Sunday, April 26
1433 E 33rd St Cleveland
Doors 7:30, music 8PM
$15 suggested donation
No one will be turned away for a lack of funds

Toby Summerfield is a bassist, guitarist, collaborator, improviser, composer. and aught dawg. He comes from rock music, through jazz and tries to operate in a cross- pollinated musical garden. He’s most at home in complicated rock bands and free improvised situations- and especially loves when both can happen. But he’ll do whatever you ask him to, within reason. He has worked extensively with Colin Stetson, jaimie branch, Dina Maccabee and Bill Brovold; been a section leader and sub conductor for Rhys Chatham’s 100 guitar performances and leads the large ensemble Never Enough Hope. During the pandemic he started a solo practice built in the tools and techniques he has developed through his career to collaborate with his musical friends. He feels lucky to have been in Ann Arbor in the late 90’s and in Chicago during the Aughts, getting to play with the luminous humans who populated the music communities in those cities.

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This performance of A Kairos Quartet is a first-time happy accident occasioned by Toby Summerfield’s passage through Cleveland to support a new record. Summerfield and Kluth were musical compatriots in Chicago during the ‘00s, contributing to one another’s lives and musical projects in big and small ways (see Summerfield’s band Never Enough Hope and Kluth’s band Aldric). Separated by years of pursuing life in different directions, they’ll be joined for this set of musicking by the luminous collaborative improvisors Carmen Castaldi (drums) and Garrett Folger (trumpet) as they interpret compositions by Kluth, Folger, and Castaldi.

AJ Kluth is an improvising saxophonist and collaborative musician. He worked extensively in Chicago, NYC, and Los Angeles scenes before coming to Cleveland in 2019 where he has become a top call reed player in mainstream and experimental musical contexts. Additionally, he serves as musicology faculty at Case Western Reserve University where his research and teaching reflect his interests in issues of aesthetics, identity, and ethics in global popular and experimental musics.

Garrett Folger is a freelance composer, educator, and performer based in Cleveland, Ohio. A graduate of the conservatory of music at Baldwin-Wallace University, he has performed across the country including at the Kennedy Center and Carnegie Hall, as well as internationally in Canada, Europe, and in numerous festivals across Cuba in 2023. Notable musical collaborations at home include performances with Sammy DeLeon y su Orquesta, the Cleveland Jazz Orchestra, Jazzworks and his own group co-led by Carmen Castaldi and Anthony Fuoco where many of his own compositions are interpreted. Garrett’s large ensemble compositions have been performed by groups such as the Third Law Collective and the Skatch Andersson Orchestra.

Carmen Castaldi was raised in Cleveland, Ohio, where he started playing jazz drums in his youth. After high school, he honed his skills at Boston's Berklee School of Music, where he attended alongside fellow Cleveland native, saxophonist Joe Lovano. There he studied with noted performer/instructors Joe Hunt, Alan Dawson, and Ed Bobick. Graduating in 1974, he moved to Las Vegas and spent much of the next decade working with artists like Keely Smith, Don Rickles, and Sonny Stitt. Relocating to Los Angeles, he continued to find performance opportunities, working with a bevy of West Coast luminaries including Teddy Edwards, Bill Perkins, Frank Strazzeri, and Herb Jeffries. During this period, he was also a member of the Bob Gail Orchestra.

Over the years, he also stayed in touch with Lovano, working with the acclaimed saxophonist on gigs at Los Angeles' the Jazz Bakery (with trumpeter Tim Hagans), the San Diego Jazz Festival, and New York's the Knitting Factory (with pianist Kenny Werner). In the mid-'90s, Castaldi returned to Cleveland, where he led his own groups and continued his association with Lovano, appearing on 2002's Joe Lovano: Viva Caruso. In 2019, he joined the saxophonist and pianist Marilyn Crispell for the ECM date Trio Tapestry.