Racer Session #557 | Conner Eisenmenger | Sunday January 29, 2023 at 7pm

Greetings, improvisers! Welcome back for a ~*~ rare 5th Sunday ~*~ at Racer Sessions, where we’re excited to be welcoming our pal Conner Eisenmenger for his first time presenting.

Having only recently moved to the Pacific Northwest, Conner Eisenmenger is still learning names and faces in the Seattle music community, and he believes the best way to learn to swim is to jump in the water. An active self-starter, Conner keeps a busy schedule as a composer, bandleader, and clinician. In 2022 he received the ASCAP Foundation Herb Alpert Young Jazz Composer Award for his piece, “Choice Paralysis,” played by his 5-piece ensemble, the Think Tank. Whether it be through composing, teaching, performing, or leading a group, Conner’s central focus is to build and nurture this new musical ecosystem that he calls home by celebrating the identities of its musicians and the communities that surround them. KNKX describes Conner’s passion for a life in music as “infectious in the best way.”

Conner will be premiering a new project called Bordasmord, featuring Neil Welch, Kelsey Mines, and Greg Campbell. Read onward for some words from Conner himself on what they’ll be presenting, and then make your way to Racer Sessions this Sunday at 7pm! We’ll see ya there.

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“The community around the Racer Sessions seemed to welcome me in before I even got the courage to approach them myself. I’ve wanted to give back and contribute some ideas of my own for a while now, and I am grateful for the opportunity to be welcomed into this space. What a wonderful community and what a fun way to spend our Sunday evenings.

When I first set out to create my newest project, Borgasmord, I was inspired by creatures from books and movies that live their entire lives underground. Sometimes, these creatures would disrupt the lives of those living above solely through the way they had to navigate their world below. This sounded like a hilarious vehicle for some intense, low-pitched madrigalisms and musical storytelling, so I ran with it in a cordless quartet instrumentation with the lowest-pitched musical colleagues I could find (Neil Welch, Kelsey Mines, and Greg Campbell). Eventually, my thoughts and stories about vicious subterranean worms and monsters drifted towards a more idealized narrative closer to that of a children’s book (maybe ones about toads, even frogs?). I thought about the simple, pastoral life a little mole or even a giant worm might create underground. Do underground creatures make little to-do lists and happily check off their daily chores unaware that cities and civilizations are crumbling from their seismic movement on the ground above?

All this to say, I don’t know what all of this will sound like, but it seems like a good jumping-off point!”