IMPFest XI

Guest artists Lucia Pulido (voice, cuatro) and Stomu Takeishi (bass) headline the Eleventh Improvised Music Project Festival. The annual festival, co-hosted by the School of Music and the student-led Improvised Music Project, presents up-and-coming musicians, faculty all-stars, and seasoned professionals of international renown. 

Friday May 24: Lucia Pulido with UW Jazz Studies faculty and students

Saturday, May 25: Stomu Takeishi with UW Jazz Studies faculty and students.

VIDEO: WATCH TED POOR INTRODUCE IMPFEST XI

ARTIST BIOS

Lucia Pulido

Lucia Pulido’s off-stage demeanor–delicate, reserved, unassuming–belies one of the most powerful and original voices in Latin American music today: a torrent of sound and emotion that mesmerizes with its energy and captivates with its sensibility. Back in the late 80’s and early 90’s, Lucia left an important mark in popular music in Colombia. Since her arrival in NYC in 1994, however, she has become a relentless explorer and exponent of the depth of Colombian and Latin American folklore.

Of most significance is the fact that she has delineated her efforts with experimentation, surrounding herself with a variety of improvisers, composers and producers who are established artists and pioneers in their own right, such as Fernando Tarres, Erik Friedlander, Satoshi Takeishi, Dave Binney, Christian Fennesz, Burkhard Stangl, Franz Hautzinger, and long-time collaborator, producer, and musical director Sebastian Cruz.

The wealth of feeling in her music is indescribable. In one set you may hear her tackling an electrifying up-tempo puya (an exuberant dance from the northern coast of Colombia) with athletic energy and virtuosity, soaring with impossible ease over the frenzy of the rhythm, followed by a heart-breaking alabao’ (a funeral lament from her country’s forgotten Pacific region) sung with enchanting tenderness. Such is Lucia’s aura: rich in its inheritance of tradition and its embrace of modernity, alive with the spirit of a true innovator, bursting with expressiveness.

She is currently working on several projects with musicians in New York City and in different countries in Europe and Latin America. Her active career includes performances in Canada, United States, Europe, Asia, and South America.

Stomu Takeishi

Stomu Takeishi (born 1964, in Mito, Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan) is a Japanese jazz bass player. He generally plays fretless five-string electric bass guitar, as well as a Klein five-string acoustic bass guitar. He often uses looping or other electronic techniques to enhance the sound of his instrument.

Takeishi began as a koto player. He came to the United States in 1983 to attend the Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. After completing his degree in 1986, he moved to Manhattan to continue his studies at The New School. He has lived in New York City ever since.

In the 1990s he began to achieve prominence as an innovative New York jazz bass player, and critics have noted both his adventurous playing and sensitivity to sound and timbre. He has played in many international jazz festivals and often performs at major venues in New York, the United States, and Europe.

He has performed and/or recorded with Don Cherry, Henry Threadgill, Pat Metheny, Bill Frisell, Butch Morris, Dave Liebman, Randy Brecker, Wynton Marsalis, Paul Motian, Myra Melford, Cuong Vu, Badal Roy, David Tronzo, Erik Friedlander, Satoko Fujii, Laszlo Gardony, Ahmad Mansour and Andy Laster.

In Downbeat's 57th Critics Poll in 2009, Stomu was the poll winner in the category of Electric Bass, Rising Star.