Steve Coleman, Jamie Baum, and Elliott Sharp Win Guggenheims

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Source: Downbeat.com
Posted 4/11/2014

Saxophonist Steve Coleman, flutist Jamie Baum and guitarist Elliott Sharp are among the recipients of 2014 fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

In its 90th annual competition for the United States and Canada, the Guggenheim Foundation awarded 177 fellowships (including one joint fellowship) to a group of 178 scholars, artists and scientists. The candidates were chosen from a group of almost 3,000 applicants. The fellowships are awarded on the basis of prior achievement and "exceptional promise."

Coleman, a highly regarded composer, bandleader and saxophonist, is famous for his M-Base concept (Macro-Basic Array of Structured Extemporizations). His long discography includes Functional Arrhythmias and The Mancy Of Sound, both recorded with his band Five Elements and released by the Pi label.

In an essay posted on the Guggenheim website, Coleman writes, "In my music, I have utilized various kinds of musical structure and temperament to symbolize the specific kinds of musical movement necessary to reference various states of energy, with the concepts of change, process and growth being central to my work. Specifically, I believe that it is through the spontaneous composition of forms that my ideas can be most readily expressed, regardless of external stylistic appearances."

Baum has toured nearly 30 countries and has performed with Randy Brecker, Tom Harrell, Dave Douglas, Fred Hersch, Uri Caine and Wadada Leo Smith. Though focusing primarily on jazz, she has been involved in several projects and tours in which she performed classical, Brazilian and Latin music. Her discography includes the Sunnyside titles In This Life and Solace.

Composer-guitarist-sound artist[-multi-instrumentalist-performer] Sharp has pioneered ways of applying fractal geometry, chaos theory and genetics to musical composition. His leader projects include SysOrk, Orchestra Carbon, Terraplane and Tectonics. [In the 1980s, he co-led Sonorexia with Peter Cherches, AKA JT member and bon vivant Pete C; Pete has described it as an "avant-vaudeville music-performance group."] Sharp is currently developing the opera Port Bou, which will receive its premiere at Issue Project Room in November. . . .

Information on the current Guggenheim Fellows is posted at the foundation’s website.