Grex (Karl Evangelista) East Coast Tour, 7-16/25

[ep1str0phy]

Hello, all-

I don't post here all too frequently anymore, but for those enterprising East Coast denizens who are inclined toward music both new and oblique, my trio Grex (me, guitarist Karl Evangelista, keyboardist Rei Scampavia, and drummer Robert Lopez) is in the midst of a short run of East Coast dates. Having just finished a successful twofer in Philadelphia and Arlington, we hit DC tomorrow.

The upcoming dates:

July 16, 7:30pm (doors)/9pm, $8, Washington, DC
at Velvet Lounge (915 U St NW)
with Ted Zook’s Lost Civilizations and Jeff Barsky’s Insect Factory

July 19, 8pm, No Cover, Brooklyn, NY
at Pete’s Candy Store (709 Lorimer Street)
with Good Times Cocaine, Golden Alphabet, and The Synthetic Blues (Grex at 8pm)

July 20, 8pm, $5-10 sliding scale, Cambridge, MA
at Outpost 186 (186 1/2 (Rear) Hampshire St)
with Angela Sawyer/Nick Neuberg/ EthanParcell Trio + Morgan Evans-Weiler Solo

July 21, 7:30pm, $5-10 sliding scale, New York, NY
at The Delancey (168 Delancey Street)
with Michael Coleman’s Young Nudist, Gene v. Baker, and MORE

July 23, 8pm (doors), 9pm, donation/all ages, Brooklyn, NY
at The Silent Barn ("Pleasure Jail" upstairs show, 603 Bushwick Ave)
with Timosaurus, Jason McMahon Solo, Diamond Terrifier

July 25, 7:30pm, $15 general/$10 students, New York, NY
at Spectrum (121 Ludlow St #2)
w/Nathan Hook/Mobiustrip

Grex might best be described as free jazz/art rock--we're former students of the great Roscoe Mitchell (of AACM fame) and have worked with the likes of Fred Frith (and his band Cosa Brava), Zeena Parkins, Hafez Modirzadeh, Francis Wong, and Tony Levin (of King Crimson fame).

This is a special tour for us, in support of our new album Monster Music. It's a summation of our activities in the past half decade, a very new step on our quest to create both "new improvised music" and contemporary "people's" music, a rare opportunity to work with some great East Coast artists, and our first chance to bring this set out East.

Here's us, a couple of days ago:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPfkODjR-fU

The album:

http://grex.bandcamp.com/album/monster-music

For further background, here's an interview I just gave for the online magazine Prepared Guitar (actually a pretty interesting website--among the heavier interviewees are the likes of Bill Frisell, Nels Cline, Frith, etc.): http://preparedguitar.blogspot.com/2014/07/karl-evangelista-13-questions.htm

And some choice reviews:

http://wordsonsounds.blogspot.com/2014/06/grex-monster-music.html (insightfully mentioning Frith, Charlie Hunter, and Henry Cowell, in turn)

http://zookeeper.stanford.edu/index.php?action=viewRecentReview&tag=1053032 (likening us to a band comprised of literal cinematic monsters)

http://www.tinymixtapes.com/chocolate-grinder/premiere-grex-monster-music (dead-on analysis by our own resident virtuoso critic, the great Clifford Allen)

Cheers, as always, Organissimo board,

K/ep1 Edited July 24, 2014 by ep1str0phy

[AllenLowe]

I am actually staying in Brooklyn this weekend - have a wedding to go to and some other stuff going on - and will have my horn but don't let that cloud your judgement - will see what I can do.

Edited July 15, 2014 by AllenLowe

[ep1str0phy]

Are you playing at all? Genuinely curious, since musical visits to this part of the EC can be rare, I know.

[AllenLowe]

just at a friend's wedding, if my hand is ok (just had surgery); but if I can I will come by.

[Chuck Nessa]

Great idea. Looking for reports.

[.:.impossible]

Come to Richmond next time!

[GA Russell]

Break a leg, ep!

[ep1str0phy]

Thanks, guys! We're doing the full 50 states next time, sanity or no sanity.

[AllenLowe]

reporting back, as ordered by Chuck - heard Grex last night in Brooklyn -

LOVE this band. Grex is one of the few performances I've seen of late with such a powerful life-force; everything goes into the music, it is energy without wasted effort; lots of brains AND brawn. Wonderful trio, perfect rhythm section, and Karl has both taste and technique. This is a true fusion band - meaning it fuses so many good ideas together into a very original kind of post-rock song form, and it performs as one very unified entity. Go see it when you can; I plan on using them on a recording if we can get it together.

Edited July 20, 2014 by AllenLowe

[ep1str0phy]

Thank you for the kind words, Allen--genuinely great to meet you, and I hope the West Coast gets an opportunity to hear your music in person sooner rather than later.

It occurs to me now that the address listing I had originally given for Spectrum was/is incorrect. This one is right: 121 Ludlow St #2, New York, NY.

Spectrum (on Friday/July 25) will be our last hit on this coast--and to those of you we've manged to see, and to all those supporters of creative music who have extended their hospitality and generosity to to us in the past couple of weeks--we thank you.

This is more of a "macro" thought, but one I've found to be really and profoundly true: adventurous music these days really lives or dies by the support of the listeners. The one thing that seems to unify the "great" gigs all across the coasts--from the SIMM Series in San Francisco and Grand Star Jazz in Los Angeles to what used to be Duende in Oakland, the Fire Museum curations in Philadelphia to Sonic Circuits in Washington DC, etc. etc.--are people with enough dedication and conviction to treat the music with dignity and generosity, often at a commercial loss. The commercial gigs can be fun and exciting, if only/especially with a big audience, but these curated gigs are special. Fred Frith once told me that it only takes a single person to "make" a scene, and over the course of my travels these past few years, it's become clear that many worthy artists have come to greatly benefit from the vision of a handful of people operating "outside" of normal commerce.

Anyhow, as a deeply self-critical musician myself, I've been very proud of Grex's music on this tour--some of the best we've ever made, and consistently exciting--and I look forward to wrapping it up on Friday. I've heard great things about Spectrum, and it's another one of "those" spaces I mention that we should really and truly cherish.