Manna~For~Thought Improvisational Trio delves into the immediacy of now with an artful array of skillfully notated and arranged original post-modern music compositions, graphic compositions, free open-gorms, and deconstructions of jazz music. The thought-provoking poetic word structures that are manipulated, dissected, and reassembled into new music within the context of each pieces weave a pliable thread of creative expression that adds counter-movement and shape. The experimental approach and intuitive interplay of its members ia a thrilling aural delight intriguing and marvelous to witness.
This group of masterful improvising musicians was formed in January, 2011 by creative vocal artist, composer & poet Nora McCarthy. Their first performance, January 24, 2011 was at Local 269 on the Lower East Side, NYC as part of the Arts For Art Evolving Voice Series produced by Patricia Parker, founder of the Vision Festival. McCarthy’s concept for the group was based on the poetry and music she writes that makes the connection between the spiritual in art and the human experience, hence the name, Manna For Thought. For this project, she used Dom Minas-guitar and Ras Moshe-tenor/flute. The synergy between all three artists was uncanny and quite remarkable and thus Manna for Thought quickly became a collective and included the compositions and arrangements of all three artists. They performed in and around New York’s Lower East Side and Brooklyn sporadically for seven years, producing one digital album of their original compositions which garnered some very favorable reviews.
"I met Nora about ten years ago and we became instant friends. We started playing and working together soon after and it has been a respectful and joyful experience. I would hear Ras Moshe play at CBGB’s on Sunday nights around 2001 and I said to “myself this is one hell of a player.” When Nora put together Manna For Thought using Ras Moshe, I thought this should be different and it was. Ras had grown into one hell of a major player and that one gig led to a series of rehearsals and some work and now a new recording with each of us contributing our original compositions. I am thrilled to be part of this trio. Explorations into the musical- unknown is what it has always been for me and this group does exactly that." Dom Minasi 10/21/2017
Nora McCarthy Manna~For~Thought Improvising Trio Nora McCarthy, Dom Minasi, Ras Moshe By: Grego Applegate Edwards ". . .The session is not just free, which would still be interesting of course with these musicians, it is most definitely a product of a kind of structured musical thinking that gives the numbers a feeling of fore-ordinance, of a special intention, a way to get the threesome together on a page like each one is writing this music as they play it, that a composition arises in each case in the way the three think together and out loud musically. At the same time there are compositional things going on too. All meshes together in ways where you do not feel a radical separation of planned and spontaneous note-ing, but instead a thoughtful and soulful gathering of three masters who make a very pointed effort to listen carefully to one another and create something worthwhile..."
Nora McCarthy | Dom Minasi | Ras Moshe: Manna for Thought By: Raul Da Gama - Aug 28, 2018 The creative outlook of this trio of improvisers is formed by their vast experience in recitation, voice artistry and free instrumental improvisation that has been influenced by the limitless exploration of sound. Nora McCarthy, brings her leaping and loping vocalastics, Dom Minasi, evokes both the visceral excitement and the gliding elegance of the guitar and Ras Moshe does for the tenor saxophone what Mr. Minasi does with the guitar on Manna for Thought an album of music that combines music with exuberant vocal excursions that combine free verse, nonsense phonetics and the sound-mass textures of the tenor saxophone and guitar as well as often zany theatricals and other adventures by these three brilliant musicians. Musically the disc shows each of the musicians at their most diverse, featuring such strikingly offbeat inspirations as from a car (or cars) in traffic, spirituality, electronic contraptions, and nature performed with portentous music vibrating with rhythm and harmonics superimposed over Miss McCarthy’s gleaming alto. The grizzled voicing of the tenor saxophone is overlaid onto the round sound of Mr. Minasi’s guitar always with a decidedly dissonant flavour comprising the innovative counterpoint of fluttering vocalizations from the tenor saxophone and deliberately wrong-footed chordal and other pizzicato motifs and gestures from the guitar. All of this is expressed in a complex rhythmic style in which conflicting layers of tempi are used to drive the music forward. The musicians often led by Miss McCarthy explore the possibility of creating monumental, pulseless music made up of shifting layers of glacial music, all with subtly changing textures whose component parts slide and flow seamlessly in and out of each other. One spectacular example is “The Whole Thing” which begins – as usual, simply enough – with Miss McCarthy leading the charge but soon morphs into a sort of low musical growl after the tenor saxophone and the guitar come screaming in. Like its companion pieces everywhere on the album, the impact of this track is overwhelming. One moment the saxophone seems to evoke a great wheezing organ, another time the frenetic strumming of the guitar, a swarm of demented bees. Texture is everything; there are no silences, instead, the music is punctuated by a series of enormous crescendos. The rest of the music while forever in improvising mode – and therefore constantly changing – is, nevertheless similar. Still, the overall effect is very different. Clusters of closely held sound by Miss McCarthy, Mr. Minasi, and Ras Moshe – melodic lines and chords made up closely adjacent notes – are built up in overlapping layers. There is still a sense of sculpted sound, but the combination of voice, guitar, and tenor saxophone timbres are often radiantly beautiful, suggesting something bejewelled and glowing. Track list – 1: Vehicle Vehicle; 2: Lesson In Compassion; 3: I See/You; 4: Frequency One; 5: The Whole Thing; 6: Snow Falls Personnel – Nora McCarthy: voice; Dom Minasi: guitar; Ras Moshe: tenor saxophone Released – 2017 Label – Independent Runtime – 45:12