About Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Chamber

Founded by mon­ster bassist Jared Nick­er­son and Vil­lage Voice icon Greg Tate in 1999, Burnt Sugar the Arkestra Cham­ber is a sprawl­ing band of musi­cians whose prodi­gious per­son­nel allows them to freely jug­gle a wide swath of the exper­i­men­tal soul-jazz-hip hop spectrum.

Burnt Sugar was orig­i­nally con­ceived as a forum for the New York area impro­vi­sa­tional musi­cian to com­pose, record and per­form mate­r­ial which reflects the breadth and depth of Amer­i­can dias­paran music in the 21st cen­tury. The intent of the Arkestra Cham­ber, through the deploy­ment of Butch Morris’s con­duc­tion sys­tem, is to make every per­for­mance a fresh inter­pre­ta­tion of its con­stituent parts.

Rather than limit our­selves to the straight jack­ets that the com­mer­cial record­ing indus­try uses to mar­ket con­tem­po­rary Black Music, Burnt Sugar freely moves amongst many styles, eras and gen­res to devise its own excit­ing hybrids.  These hybrids are based on a solid foun­da­tion of var­i­ous musi­cal tra­di­tions and the use of cutting-edge music tech­nol­ogy.  In this sense the group mis­sion hon­ors its deep­est inspi­ra­tions, the first post-modernists of Amer­i­can music – Duke Elling­ton, Sun Ra, Par­lia­ment Funkadelic and The Art Ensem­ble of Chicago.

This very accom­plished crew has play­ing cred­its that range from Toshi Reagon, DJ Logic, Gary Lucas„ TV On The Radio, Tamar Kali, Phish, William Parker, Liz Wright, The Holmes Broth­ers, Wadada Leo Smith, David Mur­ray, Joseph Bowie.

Arkestra Con­duc­tor Greg Tate says, “Burnt Sugar got the nerve to claim Sly Stone, Mor­ton Feld­man,  Bil­lie Hol­i­day, Jimi Hen­drix and Jean Luc Ponty as prog­en­i­tors. Our player-ranks  include known Irish fid­dlers, AACM refugees, Afro-punk rejects, unre­pen­tant bebop­pers, fem­i­nist rap­pers, jit­ter­bug­ging doowop­pers, frankly loud funk-a-teers and rodeo stars of the dig­i­tal divide.”

For book­ing and press inquiries:
Con­tact Jared Nick­er­son
201 420 1509