The Southern California based electro-acoustic improvisational group soNu has been described by Anthony Braxton as producing "the music of the Third Millennium." Synthesizing the wide range of musics and cultures that its members have grown up with, absorbed, and studied, the group - informed by individual sensibilities yet focused on creating a collective musical language - functions as a "laboratory" in which its members engage in the creative music process of bringing present, past and future forms, structures and textures into real-time music making practices.
soNu has collaborated and performed with luminaries from the world of post-free improvisational music, including performer/composers Anthony Braxton, Anthony Davis, Lisle Ellis, Vinny Golia, Earl Howard, George Lewis, and Wadada Leo Smith. soNu is committed to extending the music exemplified by these musicians and thinkers by critically (re)examining and (re)conceptualizing compositional and improvisational forms and means, with an eye toward the socio-cultural context of contemporary communities.
The group has appeared at The American Composer's Orchestra's Improvise! Festival (New York City), the Copenhagen Jazz Festival, the Interpretations concert series (Merkin Concert Hall, New York City), Olavsfestdagene Festival (Trondheim, Norway), Cross Drumming International Festival (Warsaw, Poland), The University of New Mexico's New Music Festival, The University of California, Riverside's Improvisation Festival, Trummerflora's Spring Rubble festival (San Diego), and Powering Up/Powering Down, the International Festival of Technology in the Arts at University of California, San Diego.
| Sounds from the Source, soNu's debut album released in 2004, prompted composer, historian, and theorist, George Lewis, to write: | |
| "soNu is a most unusual quartet for the beginning of a most unusual time. Alive and kicking well after the end of history, the ensemble's interpretations move well beyond preconceived notions of an individual improviser-composer's 'style' to assert a most trenchant form of co-creation. Through careful reflection and insight, exercised both before and during each performance, the members of the group create an unshakeable unity around each piece. With soNu, improvised structures flow under, over, around, and through pre-structured forms in seamless integration, and as the ensemble learns to co-exist with uncertainty, contingency and rupture as the exchange-value of possibility, lessons for listeners lurk." | |