|
2022 concerts march 4, 2022 john bischoff / matt ingalls march 11, 2022 karen stackpole / matt ingalls march 18, 2022 alvin lucier in memoriam march 25, 2022 the oakland reductionist orchestra / matt ingalls april 1, 2022 phillip greenlief + mark clifford + suki o'kane april 8, 2022 tim perkis + jon raskin / mooswood improvisers group april 15, 2022 christina braun + tom nunn + dean santomieri april 22, 2022 cheryl e leonard / kevin ck lo + kevin corcoran + danishta rivero april 29, 2022 nicholas isherwood & cal grad composers may 6, 2022 matthew welch / diane grubbe / josh allen may 13, 2022 sfsound plays grisey and sciarrino / angst hase pfeffer nase may 20, 2022 the scriveners (myles boisen + tim rowe + safa shokrai) / chris brown + ben davis may 27, 2022 jason kahn + kevin corcoran / kim nucci june 3, 2022 roco córdova + theresa wong / bjll dingalls june 10, 2022 webern, feldman, boulez, oliveros, spahlinger, oakland reductionist orchestra june 17, 2022 brett carson + joshua marshall / thea farhadian + tim perkis july 1, 2022 dan plonsey group / bran(…)pos july 15, 2022 jordan glenn solo / nathan clevenger trio july 22, 2022 giacomo fiore (lamb & polansky) / sfSound (grisey & maderna) july 29, 2022 moe staiano ensemble / natalia badziak august 5, 2022 ting luo + aries mond / jessica ackerley (honolulu) + phillip greenlief august 12, 2022 lia kohl (chicago) / brendan glasson august 19, 2022 chiko (japan) / lorin benedict + ron heglin / mosswood improvisers group august 26, 2022 tom nunn tribute: ghost in the house and friends september 2, 2022 del sol plays julius eastman’s “gay guerrilla” & others september 9, 2022 karl evangelista + lewis jordan / alex heigl september 16, 2022 ochs + johnston + perkis + merkey + nordeson / b day + s glass september 22, 2022 @ BERKELEY'S LIVE OAK PARK: wendy reid's "ambient bird" september 23, 2022 thomas carnacki / grale september 30, 2022 adriana camacho torres (mexico) + lisa mezzacappa / sarah grace graves sunday october 9, 2022 solos: meet the new piano! fundraiser saturday october 15, 2022 duos: methods body (portland) / kinda green sunday october 23, 2022 trios: stevie richards (australia) + jon bafus + marc zollinger / diaspora focii sunday october 30, 2022 solo+trio: tom weeks / scott looney + lisa mezzacappa + kjell nordeson sunday november 13, 2022 anne rainwater / eric theise + krys bobrowski sunday november 20, 2022 bristle / ken ueno + matt ingalls sunday december 4, 2022 motoko honda + danny kamins / uc berkeley composers sunday december 11, 2022 quinteto latino / bruno ruviaro sunday december 18, 2022 eric glick rieman / bran(..)pos+ingalls+nishi-smith+stahlmann :: view entire concert history here :: |
| MARCH 4 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
JOHN BISCHOFF three solo compositions for computer and custom analog circuits 
The starting point for Bitplicity (2020) and Visibility Study (2015) are custom analog circuits that sound in audio and sub-audio realms. Designed to be interrupted and reactivated by a performer as they sound, the circuits generate equal parts continuity and discontinuity as they are voiced. A laptop captures event structures in the resulting analog stream and subsequently re-sonifies them using custom digital synthesis components in various combinations. The circuit actions in turn interrupt and reactivate the synthesis elements as well. Calliope (2022) is a take-off on Leon Theremin’s realization of Henry Cowell’s concept—an instrument called the Rhythmicon which automatically reiterates its tones at rates corresponding to the selected pitch relations. Drawing inspiration from a YouTube clip of Andre Smirov playing one of these beautifully elegant, but sonically quirky instruments, Bischoff has built a digital synthesis version on the same principles—but where the instrument has significant drift in all dimensions and the tones come apart as each phrase develops. JOHN BISCHOFF (b. 1949, San Francisco) is an early practitioner of live computer music. He is known for his solo constructions in real-time synthesis as well as the development of computer network music. He was a founding member of The League of Automatic Music Composers (1978), considered to be the world’s first computer network band. He is also a founding member of The Hub, a