Todd Capp

Todd Capp (* around 1945 in New York City ) is an American jazz and improvisation musician ( drums ) and gallery owner.

Live and act

Capp began playing drums while studying at the University of Chicago . On the South Side of Chicago he played with blues musicians (such as Arthur Crudup ) and around the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), which was emerging at the time , such as Roscoe Mitchell , Lester Bowie , Anthony Braxton , Elvin Bishop , Jason Kao Hwang and Douglas Ewart . After a stay in Northern California, where he had worked with the Free Arts Workshop and keyboardist Eddie Sears , he returned to New York. There he played u. a. with Denman Maroney at Club The Kitchen and in Clyde Cottens Kwanzaa Ensemble at Club Baby Grand . At the end of the 1970s he directed the Improvising Orchestra , which u. a. and William Parker , Jason Hwang and Roy Campbell belonged and appeared in Lofts in Downtown New York. The album Quintessence was created in 1978 (which was only released in 1999). In 1980 he received a Meet the Composer grant and also worked as a concert promoter for the Blind Boys of Alabama . From his improvising orchestra emerged a new band called None of the Above , which had an underground hit on John Peel's radio broadcasts in 1983 with their rock single Feel Like a Dog .

In the early 1980s, Capp temporarily ended his music career and opened an art gallery in New York's East Village (223 East 10th Street) in 1985 , in which he exhibited visual artists such as Tony Fitzpatrick, Joe Coleman , Ken Brown, David Butler, Stefano Bicini , Henri Chariot , Leya Evelyn , John Geldersma , Augustus Goertz III , Greg Kaats and Eric Sparre . An improvised duet with Rashied Ali finally persuaded him to reappear as a drummer. In the 2000s he toured France with the Open Jazz Quartet, in New York he performed with the John Hagen Trio ( Segments , 2002), Joe Giardullo 's Language of Swans in New York venues such as Cornelia Street Cafe , Knitting Factory , Roulette , The Stone , Santos Party House and 2010 at the Vision Festival . In the following years Capp u. a. with Bryan Eubanks and Andrew Lafkas ( Ocean Roars 1000 Drums ); in addition, the album First Third was created in 2006 in a trio with Stephen Gauci and Reuben Radding . This was followed by collaborations with Connie Crothers , Simone Weißenfels , Per Gardin , Hannes Buder , Sylvain Kassap , Benjamin Duboc , Satoshi Takeishi , Guillermo Gregorio , Michael Lytle , Welf Dorr / Joe Hertenstein as well as the live electronics artists Mikey Holmes, Mailis Rodrigues and the poet Steve Dalachinsky in Paris. In 2013 he founded the formation Todd Capp's Mystery Train , an electro-acoustic improvisation ensemble that fuses free jazz , minimal drone and dream pop.

The Improvising Orchestra: Improvising Orchestra, Vol. 1: Quintessense (Lucky Tiger, 1999), with James Lott , William Parker, Rashid Bakr , Kim Starner , Augustus Goertz , Ray Anderson , Arthur Williams
Stephen Gauci, Reuben Radding, Todd Capp: First Third (577 Records, 2006)
Oceans Roar 1000 Drums (Ilse 2009, ed. 2012), with Bryan Eubanks and Andrew Lafkas
Todd Capp's Mystery Train (2015), with Kurt Ralske, Watson Jennison, Andrew Lafkas, Gao Jiafeng, Michael A. Holmes