RACCA Trio
RACCA Trio is born out of Ron Coulter’s Casper, Wyoming-based Creative Music Series. Something about the mountain air and wide open spaces that brews mind-expanding musical collaborations… Percussion wizard Coulter anchors the Trio’s rhythm section, along with bassist Matt Smiley and guitarist Alex Nauman. Like Coulter’s other RBR project, SeFa LoCo, RACCA is founded on principles of free improvisation - minimal planning, maximal imagination and a spontaneous plan that’s realized together.
In their first release, appropriately titled The Great Expanse, the original three are joined by famed master of the trumpet, Hugh Ragin. The album’s six far-reaching pieces, including the remarkable 24-minute title track, offer a meditation on open space and limitless possibilities.
Their second RBR release is Flow State (April 2024).
Coulter and Smiley met at the first VU Symposium for Experimental and Improvised Music in Park City, UT in July of 2016. Nauman and Smiley met during their time at the University of Northern Colorado–from 2008 to 2009. The two pairs worked on many projects before coming together as a trio years later. That meeting of 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 they recorded for several hours that day 2020 and had lunch at Racca’s Pizzeria Napoletana, which gave the trio its name.
RACCA’s members share 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 the album Flow State had been in the air for over two years, and it finally came to fruition in November 2023 The loose concept was to improvise in a free funk, psychedelic improvisation style.
Dr. HUGH RAGIN was raised in Houston, Texas, and began playing trumpet in his early teens, taking lessons in classical music, and was a member of the Houston All-City High School Orchestra. He received a degree in music education from the University of Houston and a degree in classical trumpet performance from Colorado State University and a doctorate from the University of Colorado, where he is a faculty member. He’s toured with Anthony Braxton and Maynard Ferguson, and he is currently a member of the legendary Art Ensemble of Chicago.