network band that began in 1986 and continues to expand on the network music form today. Recordings of Bischoff’s work are available on ArtifactRecordings, 23Five, Tzadik, Lovely, and New World Records. He was a recipient of an Artist Grant from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts in 1999. As a member of the Hub, he was awarded a GigaHertz Prize for life-time achievement in electronic music in 2018 by ZKM in Karlsruhe, Germany. He was on faculty for many years in the legendary Music Department at Mills College in Oakland, California. As part of his "opening set residency," Oakland musician MATT INGALLS performs his decades-in-the-making, 30-minute-continuous-micro-timbre-circular-breathing-tour-de-force clarinet solo. Exploring extended techniques that interact with the acoustic space, he often acoustically synthesizes difference tones that are perceived to originate inside the listener's ear. |
| MARCH 11 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
KAREN STACKPOLE gongs and percussion 
Revealing the tremendous sonic spectrum of gongs: at once visceral, muscular, musical, droning, soothing and surprising - incredible sounds of vibrating metal that are truly unique, both sonically and visually. KAREN STACKPOLE performs and records with metals/gongs duo Euphonics, Dean Santomieri, Ron Thompson, Myles Boisen, Moe Staiano, and John Schott’s Ensemble Diglossia as well as collaborating on various other projects. Gongs and resonance are the calling. Small distinct sounds (a la insect music) and use of silence and space rank high also. She is the drummer for Cactus Motel and has played with Malcolm Mooney and The Tenth Planet, Moxie, Bolshoi Rodeo, and Rare Thing. She is the percussionist for the improvising quartet, Vorticella. Her percussive efforts include work with the Onsite Dance Company and the San Francisco Shin Taido group. Karen also operates Stray Dog Recording Services and works as a freelance writer for DRUM! and Electronic Musician magazines. As part of his "opening set residency," Oakland musician MATT INGALLS performs his decades-in-the-making, 30-minute-continuous-micro-timbre-circular-breathing-tour-de-force clarinet solo. Exploring extended techniques that interact with the acoustic space, he often acoustically synthesizes difference tones that are perceived to originate inside the listener's ear. |
| MARCH 18 2022 7:30pm doors, 8pm concert $10-$25 |
|
MUSIC BY ALVIN LUCIER (1931-2021) 
PROGRAM Music on a Long Thin Wire (1977) pre-concert and intermission installation realized by Tom Duff Two Circles (2012) sfSoundGroup (flute, clarinet, violin, cello, piano, and sine waves) Piper (2000) Matthew Welch, bagpipes Opera with Objects (1997) Matt Ingalls, objects I Remember (1997) voices with resonant objects Letters (1991) sfSoundGroup (violin, clarinet, cello and piano) Nothing is Real (1990) Hadley McCarroll, piano and teapot (Oakland) Memory Space (1970) for singers and players of acoustic instruments PERFORMERS Matthew Welch, bagpipes Sam Weiser, violin Ken Ueno, voice Monica Scott, cello Kjell Nordeson, percussion Lisa Mezzacappa, bass Hadley McCarroll, piano Brendan Lai-Tong, trombone Matt Ingalls, clarinet Diane Grubbe, flute |
| MARCH 25 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
THE OAKLAND REDUCTIONIST ORCHESTRA 
The premiere performance of a new supergroup of local musicians with a predilection for lowercase/fricative/reductionist acoustic improvisation that often sounds more electronic than acoustic. This ensemble grows out of a rich tradition of "American reductionist" music that emerged (re-emerged?) in the late 1990's and early 2000's. Previous projects like Tom Djll's Grosse Abfahrt and The Jack Wright Large Ensemble Eight By Nine document the Bay Area's contribution to the genre. Could there be a renaissance of this music in the near future? (shhhhhhhhhhhyyyiiiiieeeeyowwwwwsssssss.s..s.....s......) PERFORMERS Monica Scott, cello Danishta Rivero, voice Kanoko Nishi-Smith, koto Joshua Marshall, saxophone Matt Ingalls, clarinets Jacob Felix Heule, percussion Andy Guthrie, french horn Tom Djll, trumpet Kevin Corcoran, percussion Kevin CK Lo, violin/flute As part of his "opening set residency," Oakland musician MATT INGALLS performs his decades-in-the-making, 30-minute-continuous-micro-timbre-circular-breathing-tour-de-force clarinet solo. Exploring extended techniques that interact with the acoustic space, he often acoustically synthesizes difference tones that are perceived to originate inside the listener's ear. |
