances are structured into four, forty-minute segments with three twenty-minute interludes. The four longer concert segments feature the improvising quartet of saxophone, piano, bass, and drums coupled with a quartet of guest visual artists. The twenty-minute interludes are performed by live sound installation artist. During the performance the audience is invited to move about the space, as one would in a gallery or museum setting, or sit in the reverse-round (as pictured in adjacent floor plan). The performance can be structured as a single or multi-day installation.
The concept of the group is based on an original composition game that is constantly ongoing amongst the musicians. The process is similar to the children’s game “broken-telephone” but in this case, the ensemble uses musical ideas instead of spoken phrases to compose their repertoire. The band adheres to a strict composition schedule which demands that each member pass along their composed ideas via email every two weeks until twelve pieces have been completed. A version of this approach is then created in concert with the four visual artists creating responsive works on each other’s surfaces. After each forty-minute set, the artists rotate to adjacent canvases with their materials and continue to create where their predecessor left off. This closely resembles the collaborative technique of the French surrealists, “cadavre exquis” or “exquisite corps”.
Since 2014, Landline has been forging new ground in the worlds of improvised music and collaborative performance. Their debut recording was released in November 2019 on Loyal Label Records. “An avant-jazz super group” - The Brooklyn Rail. The core musical members of the Landline ensemble are: Chet Doxas – saxophone, Jacob Sacks – piano, Zack Lober – bass, Vinnie Sperrazza – drums. In the spirit of fostering deeper connections with the diverse communities that they visit, Landline is also commited to collaborating with local artists from varying backgrounds to help realize their vision.
photo by Evan Shay
