Anna Webber - tenor sax, flute; Adam O'Farrill - trumpet; Mariel Roberts - cello; Elias Stemeseder - synthesizer; Lesley Mok - drums
Shimmer Wince is a new quintet led by saxophonist, flutist, and composer Anna Webber. Featuring Adam O’Farrill on trumpet, Mariel Roberts on cello, Elias Stemeseder on synthesizer, and Lesley Mok on drums, the music for this ensemble explores the applications of Just Intonation in a jazz/improvised context, including its intersections with rhythm and groove. Just Intonation, or JI, is an ancient tuning system based on the natural harmonics and resonances of notes. To Webber, her work using this non-equal tempered tuning system is a continuation of her research into using timbre and sound as organizing forces that are as important as harmony, melody, and rhythm. Shimmer Wince was released Oct 22, 2023 on Intakt Records.
Anna Webber (b. 1984) is a flutist, saxophonist, and composer whose interests and work live in the aesthetic overlap between avant-garde jazz and new classical music. In May 2021 she released Idiom, a double album featuring both a trio and a large ensemble, and a follow-up to her critically-acclaimed release Clockwise. That album, which the Wall Street Journal called "visionary and captivating," was voted #6 Best Album of 2019 in the NPR Jazz Critics Poll, who described it as “heady music [that] appeals to the rest of the body.” Her 2020 release, Both Are True (Greenleaf Music), co-led with saxophonist/composer Angela Morris, was named a top ten best release of 2020 by The New York Times. She was recently named a 2021 Berlin Prize Fellow and was voted the top “Rising Star” flutist in the 2020 Downbeat Critic’s Poll. Webber is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow. She has additionally been awarded grants from the Copland Fund (2021 & 2019), the Shifting Foundation (2015), and the New York Foundation for the Arts (2017) and residencies from Exploring the Metropolis (2019), the MacDowell Colony (2017 & 2020), the Millay Colony for the Arts (2015), and the Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts (2014). Webber is originally from British Columbia.
Photo by Alice Plati