The fascinating music on Nate Wooley’s album Columbia Icefield was inspired by the largest icefield in the Rocky Mountains. It feeds into the Columbia river, which Nate Wooley saw every day of his youth in Oregon. Columbia Icefield is also the name of Nate Wooley’s current band, which takes inspiration from man’s relationship to nature and, more generally, humanity in the face of the unapproachable.

In Columbia Icefield, Nate Wooley plays alongside guitarist Ava Mendoza, who previously performed on our stage with her own band, and with Erik Friedlander’s Sentinel. Completing the group are Susan Alcorn on pedal steel guitar and Ryan Sawyer on drums and vocals. Nate Wooley is considered a contemporary innovator of the trumpet, an adventurous musician fascinated by jazz as well as radical improvisation. In 2001 he moved from Oregon to New York, where he collaborated with avant-gardists such as John Zorn, Anthony Braxton and Fred Frith.

Nate Wooley trumpet, Susan Alcorn pedal steel guitar, Ava Mendoza electric guitar, Ryan Sawyer drums