Gerrit Hatcher, Peter Maunu & Julian Kirshner

media release: Gerrit Hatcher - tenor saxophone

Peter Maunu - guitar, mandolin, violin

Julian Kirshner - drums

One show only, $15. Sponsored by BlueStem Jazz

The Hatcher/Maunu/Kirshner trio is a union of three Chicago-based musicians active across diverse musical scenes, with a focus on the possibility of expanding territories to be found within the context of jazz and free improvisation. Julian Kirshner and Peter Maunu improvise together twice monthly as hosts and curators of the Splice Series at Chicago’s Beat Kitchen, and Hatcher and Kirshner have a running duo project of their own, including their 2017 release, "Five Percent Tint". The three have all participated with one another in various configurations throughout Chicago and beyond, creating a deep rapport as evidenced on their 2018 album "The Raven and the Dove". Through touring and extended playing, the trio has further opened up their comfortability with high-volume and high-density, in addition to quieter, textural, lower-case explorations, no show being quite like the one which preceded it.  

Guitarist and violinist Peter Maunu has toured, performed, and recorded with a long list of diverse musicians including Charles Lloyd, Jean-Luc Ponty, Bobby McFerrin, Tony Williams, Billy Cobham, Charlie Haden, Archie Shepp, and Grace Slick. As the guitarist on the Arsenio Hall Show, he performed nightly with legends like Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Ringo Starr, Madonna, Ray Charles, NWA, Public Enemy, and many more. Additionally, Maunu contributed to the soundtracks of film scores including Crash, Bobby, Food Inc., and television shows Chicago Hope, Arrested Development, and CSI New York. Since relocating to Chicago, he has performed and recorded with improvisers Fred Lonberg-Holm, Dave Rempis, Michael Zerang, Mars Williams, Jim Baker, Tomeka Reid, Katherine Young, Jason Roebke, Tim Daisy, Ryan Packard, Nelly Agassi, Avreeyal Ra, dancer Ayako Kato, and many others. In addition, he founded, curates, hosts, and performs at the Splice Series, a bimonthly improvisation series at the Beat Kitchen in Chicago.  

Gerrit Hatcher is a saxophonist, improviser, and composer. His own work typically engages with free jazz as a set of experimental practices, and as an idiom with a history unto itself, but he participates in the diverse spectrum experimental and improvised music being made in Chicago today. Hatcher has many active projects including his duo with Kirshner, a composed solo saxophone practice, the improvising trio Devouring the Guilt, and his organ quartet Refunction.  

Julian Kirshner is a Chicago-based percussionist primarily working in the context of jazz and improvised music. Percussion studies began at age 10 when Kirshner was selected to be a member of the CSO’s Percussion Scholarship Group. Over the past 10 years, he has studied with Sarah Allen, David Bloom, Dylan Ryan, and Frank Rosaly. Kirshner also organizes the Improvised Music Series at Myopic Books, a weekly showcase of musicians playing uncharted music in a first-time context.