Flow State by RACCA Trio

RACCA Trio is Montana-based guitarist, Alex Nauman; Colorado-based bassist, Matt Smiley; and Wyoming-based percussionist, Ron Coulter. Coulter and Smiley met at the first VU Symposium for Experimental and Improvised Music in Park City, UT in July of 2016. Since that meeting the two have worked together on many gigs and projects. Nauman and Smiley met during their time at the University of Northern Colorado–from 2008 to 2009, and they have gigged and worked on numerous projects ever since. The meeting of the three of them was Smiley’s idea when he and Nauman were planning to meet in Casper, Wyoming to exchange some newly printed vinyl records of one their latest recording projects. Casper is where Coulter lives and just happens to be exactly in between the others' homes in Denver and Montana. The trio recorded for several hours that day in December 2020 and had lunch at Racca’s Pizzeria Napoletana. The lunch spot resulted in the trio’s name. They've published three albums, including "The Great Expanse" with trumpeter, Hugh Ragin.

The trio shares interests and experience in jazz, free jazz, free improvisation, various pop music genres, and contemporary art music, among other unique individual musical interests and pursuits. They have played straight-ahead jazz together, but their recordings have mixed free improvisation and free jazz, with small excursions into “idea-based” and some conducted improvisation with Ragin. The recording session that resulted in this album, “Flow State”, had been in the air since their last session in April 2021. With the support of Right Brain Records, the session finally came to fruition in November 2023 The loose concept was to improvise in a free funk, psychedelic improvisation style. The result was a fresh and energizing session, which you can hear here.

Led by percussionist and composer Ron Coulter, the Creative Music Series is a forum for bold improvised and experimental music. Based in the foothills of the Wyoming Rockies, big sky's the limit for CMS's contributing artists. Hear their results here.

roncoulter.com
rightbrainrecords.com