Ava Mendoza

Ava Mendoza is a guitarist, singer/songwriter, composer, and bandleader based in Brooklyn, New York. She leads the globe-trotting avant-rock trio Unnatural Ways, works in a duo with former Can vocalist Malcolm Mooney, and records and performs in a variety of contexts. She is a first-call session musician who has worked with bandleaders including William Hooker, Nels Cline, Nate Wooley, and William Parker. Her knotty, dynamic, yet intricately melodic playing style mixes rock, jazz, metal, and funk with years of classical and improvisational training. Mendoza claims her primary influences are rhythmic fingerstyle players Rev. Gary Davis and Joseph Spence, the vanguard improvisations of electric guitarists Sonny Sharrock and Eddie Hazel, and saxophonists Albert Ayler and Peter Brötzmann. While living in the Bay Area, Mendoza made her solo recording debut with Shadow Stories in 2010. In 2015, Unnatural Ways recorded its self-titled debut as a trio with drummer Nick Tamburro and multi-instrumentalist Dominique Leone. After moving to New York, Mendoza continued the group with bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Sam Ospovat on 2016′s We Aliens and 2019′s The Paranoia Party. In 2021, she joined William Parker’s trio with drummer Gerald Cleaver for the widely acclaimed Mayan Space Station.
Mendoza was born in Miami Florida, but spent her youth in Southern California. She began playing classical guitar informally at age seven. She studied classical guitar technique in elementary school and junior high, and traditional music theory at Interlochen Arts Academy in Michigan. There she began playing in hard rock and punk bands during off-hours from school and rehearsal. After graduation she attended California Institute of the Arts in Valencia for a year before transferring to Mills College in Oakland, where she studied modern classical/electronic theory as well as improvisation. She cited getting to study with Fred Frith as a primary reason for attending Mills, and received her bachelor’s degree in Intermedia Arts.
Remaining in the Bay Area, Mendoza began playing with local bands, gigged in free improv groups, and performed solo. In 2008 with an improvising quartet co-billed to drummer Weasel Walter, bassist Damon Smith, and clarinetist Jacob Lindsay, she released Jus on Balance Point Acoustics. Two years later, Mendoza released the completely solo Shadow Stories on Resipiscent Records. The set offered folk, country, and blues standards radically revisioned through improvisation alongside original compositions. In 2012, she live-scored Buster Keaton: Four Short Films in collaboration with tUnE-yArDs, commissioned by and for the San Francisco International Film Festival. She also cut Quit Your Unnatural Ways in a duo with drummer Nick Tamburro for Weird Forest Records. In 2013 Mendoza live-scored the 1959 horror film The Bat for the San Francisco Film Society. She and Tamburro enlisted multi-instrumentalist Dominique Leone to record the first, self-titled Unnatural Ways album shortly before she relocated to New York, but it wasn’t issued until 2015 by New Atlantic. 2015 also marked the first of five different times she was voted a rising star guitarist in the Downbeat Critics Poll.
In January 2016 Mendoza released the split album Ivory Tower with guitarist Sir Richard Bishop for Germany’s Unrock. The guitarist sought local players to continue her Unnatural Ways trio. She ultimately enlisted bassist Tim Dahl and drummer Sam Ospovat. They issued We Aliens for John Zorn’s Tzadik label in 2016, and the guitarist issued the eponymously titled EP Ava Mendoza/Maxime Petit/Will Guthrie, followed by the digital-only outing D’M’N with Dahl and drummer Nándor Névai. In 2017 she was part of the avant-rock quartet Chaser on its self-titled debut. In 2018 she joined bassist Damon Smith in drummer William Hooker’s trio for Remembering on Astral Spirits.
Unnatural Ways released The Paranoia Party in 2019, a themed album Mendoza claimed was “about aliens and being alien: political paranoia, inclusion, exclusion, migration, immigration, border crossings, alter egos, and alternate realities.” She also played with Negativland on True False, and recorded with drummer Moppa Elliott’s large group for Acceleration Due to Gravity. 2019 also saw the beginning of her association with former Can vocalist Malcolm Mooney in a duo and as a member of his Eleventh Planet performing and touring ensemble.
2020 was a busy year for her. In addition to playing with saxophonist Stephen Gauci and drummer Vijay Anderson on Studio Sessions, Vol. 4, she joined saxophonist Jon Irabagon’s avant-jazz quartet I Don’t Hear Nothin’ but the Blues (alongside drummer Mike Pride and metal guitarist Mick Barr) for Anatomical Snuffbox, and again appeared with Negativland on Seeland. She also participated in the recording sessions for Nate Wooley’s Seven Storey Mountain, Vol. VI. In November, Mendoza released the digital EP With Other Media: Music for Film and Broadcast, comprising her score for Alice Guy Blanche’s 1911 film Tramp Strategy. Kino Lorber commissioned it as part of the anthology Pioneers: First Women Filmmakers that juxtaposed the early films by women with modern works by women composers. In the summer of 2021, Mendoza served as bassist William Parker’s guitarist on Mayan Space Station, a power trio outing with drummer Gerald Cleaver issued by AUM Fidelity. ~ Thom Jurek