Striving for connection:
Moving beyond expectations:
In an increasingly detached world, how do we nurture the relationship between musician and audience? We need to present live experiences that are never the same. We need to spontaneously create while the audience is in the room!
This is the idea behind Game Night. We take musical ideas and stories, and use them to create new experiences every time we play. Our compositions are games for improvisors. We start with some basic rules and then see where they take us!!!!
Kenny Foster
Kenny Foster is a woodwind specialist and music educator. He holds degrees in Music Education and Performance from the Crane School of Music and the University of Nebraska. He is the 2013 recipient of the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra Musicians' award for Outstanding Music Educator.
Kenny Foster is also currently performing regularly in the Rochester area with a wide variety of groups including The Bill Tiberio Septet, The Laura Dubin Quintet, The Coupe De’Villes, 52nd Street, The Gregory St. Vagabonds, The Uptown Groove, The Eastman Community Music School Music Educators Wind Ensemble, and other freelance work such as duos and pit orchestra playing.
His current work includes developing frameworks for improvising musicians using alternative structures. His Game Night Quartet is now performing and recording these compositions. He is a frequent guest conductor for scholastic festival bands in NY. Most recently he has presented workshops to educators teaching improvisation to young students.
The Quartet
In 2023, Kenny Foster contacted bass player Matt McNulty, and suggested that they get together with keyboardist Jon Tucker, to do some rehearsals with the idea of creating a side project that would be primarily devoted to playing improvised music with more open structures. Matt suggested Dave Maccarone as a drummer. These musicians have been very important in the development of the interaction and sound of the quartet.
The group has become a laboratory to experiment with the materials at hand and develop personal interaction without the need to gig regularly. Rehearsals and performances are Game Nights. The quartet never really knows the outcome until they play. Although accustomed to formal structures and techniques, this band permits the music to grow organically based on choices that players make while improvising. They have given themselves permission to challenge notions of how things must develop. In doing so, they have drawn on elements of Free jazz, Funk, Fusion, 12 tone music, Chance music, Rock, Bop, Blues, World Music, Pop, Performance Art, and more…….
All of this sounds pretty complicated, but the band has never strayed from humor and fun in the process!