sam comerford's thunderblender with ultan o'brien + laurence cousseau quintet
Laurence Cousseau – alto flute
Luis Miguel Aguilar – bass clarinet
Joseph Nowell – piano, FX
Emanuel Van Mieghem – bass
Pierre Ferrand - drums
Sam Comerford – reeds, tin whistle
Hendrik Lasure – keyboards
Jens Bouttery - drums, percussion, live sampling
Ultan O'Brien - fiddle, alt fiddle
After Thunderblender’s debut album Stillorgan (2020), Comerford dives ever deeper into the music he grew up with. Lasure and Bouttery get to dive along, taking in oxygen from Irish fiddler Ultan O’Brien. He swaps County Clare for County Cureghem, letting his background in traditional Irish folk and improvised music roam freely within a new group sound.
Dream and reality meet in the compositions of Laurence Cousseau, firmly rooted in jazz while playfully flirting with contemporary classical.
As a resident at Walter, Sam Comerford explores the space between avant-garde, improvisation, and the Irish folk tradition of his youth. The residency connects to his research project 'Radical Variations, Primitive Forms: The Melodic Language of Tommie Potts in Improvised Music'.
After an intense residency week in December with John Francis Flynn, Jozef Dumoulin, and Samuel Ber, Comerford has a cunning plan for the spring. In March, he meets the remarkable American pianist Myra Melford and shares that magic with a few students from KASK & Conservatorium Gent.