Friday August 21 * doors at 7, music at 7:30 * $15-25 * TICKETS

Renowned vocalist Laura Ann Singh leads an all-star ensemble across a repertoire that fuses poetry, free jazz, and avant-garde energy in an evening of captivating soundscapes. Mean Reds (OOYH 038), the debut album by Richmond-based vocalist and composer Laura Ann Singh, was conceived after she first heard Asha Puthli’s incredible contributions to Ornette Coleman’s Science Fiction in 2023. Though a relative newcomer to the improvised music world, the multilingual Singh is internationally renowned as a founding member of the bolero band Miramar, and recently as the featured vocalist in Tomeka Reid’s Ellington project. She has long admired free and avant garde jazz, but knew that her contribution to the genre would not be sound-based or heavily dependent on extended techniques like many modern singers. Her compositional approach, less common in the avant jazz world, is rooted in song. The Fracas Quintet consists of OOYH’s Scott Clark on drums and Adam Hopkins on bass, Bob Miller on trumpet, and John Lilley on reeds. Clark’s style of slow moving drone music, influenced by Morton Feldman and often cited as the sound of Richmond free jazz, is certainly present on Mean Reds; in fact Singh and Clark co-wrote two of the songs, Mean Reds and As Strange As It Is. 

Mowder Oyal  is a collective of musicians and multidisciplinary artists that make hardcore punk and free jazz at the same time. With musician and arts lawyer Adam Holofcener on guitar, Konjur Collective’s Bashi Rose on percussion and vocals, Mind On Fire's James Young on bassoon, and performance artist Sun Lynn Hunter on vocals, Mowder Oyal (phonetic Baldamore-ese for “motor oil”) is a sonic supergroup that Baltimore Magazine called “the Most Baltimore Band to Ever Baltimore.” As Bandcamp pointed out, Mowder Oyal’s work fits squarely in the lineage of creative music and weird jazz coming out of Charm City since Gary Bartz and Carl Grubbs. Frequent collaborators include multi-reedist Jamal Moore. Past members include founding vocalist SHAN Wallace (AKA Lor Ugly Yo) and phenom MC Eze Jackson.