Both individually and together as Answers, the Orlando quintet of Thad Anderson (vibrakit), Beatriz Ramirez-Belt (oboe, English horn), Christopher Belt (guitar), Brandon Kyle Miller (bass) and Caitlin Pequignot (violin) have been on the city’s vanguard making classical music not just relevant again but cutting-edge.
Although classical is their foundation, Answers aren’t some baroque Pachelbel walk down the aisle. They’re a non-hierarchical ensemble of players who are all composers with bona fides in improvisation and avant-garde music. As such, their fiercely experimental mission is far removed from the institutional piety of traditional symphony orchestras. In sound, they’re barely cousins. In theory, they’re essentially opposites. In practice, they’re on different planets.
Most recently, their high-concept thrust has come in a potent double shot of new releases with different but equally intriguing premises. The Basement Sessions, Vol. 2 is Answers’ follow-up edition of their adventures in pure and raw improvisation. “This EP is a document of unfiltered experimentation, groove and grime,” says Beatriz Ramirez-Belt. “Nothing was planned. Everything was felt.” Across two excursive 15-minute jams that go from transcendental to high-wire, this is an exercise with classical bones but a jazz mind.
Wormhole, on the other hand, is four different evolutions of a single piece. Written by Ramirez-Belt, “Wormhole” has been a launchpad of guided improvisation for the band. This EP is “Wormhole” performed and recorded live four separate times before audiences over the span of a couple years, each time a discrete journey.
“‘Wormhole’ had been an open-ended invitation — an unfinished sentence rewritten across time and space,” she says. “This EP gathers a collection of interpretations and re-imaginings of the piece, tracing its journey through shifting eras and sonic textures. Each track is a wormhole of its own, looping back, stretching forward, and bending meaning. A document of what it’s meant to us — and what it might still become.”
The Basement Sessions, Vol. 2 and Wormhole are a rare and robust double window into the exploratory world of Answers. They’re interdimensional chronicles of Answers’ unrelenting dynamism and refusal to be corralled by even their own bounds. This is music out on the frontier, work of true originality that furthers Answers’ legacy as one of the most purely artistic groups in modern Orlando music. Both are available only on Bandcamp.
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This article appears in Aug 13-18, 2025.