Adam Kantz is an improviser, composer, and creative coder currently based on the east coast of the United States. His work is rooted in the spirit of musical experimentation across a wide range of modern musical practices and traditions.
He is committed to the simultaneously self-determining and collaborative nature of musical improvisation as a compositional tool and works with an ever-expanding group of musicians and composers in the creation of new music. Through applying various emerging machine listening and machine learning possibilities, Adam’s intentions are to expand laptop performance to open new pathways for the relationship between musician and computer.
Abstract Black is one of many highly notable projects of jayve montgomery, a Nashville sound artist and multi-instrumentalist of the Chicago school of Free, Creative, and Improvised musics, Sonic Healing Ministries sector. He was Senior Program Specialist for the Chicago Park District’s Inferno Mobile Recording Studio (2006-2013), a collaborative sound making program for youth and people with disabilities. He was also a curator and artist-in-residence at Brown Rice (2008-2012), an art space for listening in Chicago, IL.
Since moving to Nashville, he has become an integral member of the improvised and experimental music scene of the city and region; gaining local recognition for Nashville Scene solo performance of the year 2019; and becoming alum of Pitchfork Music Festival (Standing on the Corner), High Zero Festival of Improvised and Experimental Music, and True/False Film and Music Festival. 2021 has taken Montgomery on two tours of France with The Bridge.
"Montgomery’s new music, released on cassette by Nashville label Banana Tapes, doesn’t sound out of place in the current jazz scene. In Circles With Self could make a bookend with bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding’s work, and it bears similarities to glitchy, hip-hop-influenced repertory records like MAST’s 2018 Thelonious Sphere Monk. Even though he’s been influenced by jazz, Montgomery hasn’t set out to rework the jazz repertoire. His Abstract Black recordings combine spoken-word sections with sections that use circular looping, and he also plays saxophone with a skronky bite that is immensely satisfying.
For Montgomery, an admirably unfettered musician who seems determined to seize the moment, jazz is a constant presence, but he says it might be merely a point of departure. As he tells me, “It’s taking this concept of great black music, Sun Ra-influenced stuff, and putting it into the circles.”
Edd Hurt, Nashville Scene, January 24, 2019