StLJN Saturday Video Showcase: Spotlight on Chris Corsano

This week, let's take a look at some video clips featuring percussionist Chris Corsano, who will be in St. Louis to perform Saturday, January 28 at the Kranzberg Arts Center in a concert presented by New Music Circle.

Corsano, a veteran free improvisor raised and still based in New England, has played and recorded with a wide variety of musicians over the past two decades, including improvisors like saxophonists Paul Flaherty and Evan Parker and multi-instrumentalist Joe McPhee, as well as Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, Nels Cline of Wilco, rock singer Bjork, and groups such as Six Organs of Admittance, Vibracathedral Orchestra, Cold Bleak Heat, and Rangda. For his gig here, he'll be joined by two St. Louis musicians, bassist Darin Gray and bassist Dave Stone.

Today's clips offer excerpts from four relatively recent live performances that should serve to illuminate some of Corsano's techniques and tendencies as an improvising musician. First up, there's a part of a 2010 solo show at a house concert venue called The Nicolas Cage in New Brunswick, NJ.

Down below, there are parts of two more solo performances, one in October 2010 in Berlin and the in May, 2009 in Turners Falls, MA. We wrap up with a half-hour chunk of the recent concert by Corsano with his longtime collaborator, saxophonist Paul Flaherty, and guitarist Bill Nace last December at Flywheel Arts Collective in Easthampton, MA.

For more about Corsano, check out this interview he did with Perfect Sound Forever; and this one he did with the website Tiny Mix Tapes.