Mat Muntz 3-day Residency: Day 1 Phantom Islands
Phantom Islands II - Bag of Winds
Mat Muntz - Balkan bagpipes, bass, compositions
Ben Goldberg - clarinets
Kasey Knudsen - alto saxophone
Scott Amendola - drums/percussion
Nominated for a 2024 German Jazz Prize for Best International Debut Album, composer/bassist/bagpiper Mat Muntz's Phantom Islands presented sounds which had literally never been heard before: a microtonal chamber free jazz odyssey for the obscure Croatian bagpipe primorski meh, praised in The Wire as evoking "a strangeness which is positively thrilling." This instrument's jarring timbre and non-tempered tuning remain at the center of new compositions for some of the Bay Area's finest improvisers, blurring the line between traditional and experimental musical vocabularies.