| APRIL 1 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
PHILLIP GREENLIEF with MARK CLIFFORD and SUKI O'KANE 
PHILLIP GREENLIEF performs a solo saxophone opening set followed by his BARBEDWIRE graphic scores with vibraphonist MARK CLIFFORD and percussionist SUKI O'KANE. Greenlief has been playing solo since 1979, an evolving conception of what is possible in saxophone performance. More recently, his solo work has been inspired by the landscapes he has experienced while traveling the American Southwest. His BARBEDWIRE project consists of a selection of 37 graphic scores for trio: andrei tarkovsky said that to make a film was to sculpt in time. Since his emergence on the west coast in the late 1970s, saxophonist/composer PHILLIP GREENLIEF has achieved international acclaim for his recordings and performances with musicians and composers in the post-jazz continuum as well as new music innovators and virtuosic improvisers. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Meredith Monk, Rashaun Mitchell and They Might Be Giants. Albums include LANTSKAP LOGIC with Fred Frith and Evelyn Davis, THAT OVERT DESIRE OF OBJECT with Joelle Leandre, ALL AT ONCE with FPR (Frank Gratkowski and Jon Raskin), and OH THAT MONSTER with LA punk pioneers Thelonious Monster. Recent residencies have included the Banff Center for Art and Creativity, Neue Muzik Koln, and Headlands Center for the Arts. His critical writing has been published in Artforum, Open Space (SFMOMA), and Signal to Noise. The Bay Area's do-it-yourself ethos has produced a bevy of dazzlingly creative musicians, but few have put the philosophy to work as effectively as Phillip Greenlief. – Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Chronicle MARK CLIFFORD is a vibraphonist, percussionist, pianist, educator, composer, and producer based in Oakland, CA. A much sought after performer and improviser, Clifford is equally involved in classical music, new music, jazz, free improvisation, and rock. He is involved in multiple projects in the Bay Area and around the US. In demand as a recording musician, he can be heard playing drums, piano, keyboard, and percussion on over 20 records to date and his performance experience spans worldwide. He has had the honor of playing alongside an array of master musicians including: Jeff Parker, Kjell Nordeson, Ches Smith, Joan La Barbara, Aram Shelton, Colin Stranahan, Scott Amendola, Tatsuya Nakatani, Ron Miles, Lisa Mezzacappa, and he has performed with The Colorado Symphony Orchestra, So Percussion, sfSound, and Oakland Active Orchestra. Oakland-based musician, composer, improviser and instigator, SUKI O'KANE works with artists from a wide array of of music, movement, expanded cinema and public art genres; and is student of monumental and durational forms. Combining made/found percussion and Jurassic electronics, she stays curious in the the pandemic collective DuoB Experimental Band led by Lisa Mezzacappa and Jason Levis, and is a member of many creative initiatives: from the ukulele art band Special Ghosts to the Thingamajigs Performance Group with Dylan Bolles, Keith Evans and Edward Schocker. Her composition "Texture" appears in the 2022 LP/DVD Bimodal Press release Gravity Spells II. |
| APRIL 8 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
TIM PERKIS + JON RASKIN and THE MOSSWOOD IMPROVISERS GROUP  
TIM PERKIS (electronics) and JON RASKIN (saxophones) started playing together regularly online in April of 2020 often with George Cremaschi in Prague and later with Dirk Stromberg in Singapore using a combination of Sonobus and Zoom. This concert is the first time Perkis and Raskin will be playing together in the same space since the pandemic. Jon writes of this experience: Playing online is a combination of playing in your living room in the early morning, with headphones on, in front of a microphone and video camera. Not the most conducive environment for creativity. The sessions start off making sure you have levels figured out, getting the connection stable and working toward a feeling immediacy