Micah Hummel Alex Meltzer Duo at Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble

Micah Hummel (drumset) and Alex Meltzer (electronics, samples) invite the audience into their creative process with an open workshop and performance of music they have developed as a duo. As musicians continue to develop their work under covid-related restrictions, this video, shot on the mainstage at and with lighting design by Portland Center Stage, invites the audience to hear how they develop their music and to hear the “before and after” of a new composition as they collaborate.

There is a deep human element to this duo’s creativity—they’ve long been friends but done even more work together lately since they are also roommates—and a technological element, resulting from the tools they’ve chosen. Using devices on Hummel’s drums that send data to Meltzer’s laptop, the music combines acoustic and sampled or synthesized sounds in an improvised succession of textures and timbres....

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Micah Hummel (drumset) and Alex Meltzer (electronics, samples) invite the audience into their creative process with an open workshop and performance of music they have developed as a duo. As musicians continue to develop their work under covid-related restrictions, this video, shot on the mainstage at and with lighting design by Portland Center Stage, invites the audience to hear how they develop their music and to hear the “before and after” of a new composition as they collaborate.

There is a deep human element to this duo’s creativity—they’ve long been friends but done even more work together lately since they are also roommates—and a technological element, resulting from the tools they’ve chosen. Using devices on Hummel’s drums that send data to Meltzer’s laptop, the music combines acoustic and sampled or synthesized sounds in an improvised succession of textures and timbres.
Listeners won’t hear the Tin Pan Alley-inspired song forms typical of straight ahead jazz, but instead will hear a carefully constructed set of sound worlds that move from one to the next intuitively. Quoting a mentor of his, Hummel said “jazz is an approach to music, not a genre of music,” and this band uses this method to push themselves into “new territory via improvisation.”

The event will consist of the premiere of a 40-minute pre-recorded video produced by PJCE Executive Director Douglas Detrick and a Q&A with the artists joining remotely to answer questions from the audience and offer their reflections on this music and their lives as artists in this moment.

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