Current and recent projects include Moraine, Tempered Steel, Ting Bu Dong, Iron Kim Style, Tanabata Ensemble, Identity Crisis, and Chekov.
Influences
MUSICAL INFLUENCES: John Abercrombie, Art Ensemble of Chicago/AACM, Derek Bailey, Paul Bley, Anthony Braxton, Brotherhood of Breath, John Cage, Eugene Chadbourne, Don Cherry, John Coltrane, Cui Jian, Miles Davis, Stuart Dempster, Eric Dolphy, ECM, Bill Evans, free improvisation, Fred Frith, Stan Getz, Egberto Gismonti, Jimi Hendrix, King Crimson, Gyorgy Ligeti, John McLaughlin, Charles Mingus, Ben Monder, No Wave, William Parker, Harry Partch, Annette Peacock, Jim Pepper, psychedelia, George Russell, Terje Rypdal, Elliott Sharp, Soft Machine, Sun Ra, Toru Takemitsu, Keith Tippett, Ralph Towner, Robert Wyatt, and the music of Brazil, Cambodia, China, Korea, the Naxi people, North Africa, Vietnam, and Xinjiang. EXTRAMUSICAL INSPIRATIONS: Edward Abbey, J.G. Ballard, Paul Bowles, William S. Burroughs, Dadaism, deep ecology, Philip K. Dick, Marcel Duchamp, Federico Fellini, Fluxus, William M. Gaines, Allen Ginsberg, Andy Goldsworthy, Brion Gysin, Jane Jacobs, Ken Kesey, Stanley Kubrick, James Howard Kunstler, Bob Marshall, John Muir, Mardy and Olaus Murie, Pacific Northwest coast and Southwest native cultures, Man Ray, Gary Snyder, David Suzuki, Ichiro Suzuki, Taoism, William T. Vollmann, Alan Watts, Zen
Record Label
First World Music, MoonJune, Sky, Palace of Lights
Dennis Rea's adventurous guitar playing blends modern jazz, creative rock, experimental music, and world musical traditions into an approach that is uniquely his own, embracing haunting lyricism, enigmatic textures, agile improvisation, and the raw dynamism of rock. He has performed on three continents at such venues as the WOMAD Festival, Beijing International Jazz Festival, Sichuan-China International TV Festival, Bumbershoot Arts Festival, Columbia Gorge Amphitheater, and Earshot Jazz Festival. Over the years Dennis has led or been a key contributor to numerous innovative groups, including Land, Stackpole, Axolotl, Savant, Earthstar, Ink, Eric Apoe & They, Identity Crisis, the Gang of Formosa, Moraine, and Ting Bu Dong. He has performed or recorded with such prominent creative musicians as European free jazz legend Han Bennink, Chinese rock megastar Cui Jian, acclaimed French composer Hector Zazou, German electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze, trombone virtuoso Stuart Dempster, and jazz mainstay John Clayton, as well as members of King Crimson, R.E.M., Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Ministry, and the Sun Ra Arkestra. He has collaborated with many of the most important figures in contemporary Chinese music and was one of the first Western musicians to record an album for the state-owned China Record Company. His activities have included film, theater, radio, and modern dance, and he has appeared on more than two-dozen recordings to date. He was a finalist for Best Guitarist in the 2005 Seattle Weekly Music Awards, and won a Golden Ear Award for Best Northwest Outside Jazz Group in 2000 as leader of the improvising quartet Stackpole. He is also an accomplished author whose most recent work is the book Live at the Forbidden City: Musical Encounters in China and Taiwan. For more information, see Dennis Rea's Web site.
"Dennis is a young, very talented musician who I think will develop into something quite interesting"
—Stan Getz in 1979
"One of the most talented instrumentalists in the region, Rea has long distinguished himself in varied settings, creating a dynamic, lyrical, enigmatic blend of modern jazz, boundary-pushing rock, experimental music, and world music traditions. In Seattle, he has participated in some of the most impressive homegrown musical outfits, including the late 1990s juggernaut quartet Stackpole, with whom he won the 2000 Earshot Jazz Golden Ear Award for best Northwest 'outside jazz.'"
—Earshot Jazz
"The first time I heard LAND guitarist Dennis Rea, he was playing the greatest phased guitar solo of all time on Earthstar's 1979 classic of Euro-electronica, French Skyline."
—The Wire
"Anybody who can make a guitar sound like my broken radiator is all right by me."
—audience member at a Dennis Rea solo prepared-dobro performance
Hey Dennis, thanks for accepting! I came to your page via Atze Ton; I'm working on a few songs of mine with him at the moment - excellent musician with a brilliant producer's touch! ;-) All the best, Niels
Hello Dennis, Thought of you the other day on my way up Santanoni - all the good hikes we had. It's great to hear your new music and see that you are doing well. The Best! Dan
Our simplification algorithm tends to remove unstable features of Blum's medial axis. Moreover, our algorithm preserves the topological structure of the original medial axis and ensures that the simplified medial axis has the same homotopy type as Blum's medial axis. We use the separation angle formed by connecting a point on the medial axis to closest points on the boundary as a measure of the stability of the medial axis at the point. The medial axis is decomposed into its parts that are the sheets, seams and junctions. We present a stability measure of each part of the medial axis based on separation angles and examine the relation between the stability measures of adjacent parts. Our simplification algorithm uses iterative pruning of the parts based on efficient local tests. We have applied the algorithm to compute a simplified medial axis of complex models with tens of thousands of triangles and complex topologies.
Ni hao & greetings from Taipei. I really love it here, just winding down a month stay. I'll be heading back to Taiwan in May to complete a recording with aboriginal kids (from the Ami tribe) playing samba drums to traditional & pop Taiwanese music...
Let's get together sometime!
love
Amy
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