Sunday 12/9: Fire In My Head (The Anxiety Suite): East Bay Premiere

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Hello folks! I wanted to invite you to a very special performance coming up--it's the East Bay premiere of my brand new composition Fire In My Head (the Anxiety Suite) for my Quintet+1 (with Kasey Knudsen, alto saxophone; Sheldon Brown, bass clarinet; Adam Shulman, piano; Fred Randolph, bass; Jon Arkin, drums, and myself on trumpet) at The Back Room in Berkeley.

Some back story: a few years ago I wrote a suite for my Quintet+1 called Interview Music, which was purposefully not about anything. I wanted to let the music stand on its own, and while I don't regret that decision, in retrospect 2016 was a not a good year to be "above the fray," artistically speaking.

So when I was very fortunate to receive a grant (from Chamber Music America's New Jazz Works program) to compose a new major work for my band, I decided to write about something I've been struggling with on a personal level for ages, and that pretty much everyone I know has been dealing with on an hourly basis since, oh, late 2016: anxiety.

Fire In My Head is my five-part, 55-minute attempt to translate that emotional cyclone into music. The movements (Signs & Symptoms, This Is Fine, Thought Spirals, Internal Exile, and Resistance) range from straightahead jazz to chamber music to free improvisation, and represent some of the densest yet most personal composition I've ever done. But one thing I discovered in the process is that, just as my wife pointed out to me that "even your happy songs have an undercurrent of anxiety," even my intentionally anxious material can't seem to help but to also reflect hope and a desire to create beauty and connection.

So please join me and my bandmates (who have been working their butts off on this challenging material) Sunday, December 9 at 5pm for our East Bay premiere at The Back Room in Berkeley!

The Ian Carey Quintet+1: Fire In My Head (The Anxiety Suite)—East Bay Premiere
Sunday, December 9, 5pm-7pm
The Back Room, 1984 Bonita Ave, Berkeley
Tickets ($15 advance, $18 door)

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