Luggage Store Creative Music Series
1007 Market Street SF
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A night of 2
8:00 pm Lorin Benedict- voice, and Ian Carey- trumpet
9:00 pm Rent Romus - reeds/flutes Alex Cohen - guitar


Lorin Benedict is an improvising vocalist (scat singer, essentially) living in Oakland. He attempts to introduce more structurally involved elements into the field of vocal improvisation. Most of his work in this area is centered loosely in the jazz idiom. Recently, Lorin has co-led small groups (duos, trios) in which the roles of the musicians are somewhat mutable even in contexts where highly structured forms are being played. Examples include Bleeding Vector with Berkeley guitarist Eric Vogler, and another duo project with east bay saxophonist Kasey Knudsen. Together, these three musicians jointly lead the trio project, The Holly Martins. He has also co-led another duo project with Brooklyn-based drummer Sam Ospovat. Lorin joined the fold of musicians rather late in life, at the age of 31, after many years of listening to recordings and live performances, many of which involved members of his immediate family (all of whom are/were orchestral musicians in the western classical tradition).

Ian Carey is a trumpeter, composer, arranger, bandleader and instructor, who “asks deep musical questions and comes up with compelling answers” (Bill Kirchner, editor, The Oxford Companion to Jazz).
Born in 1974 in Binghamton, New York, Carey grew up in a house suffused with music and art. His mother, the late Judi Carey, worked as an illustrator and arts fundraiser. His father Philip is an exhibit designer and gallery-represented graphic artist with a long-running series illustrating his vivid dreams. Also an adventurous vocalist, he performed with the Gregg Smith Singers in the 1960s, a chorus that frequently worked with Igor Stravinsky and won a Grammy in 1966 for the Columbia LP Ives: Music for Chorus.
Quickly recognized as a formidable improviser, Carey performed around the Bay Area with top-notch ensembles including: the Electric Squeezebox Orchestra, the Contemporary Jazz Orchestra, Tony Corman's Morchestra, Adam Theis’ Realistic Orchestra, Matt Small's Crushing Spiral Ensemble, accordionist Rob Reich’s Circus Bella All-Star Band, the Fred Randolph Quintet, and the Nathan Clevenger Group to name a few.

Alex Cohen is a guitarist, performance artist, and composer. From 2007-2014, Alex performed regularly with the jazz fusion group Organ Yank. Since relocating to the bay area, Alex’s work has shifted toward the absurd, often involving found objects and homemade wearable instruments. He has performed with Huge Statue of Jesus, NucciCohen Duo, Harbinger, Hamir Atwal, Eyvind Kang, Dennis Franz Kafka, Bad Jazz, Paul Mitchell, and Vincent Davis.

Rent Romus is a saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist, composer, bandleader, music producer, and community leader hailed by Downbeat as having "...a bold sound, unmistakable sincerity and conviction". A third generation Finnish American born in the great north of upper Michigan and growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area, Romus' work on the saxophone has been dubbed “ferocious” by the San Francisco Weekly and “central to the creative music world of the West Coast” by writer jazz critic Frank Rubolino. From his very beginnings as a student of jazz while being exposed to the twilight tutelage of Stan Getz he found himself drawn to the outer realms of Sun Ra and Albert Ayler, as well as Arthur Blythe, Derek Bailey and Merzbow. He leads the Lords of Outland a free improvisation unit since 1994, the Life’s Blood Ensemble a compostional contemporary ensemble, and works with pianist Thollem McDonas in the Bloom Project as well as the collective improvisation group The Ruminations.
He has recorded over 40 albums exploring improvisation and composition in a wide variety of musical settings both as a leader and sideman which have included Chico Freeman, John Tchicai, Vinny Golia, Thollem McDonas, Stefan Pasborg, James Zitro, Heikki "Mike" Koskinen, and Jon Bridsong to name a few. He is the founder of Edgetone Records with over 30 years of independent music production, and performance experience as well as the founder and Executive Director of Outsound Presents under which curates the bi-weekly music series known as SIMM at the Musicians Union Hall, the weekly Luggage Store Gallery Creative Music Series, as well as annual Outsound New Music Summit, the Bay Area's creative music festival held every summer in San Francisco.

Cost: $6-15

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