Kneebody's five members are Adam Benjamin (keyboards), Shane Endsley (trumpet), Kaveh Rastegar (bass), Ben Wendel (saxophone) and Nate Wood (drums). Educated at the Eastman School of Music and the California Institute of the Arts, they have worked as sidemen with important figures from an astonishing range of artistic sensibilities including Ani DiFranco, Snoop Dogg, Steve Coleman, and Chaka Kahn. This versatility informs the category-defying music of Kneebody. Meshing the improvisational skill of jazz with the swagger of hip-hop and the conviction of rock, Kneebody plays hard and is endlessly creative. The result is an organic, original instrumental music that has, as one L.A. Music Connection reviewer wrote, "an epic, trans-generational gravity."
To see Kneebody play live is a unique experience. Each of the five members uses acoustic, electric and electronic elements in their live rig, so their shows feature a huge variety of sounds and textures. Their ten-year history of collaboration, dating back to their conservatory days, has bred a top-notch repore among the members - their collective pocket is infectious, and they improvise together with the confidence and sensativity of a well-established ensemble. And through the years, the five have maintained their relationships as close friends, which can be felt in the looseness and camaraderie of their magnetic stage presence.
Each of the five members is a contributing composer to the band as well, and their widely varied compositional voices have built an eclectic and balanced repertoire. Their live set moves dexterously from the moody rock anthems of Rastegar to open-ended groove structures by Endsley, from Wendel's highly nuanced through-composed chamber pieces to Benjamin's quirky, engaging opuses. Despite the complexity of much of their repertoire, the members of Kneebody learn all of their music by ear, memorizing the material as modular information, so that any of the pieces can be spontaneously reinvented in a new key or meter. This became more crucial as Kneebody's innovative system of musical cues became a larger component of their live show.
Their musical cues are among Kneebody's most inventive contributions. Kneebody first began using musical cues when Endsley wrote "The Slip", a piece that involved a cuing system adapted from his experience in Steve Coleman's band. Soon the band saw the great potential in these cues, both in subtly directing the band's improvisation and facilitating unexpected twists and turns in their compositions. Kneebody now uses a wide variety of cues in their live show, and they can affect all aspects of the music, from changing key or tempo, to starting one piece and beginning another, to directing the orchestration of an improvisation. These cues are interwoven into the natural flow of the music, generating an additional level of synchronicity to their ensemble playing. |