Melvin Gibbs' 'Amasia' Listening Party

Marking the release of Melvin Gibbs' Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2, this listening party brings together Gibbs with special guests, multi-instrumentalists Josh Abrams and Ben LaMar Gay, for a fluid exchange of listening, performance, and conversation, presented by Hausu Mountain.

The avant-jazz odyssey, Amasia, finds Gibbs operating as composer, arranger, collagist, performer, and bandleader, all while merging together recordings that span two decades, featuring an interdisciplinary array of collaborators, into a composite whose amalgam of ideas transcend genre and categorization.

Following in the Anamibia series of releases which began with Anamibia Sessions 1: The Wave, Amasia shifts the focus from Gibbs’s purely solo electronic experiments towards the realm of large ensemble assemblage, recontexualizing performances recorded as early as 2006 within the wide scope of his contemporary production and the in-the-studio contributions from collaborators in 2024-2025. The thrilling results find, to give one example, the inimitable guitarist Pete Cosey – former Miles Davis / Muddy Waters / Herbie Hancock associate – who recorded his parts in 2006 playing his signature distorted leads alongside the organ and Wurlitzer of experimental jazz keyboard pillar John Medeski (also recorded in ’06) over a drum performance by luminary Greg Fox (recorded in 2025).

In his role as the spearhead of the many branching sonic facets of Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2, Gibbs drew inspiration from Teo Macero and Miles Davis’s boundary-shattering production & editing on landmark albums including Bitches Brew, On The Corner, and Get Up With It — with Agharta serving as the North Star for the album’s creation. Gibbs began meticulously compiling and piecing together Amasia to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Agharta in 2025, an album whose expansive atmospheres and genre-agnostic experiments inform his work to this day.

Event Program:

• Melvin Gibbs and Ben LaMar Gay Performance
• Amasia: Anamibia Sessions 2 Listening Session
• Melvin Gibbs, Josh Abrams, and Ben LaMar Gay In Conversation

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About Melvin Gibbs:

Grammy-nominated composer / producer / bassist Melvin Gibbs has a beyond-diverse background in jazz, rock, punk, and freeform experimentalism — anchored by mentors including Ornette Coleman and Gil Evans, encompassing work with Arto Lindsay, dead prez, and Sonny Sharrock, stints in Defunkt and the Rollins Band, and collaborations in ensembles including Power Tools alongside Bill Frisell and Ronald Shannon Jackson and the cooperative Harriet Tubman. Within the last few years, Gibbs released solo works on Editions Mego and Northern Spy, and performed in collaboration with Marshall Allen, Elliot Sharp, Don McKenzie (as Bootstrappers), Wadada Leo Smith, and with theoretical physicist Dr. Stephon Alexander (as God Particle). He recently finished his first book, titled How Black Music Took Over The World, which will be published by Basic Books next year. Gibbs plays bass in the band Body Meπa, whose two albums to date – 2021’s The Work Is Slow (HAUSMO120) and 2024’s Prayer in Dub (HAUSMO145) – were released by Hausu Mountain.

Melvin Gibbs Instagram

Melvin Gibbs Twitter / X

Melvin Gibbs Bluesky

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