Decades ago it was George Wein, a man on a mission to spread the joy he felt from the music that touched his soul. Today two enthusiastic young curators are following in Wein’s footsteps. They’re shaking up the scene by presenting new music that thrills them, and defining a new audience in the process.
Jointly curated by Brice Rosenbloom of Boom Collective and Adam Schatz of Search & Restore, the Undead Music Festival has appealed to those whose eclectic tastes tend toward the fringes of creative improvised music. In its third year, the renegade festival (a kind of springtime counterpart to the equally adventurous Winter Jazz Fest) expanded its borders beyond New York for the first time, by organizing a “Night of the Living DIY” in homes, warehouses, artspaces and clubs in Chicago, Milwaukee, Austin, Houston, Seattle, Portland, Richmond, Oslo, Copenhagen and other host cities on May 11. The Festival’s final night, May 12, featured a series of improvised round-robin duets at New York City’s 92YTribeca.
