Guitar Legend David Torn To Tour US In Support Of New Album “only sky”

Ever-intrepid guitarist, producer, improviser, film composer and soundscape artist David Torn will embark on his first solo tour of the US since the mid-nineties (see itinerary below). The 22-city tour is in support of “only sky” – an album that explores the far sonic edges of what one man and a guitar can create, a solo recording of almost orchestral atmosphere.
“only sky” is Torn’s first ECM release since 2007’s acclaimed “prezens”, a full-band project, with Tim Berne, Craig Taborn and Tom Rainey, that Jazzwise described as “a vibrating collage full of shimmering sonic shapes, a dark, urban electronic soundscape – a potent mix of jazz, free-form rock and technology that is both demanding and rewarding.” Many of those same descriptors apply to “only sky”, with its hovering ambient shadows and vaulting flashes of light, its channeling of deep country/blues memories and Burroughsian dreams of North Africa. Recorded in the acoustically apt hall of the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center in upstate New York (and then sorted and mixed in Torn’s own mad-scientist lair), “only sky” is an album to get lost in, over and again.

Says David, “For the ‘only’ sky tour, I’ll be performing as I did for the recording: playing the electric guitar, bending its effect to how I might hear it fit these early days of the 21st Century; maybe I’ll even convince it to kick some ass, too! Stranger things have happened.”

Across his career, Torn has worked with jazz improvisers (Jan Garbarek, Tim Berne, Don Cherry), film composers (Ryuichi Sakamoto, Carter Burwell) and art-pop singers (David Bowie, David Sylvian). He has also composed music for several films including “Friday Night Lights”, “Lars and the Real Girl”, “Everything Must Go”.

“Torn has a knack for creating music that is at once ethereal and gestural…Torn’s integration of ephemeral realism and celestial surrealism is palpable, providing the true ebb and flow of only sky’s dramatic arc.” – Wilbur MacKenzie – The New York City Jazz Record

“To call him a hero of the electric avant-garde would be accurate but incomplete.” – Nate Chinen, The New York Times

“Go ahead and call the wily guitarist a master of chopped ‘n’ screwed jazz schema. Onstage the mad scientist and his new pals find a way to balance the aggression with the reflection. Wildly tantalizing textures.” – Village Voice New York

David Torn tour dates:
May 08 – New York, NY at Subculture
May 10 – Hamden, CT at The Ballroom at The Outer Space
May 11 – Marlboro, NY at The Falcon
May 12 – Dunellen, NJ at NJ Proghouse @ Roxy & Dukes
May 13 – Cambridge, MA at Regattabar
May 14 – Philadelphia, PA at Philadelphia Art Alliance
May 16 – Portland, OR at Holocene
May 17-18 – Seattle, WA at Storyville (Pike Place)
May 19 – San Francisco, CA at Slim’s
May 20 – Sacramento, CA at Gold Lion Arts
May 21 – Los Angeles, CA at Blue Whale
May 22 – Denver, CO at Walnut Room
May 26 – Minneapolis, MN at Cedar Cultural Center
May 27 – Milwaukee, WI at The Jazz Estate
May 29 – Chicago, IL at Constellation
May 30 – Cincinnati, OH at The Monastery
May 31 – Pittsburgh, PA at Club Café
June 1 – Washington DC at Union Arts
June 3 – Baltimore, MD at The Windup Space
June 4 – Carrboro, NC at Cat’s Cradle
June 6 – Asheville, NC at Streamside Concerts
June 7 – Atlanta, GA at Red Light Café

Source: ECM Records