Excerpt from Something Else! Review:
“Drummer, composer, bandleader and side woman Kate Gentile is relatively new on the scene but it’s already clear that whatever style of music she takes on, it’s always in the vanguard of that style. More than that, she invents styles of her own. So to say that her latest release b i o m e i.i (from Gentile’s and Matt Mitchell’s Obliquity Records) is ambitious only describes the norm for her. What makes b i o m e i.i particularly special is how it reveals how far Gentile’s artistic reach goes. It’s really, really far.
“Largely stepping away from a diverse world of cutting-edge jazz and into the esoteric world of creative chamber music, Gentile brings over to this idiom her craft of integrating improvisation into meticulous scores and blurring the distinction between either.
“As they follow Gentile in the billing, it might be easy to assume that International Contemporary Ensemble is Gentile’s backing band but no, it’s a true partnership. The International Contemporary Ensemble has spent some twenty years working with composers emerging and established to provide a conduit for their challenging and provocative works. They commissioned Gentile to provide a set of pieces, with Gentile also becoming part of the band as its drummer and a second percussionist.” — S. Victor Aaron