Summit Quartet
In the waning days of 2021, Sweden-based pianist Walter Thompson, joined Wyoming-based percussionist Ron Coulter and Denver-based saxophonist Mark Harris and bassist Matt Smiley for an open recording session, with no script or plan. The result is the album New Air, with seven fresh, spontaneous tracks.
Coulter had met Thompson and Harris at a workshop a few months earlier. The topic was Soundpainting, a real-time composition process of Thompson’s invention. Thompson has collaborated with Anthony Braxton, John Zorn and orchestras of Paris, Berlin, Copenhagen, Barcelona, New York, Chicago and LA, among others. Coulter is an accomplished performer and composer with equally vast credits. The Summit Quartet formed quickly as a creative project based on a shared language of improvisation, with deep jazz roots.
Walter Thompson has achieved international recognition as a composer and for the creation of Soundpainting, the universal multidisciplinary live composing sign language. Thompson has composed Soundpaintings with contemporary orchestras, dance companies, theatre ensembles and multidisciplinary groups in United States, Europe and South America. In 1974, after attending Berklee School of Music, Walter Thompson moved to Woodstock and began an association with the Creative Music Studio. While there, he studied composition and woodwinds with Anthony Braxton and began to develop his interest in using hand and body gestures as a way to create real-time compositions. Beginning as a tool to help shape the direction of a performance, it has evolved to become a universal composing language for composers and artists off all disciplines and abilities. Soundpainting is now being used both professionally and in education in more than 35 countries around the world.
Matt Smiley is a bassist, composer, and educator residing in Denver. As a performer and a composer, Smiley focuses on developing systems and modes of playing at the nexus of composition and improvisation referencing the American and European experimental music traditions, while simultaneously deviating from them. He has worked with prominent performers and composers including Alvin Lucier, Christian Wolff, Stephen Drury, Jean-Claude Risset, Terrell Stafford, and Greg Osby. In addition to a rigorous performance schedule, he teaches at both Denver School of the Arts Jazz Camp and The Gift of Jazz.
Ron Coulter is a percussionist, composer, and improviser. He has presented at over 100 universities and has toured internationally appearing in 49 U.S. states, Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan with artists such as the Glenn Miller Orchestra, Chicago Chamber Orchestra, David Murray, Sandy Duncan, Bolokada Condé and Tone Road Ramblers, among others. Ron has presented at numerous conferences, co-founded the Percussion Art Ensemble, duende entendre, Marble Hammer, Drm&Gtr, the Southern Illinois Improvisation Series and the Creative Music Series. Additional interests include noise, intermedia, interdisciplinary collaboration, and organizing Fluxconcerts. Ron has penned more than 400 compositions for various media.
Coulter is also a member of RBR artists SeFa LoCo and, with Smiley, RACCA Trio.
Mark Harris is currently Assistant Professor of Studio Saxophone at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He has worn many musical hats, from backing national and international artists including Bob Hope, Cab Calloway, George Shearing, and Roger Waters, to working with bands in Afro-Pop, Electronic, Big Band, Avant Garde, Art Rock, Classical Chamber and other uncategorizable styles. His wide-ranging interest in creative and collaborative music is demonstrated by his current performance groups including The Lamont Sax Quartet, the Metro Wind Consort, Thinking Plague, Hamster Theater, 9th and Lincoln Big Band, Random Axe, and Ligeia Mare. He has a profound interest in getting improvisation and more open creativity into public schools and has become an advisor to Denver Public Schools on the subject. Mark has been a passionate studio teacher for over 30 years, and he maintains a private studio.