like you are in a room together and overcoming the frustrating technology glitching out. Over time the software improved and we got a better understanding how of play with it all improving the quality so you could really dig into the music. Following the duo, a collection of local improvising musicians, THE MOSSWOOD IMPROVISATION GROUP, will join Tim and Jon in set of free improvisation. PERFORMERS Hallie Smith, violin Jon Raskin, saxophone Tim Perkis, electronics Crystal Pascucci, cello Lisa Mezzacappa, bass Scott Looney, piano/electronics Jordan Glenn, percussion Myles Boisen, guitar TIM PERKIS has been working in the medium of live electronic and computer sound for many years, performing, exhibiting installation works and recording in North America, Europe and Japan. His work has largely been concerned with exploring the emergence of life-like properties in complex systems of interaction. In addition, he is a well-known performer in the world of improvised music, having performed on his electronic improvisation instruments with hundreds of artists and groups, including Chris Brown, John Butcher, Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Frith, Gianni Gebbia, Frank Gratkowski, Luc Houtkamp, Yoshi Ichiraku, Matt Ingalls, Joelle Leandre, Gino Robair, ROVA saxophone quartet, Elliott Sharp, Leo Wadada Smith and John Zorn. Ongoing groups he has founded or played in include the League of Automatic Music Composers and the Hub -- pioneering live computer network bands -- and Rotodoti, the Natto Quartet, Fuzzybunny, All Tomorrow's Zombies and Wobbly/Perkis/Antimatter. JON RASKIN has been a member of Rova Saxophone Quartet for the last 43 years exploring the relationship of improvisation and composition, developing and honing the language of ensemble music and researching linguistic possibilities of the saxophone. He has performed and/ or recorded with Anthony Braxton, Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Sam Rivers, Tim Berne, Tim Perkis, Leo Smith, Frank Gratkowsi, Phillip Greenlief, Henry Kaiser, and Vladimir Tarasov. |
| APRIL 15 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
CHRISTINA BRAUN + TOM NUNN + DEAN SANTOMIERI (in the large chapel)  
CHRISTINA BRAUN (dance) and TOM NUNN (original invented instruments Skatch Box and Crustacean) have performed together in Bay Area festivals for over a decade. For this concert, they present two new duo pieces. DEAN SANTOMIERI performs original stories for voice with live looping and effects and joins Christina to close the concert with a short improvisational piece for dance and guitar. CHRISTINA BRAUN is a lifelong dancer and considers Tom Nunn her improvisation mentor. Her choreography has been presented the Center for New Music, the International Butoh Festival Thailand, the West Wave Dance Festival, and the Asian Art Museum among other festivals and museums. Christina has been working in collaboration with composers since 2002. As SF Butoh LAB, Christina has produced Butoh dance symposia, performances, and workshops to strengthen a culture of peace with collaborative art practices. TOM NUNN has designed, built and performed with experimental musical instruments since 1975, always with a focus on recycled/re-purposed materials, to create a unique voice in improvised music. He has participated in several festivals such as the High Zero Festival in Baltimore, AK07 in New Zealand and Sound Symposium in Newfoundland. DEAN SANTOMIERI (spoken word / electric guitar) Regularly performs solo or with other performers, variously as guitarist or narrator of his own short fiction. Stylistically his guitar playing is most closely associated with the modern classical avant-garde and is characterized by a loose compositional framework that allows for improvisatory explorations. Since 2011 he has been playing and recording with violinist Thea Farhadian, in the Santomieri-Farhadian Duo. Dean has also been associated with the groups: Donkey Boy; Malcolm Mooney & the 10th Planet; I Franzen; Ghost in the House and the Cornelius Cardew Choir. |
| APRIL 22 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
CHERYL E. LEONARD KEVIN CK LO + KEVIN CORCORAN + DANISHTA RIVERO  
