“What a fine young quartet this is... they follow many different musical paths,
all the while maintaining a pretty stimulating group voice.”
–Jason Bivins, Cadence Magazine

"One of the most powerful and appealing jazz units currently active."
-Rex Butters, All About Jazz Los Angeles

"This music is a sinuous dance, but one where every move,
every exit and entry, every bob and weave, is made with razor-sharp precision...
the Empty Cage Quartet finds a new way forward for the modern-day free jazz quartet."
-Nate Dorward, Signal to Noise

"The MTKJ Quartet's music is the shit..."
-Gene Armstrong, Tucson Weekly

"Not your typical background jazz music, this local group is in your face,
angular, fresh, and assertively spontaneous."
-Zach Behrens, LAist

"Wildly eclectic..."
-The Santa Fe Reporter

NOW ON MYSPACE!!!
www.myspace.com/emptycagequartet

AND YOUTUBE!!!
www.youtube.com/emptycagequartet

JASON MEARS, from Alaska, is a saxophonist, clarinetist, composer, improviser, and educator who is currently living just outside of Tokyo, Japan. He holds a BFA in Music Education from Boston University and a MFA in African-American Improvisational Music from California Institute of the Arts, and has studied with Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Harvey Pittel, Paul Novros, Donald Sinta, John Sampen, and Vinny Golia. Jason's most recent projects include the Empty Cage Quartet (MTKJ), Harris Eisenstadt's The Soul and Gone, Vinny Golia's Music for Like Instruments (the Eb saxophones), The Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, the Jeff Kaiser Ockodektet, and the Kreative Orchestra of Los Angeles (KOLA) - an 11-piece ensemble he initiated along with drummer/composer Harris Eisenstadt which "functions as a mobile laboratory for some of L.A.'s musical masterminds to publicly swap experimental compositions and performances" (Rex Butters, All About Jazz Los Angeles). Jason has made frequent interdisciplinary collaborations with filmmaker Allen Glass and dancer Miyuki Kobayashi, and has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Frank Gratkowski, Phillip Greenlief, Jack Wright, Leroy Jenkins, Mark Trayle, Michael Vlatkovich, Jeb Bishop, Jason Roebke, Jeff Parker, Steuart Liebig, Harris Eisenstadt, and Damon Smith. He has recorded on the Nine Winds, 482, and pfMENTUM labels.

KRIS TINER is active on the West Coast as a trumpet player, composer, and improviser. His music has been described as "extraordinarily inventive" by Signal to Noise, and Cadence Magazine calls him "a really compelling voice." He has performed at concert venues and festivals throughout North America and in Europe and West Africa and he appears on over 35 recordings. His own projects have been released on the Clean Feed, pfMENTUM, Nine Winds, and Evander Music labels. In addition to numerous interdisciplinary collaborations involving dance, poetry and spoken word, visual art, film, and animation he has recorded music for radio, television, and motion picture scores and his trumpet playing has been heard on MTV and Comedy Central. His primary musical project apart from the Empty Cage Quartet is TIN/BAG - a duo with Brooklyn guitarist Mike Baggetta that deals with a spare, ethereal, and highly exploratory music, "clearly cut from cloth that hasn't been designed yet..." (–Improvijazzation Nation). Kris is a regular member of the Industrial Jazz Group and the Los Angeles Trumpet Quartet, and he has collaborated with a broad range of creative musicians including Vinny Golia, Wadada Leo Smith, Leroy Jenkins, Gerry Hemingway, Nels Cline, Ken Filiano, Kraig Grady, Tatsuya Nakatani, Jeff Kaiser, G.E. Stinson, Joe LaBarbera, Harris Eisenstadt, Lukas Ligeti and Brad Dutz. A California native, Kris holds an MFA in African-American Improvisational Music from California Institute of the Arts. He has lectured on both music and visual art, and currently directs the jazz program and teaches courses in jazz and American popular music at Bakersfield College.

PAUL KIKUCHI is a percussionist, composer, and instrument maker from Indianola, WA. Paul holds degrees in music from Bennington College and California Institute of the Arts, where he studied closely with Milford Graves, Wadada Leo Smith, and Vinny Golia. Currently, Paul's main project is the Empty Cage Quartet, though he is also a member of other bands such as Seattle's Orkestar Zirkonium. Kikuchi has been known to collaborate with musicians such as Marilyn Crispell, Daniel Carter, Paul Plimley, The Now Orchestra, and Gregg Keplinger, and has performed at festivals such as the Vancouver International Jazz Festival and the Earshot Jazz Festival. Paul is also a music educator. Recently he has been incorporating learning methods and somatic awareness drawn from his knowledge of the Feldenkrais Method into his teaching. He is currently music faculty at the Art Institute of Seattle, Academy of Creative Education, and West Sound Academy. He lives in Seattle, WA.

IVAN JOHNSON, from Los Angeles, completed his BFA degree at California Institute of the Arts in 2003, where he studied chamber music, jazz, composition, theory and arranging. He has studied contrabass with Charlie Haden, Darek Oles, and Peter Rofe; arranging and composition with Michael Pisaro, Marc Lowenstein and Mark Menzies; and Baroque music with Allen Vogel and Tisha Goldstein. Ivan has performed all over the United States with an eclectic group of ensembles, and made his solo debut at the 2003 Athens Music Festival in Athens, Georgia. As a musician on the progressive music scene he has premiered compositions by Marc Lowenstein, Vinny Golia, Mark Menzies, Anne LeBaron, Michael Pisaro, James Tenney, Kris Tiner, and Jason Mears. Mr. Johnson’s current projects include the Lian Ensemble - a classical Persian group which streches the boundaries of traditional Iranian music, Dark Wing plays a unique blend of world music using free improvisations and original composition for marimba, string bass, tar, setar, ney and a variety of percussion instruments, and the Nate Lapointe Band - a rootsy eclectic songwriting and improvising group. Ivan is head of the jazz program at Oakwood High School in Los Angeles, and he co-founded the Academy of Creative Music. Recently Mr. Johnson was the Assistant Music Director for the world premiere of the critically acclaimed opera "The Peach Blossom Fan," working closely with Stephin Merritt from the Magnetic fields, and has been an Artist In Residence at Stanford University, performing music by Brian Ferneyhough, and Mark Applebaum. Mr. Johnson recently premiered his own opera “Lucid Dreams” with composer Ethan Gruska.

Individual shots by Karla Jadwin © 2005 Jadwin Photography

---

DOWNLOAD PDF PRESS KIT (208kb) ELECTRONIC PRESS KIT @ SONICBIDS PRESS PHOTOS Click below to download, 300 DPI JPG (left and middle photos credit: Allen D. Glass II) For booking, concert info, or to join our mailing list please send an email to: emptycagequartet@yahoo.com   Empty Cage Quartet: In Oakland (FREE MP3 DOWNLOAD) Recorded at 1510 8th St Performance Space in Oakland, CA, August 6, 2007 1. Music performed as one continuous suite (41:04) The Taming Power of the Great (Mears) An Other Within (Mears) For Four Instruments (Tiner) Gravity No. 1: Part 5 (Tiner) I Hate Your Teapot (Tiner) Gravity No. 1: Parts 10 and 9 (Tiner) Swim Swim Swim, Eat Eat Eat (Mears)

---