ACTUAL/ACTUAL
LIVE AT MANNY’S
APRIL 18
DOORS AT 6PM SHOW AT 8PM
Actual/Actual showcases jazz improvisation with an orientation towards thematic music and spontaneous composition at its core. Their wide swath of performative expression taps swing, ballads, freejazz, modal and other musical genres. It's all “grist for the mill” as they create a new context for these elements where improbable connections are made when you least expect them to.
Front man and saxophonist Rent Romus whose performative history started in the late eighties, originally hails from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan and has made it a point to engage and collaborate with musicians throughout the Midwest region. This band represents an important part of his “talent reconnaissance” and is truly a multi-generational affair. Their first album Baptismal was released in the summer of 2022.
In the spring of 2023 they released an EP here for the outside recorded live at WYSO radio in Yellow Springs Ohio while on Edgetone Records.
Rent Romus - alto, soprano saxophones
Gerard Cox - piano, Rhodes, Wurlitzer, Korg key bass, percussion
Josh Strange - vibraphone, trumpet
Troy Kunkler- drums
Press Quotes:
"Spectral moments surface throughout as a bit of other-worldliness emerging from brassy cacophony. Raucous, delicately haunting, and most definitely coy, the album has a kind of nonchalant majesty to it." - Elise Mills, White Crate
"Baptismal is the group's debut and presents a band with high energy, lots of creativity, close interplay, subtlety, and plenty of fire" - Richard Gilman-Opalsky, Activator Magazine "This is free jazz - you might think, well yeah, 70ies style Milt Jackson - but somehow these chaps keep an edge to things. There is a continuous presence of free improvisation lurking around the corner, as well as a more 'rock' style approach to playing..." - RSW, Vital Weekly
Listen:
https://soundcloud.com/rent-romus/actual-actual-2023-compliation https://edgetonerecords.bandcamp.com/album/baptismal https://rentromus.bandcamp.com/album/here-for-the-outside