TMT: Toren-Morris-Taddeo Trio + Late Night Jazz Jam Influenced by new music, jazz, and avant-rock, join us as this exciting New York City-based group makes BLU debut and hosts a special late night jazz jam session! Featuring Cat Toren, Angela Morris, Anthony Taddeo & special guest, Sam Blakeslee.

TMT is a New York-based trio featuring piano (Cat Toren), tenor saxophone (Angela Morris), and drums (Anthony Taddeo) that performs original compositions and collaborative improvisations. Influenced by new music, jazz, and avant-rock, the trio’s arrangements for this bass-free instrumentation showcase the multifaceted chamber music character of the piano and explores the extension of the roles of all three instruments.
 
Mixed with extreme moments of free improvisation that build on through composed melodies/rhythms, the TMT Trio is anything but common.
 
Join us as the TMT Trio brings an exciting set of artful originals for their BLU Jazz+ debut, followed by a special Late Night Jazz Jam! The Late Night Jazz Jam is for musicians and music lovers alike, so bring your horn and join us at the gathering place for the area’s finest professional and up-and-coming talent!
 

Cat Toren

(Piano and Compositions) – Catherine (Cat) Toren is a jazz pianist, improviser, and composer. Originally from Vancouver, Canada, Cat has studied classical piano and theory at the Royal Conservatory of Music and holds a Bachelor of Jazz Studies from Capilano College in Vancouver. She has been a valued participant at the Banff Centre’s Big Band Workshop and Jazz and Creative Music Workshop with funding from the Canada Council for the Arts.
 
Cat is the pianist in the collaborative quintet Pugs and Crows who won Instrumental Album of the Year at the 2013 JUNO awards for their release Fantastic Pictures. At the 2010 Vancouver International Jazz Festival, the group won the prestigious Galaxy Rising Star Award. They have received high acclaim in the Canadian creative music scene, having performed coast to coast and shared bills with artists such as Bill Frisell and Jill Barber. In 2011, Cat was honoured to be selected as the recipient of the Denis Jackson Endowment Fund while at The Banff Centre. Also in 2010, Cat had the privilege of performing in the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver.
 
Cat relocated to Brooklyn, New York in the summer of 2010 and is very active in the creative music community. She has a quartet under her leadership, co-leads in the internationally based trio Elk Town, and works as a contributing musician in many ensembles, including Jasmine Lovell-Smith’s Towering Poppies and folk guitarist Matt Pierrot. Cat has many years of teaching experience (privately and as a master-class clinician at the Kiwanis Jazz Festival), and has worked for Creativ Music Vancouver and the Brooklyn-Queens Conservatory of Music. She is proudly on faculty at the Musician’s General Store in Brooklyn, NY. Cat has two record releases under her name thus far and has worked as sideperson on numerous other recordings. Leading groups in Europe, Canada and America, Cat continues to pursue her dream of playing music all over this beautiful earth.
 

Angela Morris

(Saxophone and compositions) – Angela Morris has performed in clubs, festivals, and concert halls across Canada and in the US, the UK, Ireland, Belgium and Denmark. She plays and writes for several collaborative bands, including Rallidae with vocalist Alex Samaras, Common Wealth – a sextet she co-leads with saxophonist Jasmine Lovell-Smith, and Candidland. The Angela Morris Toronto Quintet, active since 2008, features some of Canada’s finest young jazz musicians (Jon Challoner, Don Scott, Dan Fortin and Ethan Ardelli).
 
A Canada Council for the Arts grant recipient, Morris received her masters degree in jazz composition from the City University of New York where she studied with modern big band wizard Darcy James Argue and was awarded the Marvin Hamlisch award for Jazz Composition. Morris continues to compose music for large ensemble, and is currently a member of the BMI Jazz Composer’s Workshop run by Jim McNeely and Mike Holober. She has spent several blissful springtimes on scholarship at the Banff Centre workshop in Jazz and Creative Music where she had the opportunity to work with many renowned artists including director Dave Douglas.
 
Morris has contributed violin, flute, clarinet, saxophone, and vocal performances to indie film scores and rock records.
 
She is also a passionate educator, serving as faculty at National Music Camp of Canada since 2011, and co-founding Toronto’s Annex Academy of Music in 2009.
 

Anthony Taddeo

(Drums and Compositions) – Anthony Taddeo is a drummer, composer and ODP performing artist currently residing in Cleveland, OH. Anthony was introduced to the performing arts at an early age and has a long varied history in both piano and percussion. Early on in his musical career he studied with world renown percussionist Jamey Haddad before moving to New York City in 2009 to further pursue his musical career at The Newschool for Jazz and Contemporary Music. In 2010 Anthony was asked to represent The Newschool and perform at the Bern jazz festival in Switzerland for two weeks with Melanie Charles and Nitzan Gavrieli. In 2011 Anthony graduated with honors from The Newschool and immediately began performing with a wide variety of artists from all genres of music including: Dan Tepfer, Frank Wess, Ron McClure, Amber Rubarth, Dave Edgar, Lora-Faye Whelan, Joel Schmirnoff and Charles Giordano. In 2013 He has performed with, Tony and Grammy award winning, Steve Kazee to sold out crowds at the legendary Birdland Jazz Club and 54 below. More recent notable performances include a jazz tour in Spain during the “Ciclo 1906 Jazz. Fest” June of 2014 with Rachel Brotman.
 
Anthony is an active composer and arranger for projects in NYC and Cleveland. Along with composing sound design for videos and animations he has his own percussion experiment called “kitchen table music,” he is also currently endorsed by “Out of the Drawer Percussion” as a performing artist.
 

$5 (free for jam session musicians)