Event Detail

STEPH RICHARDS & QASIM NAQVI
Thursday, May 25th, 2023 at 7:00 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Music Center Experimental Theater

Duo collaborators Steph Richards (trumpet/compositions/UC San Diego Music Faculty) and Qasim Naqvi (composer/analogue synthesizer/drummer) Premiere a program of sonic constructions for trumpet, resonating vessels, drumset and analog synthesizers. Longtime collaborators, Naqvi and Richards most recently released Thyroid (2022) as part of the acclaimed Wind Layers project by 7K! Records also featuring saxophonist Colin Stetson and trombonist Peter Zummo.

ABOUT STEPH RICHARDS:

“A rising force in avant-garde jazz…a virtuoso of otherworldy sound” (Jazz Times)

Trumpeter and composer Steph Richards has steadily established herself in as an engaging experimentalist on the jazz and creative music scenes, working with pioneering artists ranging Henry Threadgill and Anthony Braxton to Laurie Anderson and David Byrne. Her work is driven by a curiosity of what sensory variables are open to experimentation— often resulting in interdisciplinary works that include scent, dance, and performed in unexpected spaces such as carousels or underwater. Her works have been featured stages as iconic and varied as Carnegie Hall, the Blue-note and Lincoln Center.

Originally from Canada, Richards has spent much of her career in Brooklyn, NY. Dedicated to experimental music without regard to genre, she is fluid in the contemporary music scene (she has performed alongside the Kronos Quartet and the International Contemporary Ensemble) as well as in the jazz and creative scenes, working with the many musicians such as Jason Moran, Ravi Coltrane and Sylvie Courvoisier.

As a soloist, Richards’ solo records explore improvisation, spectral experimentation, groove and, in her more recent release, scent. Supersense (Northern Spy Records, 2020), is an inter-sensorial body of works by Steph Richards in collaboration with scent artist Sean Raspet. It is an exploration of the emotional dialogue between sound and scent, which evokes sensations that linger in the wordless space of sonic vibration and chemical reaction. "Supersense makes for high-grade experimental avant-garde and then some" (All About Jazz ****1/2).

Her debut record Fullmoon (Relative Pitch Records) was hailed as a “bold pronouncement” by the New York Times and voted on multiple “Best of 2018” year end lists, including as the #1 Record of the Year by Free Jazz Collective. An electronic exploration of trumpet/resonating percussion and sampler, the record featured the work of pioneering electronic artist J.A. Dino Deane. Steph immediately followed up with her 2019 release Take The Neon Lights, a quartet situated between experimental jazz, free funk and avant rock, It also received high praise from critics, with Downbeat calling Steph “a virtuoso of nonlinear trumpet playing".

For years she co-produced the NYC-based FONT Music festival alongside trumpeter Dave Douglas and now produces FONT West on the West Coast. She is on faculty at the experimentally driven University of California San Diego and is a Yamaha artist.

ABOUT QASIM NAQVI:

Pakistani-American drummer and composer Qasim Naqvi is perhaps best known as a founding member of acoustic trio Dawn of Midi. Outside of his work in DOM., Naqvi is an accomplished solo artist with a passion for analogue and modular synthesizer systems. 

His concert music has been performed/commissioned by The BBC Concert Orchestra, Jennifer Koh, The London Contemporary Orchestra, Stargaze, Bang on a Can All-Stars, Crash Ensemble, The Now Ensemble, The Erebus Ensemble, yMusic, The Helsinki Chamber Choir, Alexander Whitley, Cikada, The Chicago Symphony Orchestra(MusicNOW Season) and others. He has been a featured composer at the Musica Nova Festival in Helsinki, the Spitalfields Festival in London, Ultima Festival, Southbank Centre and the Rest is Noise Festival in Holland.

Qasim's soundtracks for film have appeared on HBO, NBC, PBS, Showtime, New York Times Op-Docs, VICE Media, at The Tribeca, Sundance, Toronto, Rotterdam and London Film Festivals, at dOCUMENTA 13 and 14, The Guggenheim Museum, The Tate Britain (Turner Prize 2018), MOMA P.S. 1, IDFA, Berlinale and others. He has worked with such notable filmmakers as Laura Poitras, Mariam Ghani, Marc Levin, Naeem Mohaiemen, Smriti Keshari, Prashant Bhargava and Erin Heidenreich.

Acoustic trio Dawn of Midi have released two albums. Their most recent Dysnomia, was acclaimed by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Spin, The Guardian and the New Yorker. Radiohead personally picked Dawn of Midi as their support band for two sold out concerts at New York's Madison Square Garden for their Moon Shaped Pool tour.

Qasim earned his B.F.A in performance from the New School Jazz and Contemporary Music program and his M.F.A in composition and performance from California Institute of the Arts. He studied drums and performance with Andrew Cyrille, Joe Chambers, Reggie Workman, Buster Williams, Ralph Peterson Jr., Charlie Haden and Rashied Ali and composition with Wolfgang von Schweinitz, James Tenney, Morton Subotnick, Marc Sabat, Wadada Leo Smith, Michael Jon Fink and Anne LeBaron. He is a 2016 N.Y.F.A Fellow in Music and Sound and has received other fellowships and awards from Chamber Music America, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Mid-Atlantic Arts Council, Harvest Works, The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, S.T.E.I.M. and Art OMI.

Presently, Qasim lives in Brooklyn New York and works on a variety of projects as a freelance composer and drummer. He is represented by Erased Tapes Publishing.