Jazz festival will have workshops and Animal Zoo
Band of the week
Friday, May 1, 2009
By DICKSON MERCER
Staff writer
Click here to enlarge this photo
Submitted photo
The members of Animal Zoo are, in the front row, Zak Croxall of Boston, left, and Randy Runyon Jr. of La Plata. In the back row are Tom Hartman of Boston, left, and Jeremy Vovcsko of East Bridgewater, Mass.
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If you go
A jazz festival will be held May 1 and 2 at the College of Southern Maryland, La Plata campus, 8730 Mitchell Road. The event begins with a free public high school jazz clinic hosted by Chris Vadala at 9 a.m. May 1. Vadala will host another workshop for jazz musicians of all abilities at 2 p.m. May 2. The college's Solid Brass, saxophonist Chris Vadala and Randy Runyon's Animal Zoo will perform at 8 p.m. May 1 and 2 in the fine art center. Tickets are $5. Call 301-934-7828.
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La Plata's Randy Runyon began playing guitar at 11 and grew up listening to the seminal bands of rock ‘n' roll. At some point, though, he discovered jazz.
Runyon began his studies with Baltimore guitarist Carl Filipiak and went on (with a scholarship) to Berklee College of Music in Boston. In the past four years he has played with a variety of groups. Last year, however, Runyon formed Animal Zoo. The Boston-based group will release its debut CD this summer, and Filipiak is one of the album's guest contributors.
Animal Zoo will perform during the College of Southern Maryland's jazz festival May 1 and 2. The lineup also includes the college's Solid Brass and saxophonist Chris Vadala, a professor of music at the University of Maryland, who will perform in concert as well as lead two free workshops — one for high school students on May 1, and another for jazz musicians of all abilities on May 2.
The four members of Animal Zoo describe their purely instrumental sound as a mix of funk and visual and hard house. "Welcome to the Animal Zoo," their MySpace bio states. "Here you will find four creatures roaming through a sonic bedlam, exploring the possibilities of vibration and color, groove and improvisation. This environment evolves and guides them as they explore and communicate their music with the rest of the world."
Experimental, or genre-bending, will partially describe this outfit. While the sound, as a whole, is certainly not smooth jazz, Animal Zoo will nonetheless borrow it as a concept, almost like Spyro Gyra.
In "Three Trees" the group is almost two bands at once. In one section it's homing in on jazz fusion; in another, it's conjuring the jam band Phish, either with peppy guitar or through psychedelic, space-like departures.
Go to www.myspace.com/animalzoomusic and check out the ambient yet groovy "Hieroglyph" or the colorful "Hippidy Hoppidy," in which free-wheeling sax whirls around a funky soundscape.
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