Zoh Amba + Chris Corsano

Zoh Amba began playing the saxophone during her middle school days in east Tennessee, where she took to practicing daily in the forest near her home. Amba’s relationship to the instrument initially represented an escape from a deep sadness, which she describes frequently in interviews. Over time it developed into a conduit for the divine—the title of her album Bhakti (2022) means devotion to God—as she views her music and her commitment to the Hindu spiritual discipline of Advaita Vedanta as inexorably linked. Amba’s influences include Albert Ayler and her mentor David Murray, who has praised the young musician’s search for her own voice. John Zorn produced her debut record, O, Sun (2022), for his renowned label Tzadik Records.

For this performance Amba is joined by Chris Corsano, praised as “one of the world’s great drummers” by the Guardian (UK). An upstate New York–based musician who’s been active at the intersections of free jazz, avant-rock, and noise music since the late 1990s, Corsano has worked with everyone from Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore and Wilco’s Nels Cline to New York saxophonist Paul Flaherty and Björk, who invited Corsano to play on her Volta world tour in 2007–8. Be among the first in the region to see Amba and Corsano unite onstage in fearless pursuit of pure music and collective improvisation. (program approx. 60–75 mins.)

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Zoh Amba, courtesy of Heavy Trip.