The Curious Bandpage

which was seeded in a two-part collaboration. Kevin Dunklee is a composer who experiments with form and harmony -- his primary instrument is trumpet, and he has also been playing and composing on the piano all his life. Tom Heyda is a songwriter, singer, bass clarinet player and guitar innovator who also came to the table with a stack of songs. Meeting by chance, they got excited about their similarities of style and intriguing and different song writing approaches, so their jam just seemed to continue over several months and build until it was time to bring in other instruments. Starting with percussion, Kevin called in his old friend "The Doctor" Diago, who was already beginning to experiment with different ways to play timbales and congas and jamblock and bells in a custom hand-drumming setup -- perfect to complement this stuff since they were shy about introducing the kick drum right away. They have now been working together in "the laboratory" for a bit over two years, and at this point they have developed a strong rhythm section with a good sense of the music -- which grooves in subtle ways sometimes and stretches in others......hard to really describe.