Tune in to Afternoon New Music at 3:00 PM on Tuesday, September 6 for an exclusive in-studio interview with Travis LaPlante, leader and composer of the tenor sax quartet Battle Trance. The program will include a fifteen-minute interview with LaPlante about the inception of Battle Trance and the painstaking process of composing and recording their new album, "Blade of Love." WKCR will also be playing LaPlante's entire personal compositional journey, "Blade of Love."
Travis Laplante is a saxophonist, composer, and qigong healer living in Brooklyn, New York and southern Vermont. Laplante leads Battle Trance, the acclaimed tenor saxophone quartet. He is also known for his solo saxophone work and his longstanding ensemble Little Women. Laplante has recently performed and/or recorded with Trevor Dunn, Ches Smith, Peter Evans, So Percussion, Gerald Cleaver, Michael Formanek, Buke and Gase, Darius Jones, Matt Maneri, and Matt Mitchell, among others. Battle Trance is a quartet composed of four tenor saxophone players: Travis LaPlante, Patrick Breiner, Matt Nelson, Jeremy Viner. Formed in 2012, the quartet have spend hundreds of hours deepening their musical connection with each other, touring relentlessly from Brooklyn to Los Angeles, Montreal to Vancouver. Their debut album, "Palace of Wind" was released in 2014.