credit Camille Lenain, camillelenain.com
Skrontch Music
Byron Asher’s Skrontch Music is an experimental large ensemble performing new music that explores the history and lineage of jazz in New Orleans and the South through contemporary composition and collective improvisation. The Skrontch ensemble features a diverse cross section of New Orleans' creative music scene, drawing from the traditional, straight-ahead, and free jazz communities.
Skrontch Music borrows its name from a lesser-known swing era dance step, the Skrontch, which Duke Ellington featured in his show at the Cotton Club in the late 1930s. The lyrics to Ellington's 1938 recording of Skrontch instruct: "Skrontch on the four beat / Skrontch then you repeat / Skrontch up on your toes / And then start to cover ground." The emphasis on beat four propelled a dancer into the next measure of music, and like the dance, the music pauses in the here and now, looks back from where we came, and steps forward.
Lord, when you send the rain, the second in a series of recordings by the group, was released to the public on April 19, 2024 on New Orleans’ Sinking City Records. The album is a meditation on the blues, looking to the history of that music tradition as a Black radical socio-political cultural production rooted in the Mississippi Delta with central ties to the formation of jazz in New Orleans. The piece features evocative sound collage from electronic musician Peter J Bowling, sampling archival interviews with Fannie Lou Hamer, New Orleans residents after Hurricane Katrina, and noted blues singers Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey.
The composition of the work was supported by a 2018 MacDowell Fellowship, and the recording was funded by grants from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the Threadhead Cultural Foundation.
The group’s debut recording, Byron Asher’s Skrontch Music, was released in 2019. The album was researched and composed during a 2016/17 artist residency at New Orleans’ A Studio In The Woods and incorporates elements of sound collage and text from primary source documents to address the intertwined lineages of the formation of New Orleans jazz and anti-Jim Crow activism. The recording was supported by grants from the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation and the Puffin Foundation.
In March 2020, Skrontch Music embarked on its debut tour, playing shows across the Deep South, including at the Center for the Study of the South at the University of Mississippi. The tour was funded by an inaugural Jazz Road touring grant from South Arts, and the trip through the Delta was especially meaningful as they dug into the material featured on the second recording.
Skrontch Music ensemble members and collaborators include:
Doug Garrison - drums
James Singleton - bass
Steve Glenn - sousaphone
Oscar Rossignoli - piano
Emily Frederickson - trombone
Shaye Cohn - cornet
Reagan Mitchell - reeds
Aurora Nealand - reeds
Ricardo Pascal - reeds
Peter Bowling - electronics
Paul Thibodeaux - drums
Ricio Fruge - trumpet
Jenna McSwain - piano
Martin Masakowski - bass
Rex Gregory - reeds
Tomas Majcherski - reeds
Michael Torregano Jr. - piano
Emily Mikesell - trumpet
Dan Oestereicher - reeds
Jason Mingledorff - reeds
Brent Rose - reeds
Brad Walker - reeds
Justin Peake - electronics/production
Previous Skrontch Performances include:
University of Mississippi, Center for the Study of the South, Oxford, MS
Rudy’s Jazz Room, Nashville, TN
AND Gallery, Jackson, MS
Church of the Sacred Ear, Grand Coteau, LA
Jazz Now concert series, New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation
Snug Harbor, New Orleans
Shape of Jazz to Come, Sound Observatory New Orleans
The Broadside, New Orleans
Marigny Opera House, New Orleans
A Studio In The Woods Forestival, New Orleans
New Orleans Jazz Museum
Xavier University, New Orleans