CHERYL E. LEONARD performs new compositions and improvisations from Unstable Material, a project rooted in sonic explorations of Marin Headlands and inspired by the area's geologic, ecologic, and human histories. Sounds played live on found natural objects intertwine with recordings captured in and around Headland's transforming landscapes. Works reflect on borderlands, timescales, and the intersection of human-made worlds and the wild. During lockdown in 2020-21, a massive landslide within California’s Marin Headlands became my self-assigned sonic study area. Here, a chaotic jumble of earth, vegetation, and old military bunkers collapse into the Pacific Ocean. Marked by a sign that reads ‘Danger, Unstable Material, Do Not Enter,’ a paved road tumbles off a precipice, casting itself into sea and sky. Unable to resist such an enticement, for months I visited regularly. Exploring this topsy-turvy borderland via field recording and site-specific improvisations, I listened, duetted with buoys and birds, performed for wind and surf. The evening concludes with improvised music from KEVIN CK LO (violin/flute/piano/electronics), KEVIN CORCORAN (percussion/electronics), and DANISHTA RIVERO (voice/electronics). CHERYL E. LEONARD is a composer, performer, field recordist, and instrument builder whose works investigate sounds, structures, and objects from the natural world. Her projects cultivate stones, wood, water, ice, sand, shells, feathers, and bones as musical instruments, and feature one-of-a-kind sculptural instruments and field recordings from remote locales. Leonard is fascinated by subtle textures and intricacies of sounds. She uses microphones to explore aural worlds within her sound sources and develops compositions that highlight the unique voices she discovers. Her recent projects focus on climate change and extinction of species. Leonard’s music has been performed worldwide and is available on multiple record labels. Her instruments, recordings, and graphic scores have been exhibited in galleries and museums in the U.S. and abroad, and she has contributed to several books on music and sound art. Leonard has received grants from the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists and Writers Program, New Music USA, American Composers Forum, American Music Center, ASCAP, Meet the Composer, and NYSCA. Her commissions include works for SFMOMA’s Open Space, Kronos Quartet, Hope Mohr Dance, and the La Jolla Historical Society. She has been awarded residencies at Kunstnarhuset Messen, Djerassi, Oberpfälzer Künstlerhaus, the Arctic Circle, Villa Montalvo, and Engine 27. KEVIN CK LO utilizes instruments, digital sound processing and generative programming environments to examine spatial and auditory sensitivities, topological structure and audience kinesthetic response while seeking to corrupt conventional compositional/performative/installative rationale. He is one half of the experimental interdisciplinary duo, DROUGHT SPA, with alex cruse. He works at CounterPulse and is a PhD candidate in music composition at UC Berkeley. KEVIN CORCORAN works with percussion, field recording and sometimes electronics with an open interest in sound as medium as it moves through contexts of music, art, communication, and place. He improvises, arranges sounds and collaborates across disciplines and borders having performed throughout the US, Europe and East Asia with musicians, dancers, filmmakers, writers and visual artists. Percussion will be the focus of this collaboration with emphasis on friction, sympathetic vibration, sustained tones and use of found objects. DANISHTA RIVERO is an improviser, performer, and sound artist based in Oakland, California. She explores the artifacts resulting from heavy processing of the voice and their relationship to its acoustic resonance. She is a member of electro-acoustic duo Voicehandler with percussionist Jacob Felix Heule. She is also half of Las Sucias, a feminist tropical noise duo with Alexandra Buschman-Román. |
| APRIL 29 2022 8pm $10-$25 - FREE (with Student ID) |
|
NICHOLAS ISHERWOOD with CAL GRAD COMPOSERS 
NICHOLAS ISHERWOOD performs a diverse program of contemporary vocal music, including 3 premieres by graduate composers from UC Berkeley and a rare performance of Followe Thy Faire Sunne (1962) for voice and tubular bells by Morton Feldman. Bass baritone NICHOLAS ISHERWOOD is one of the leading singers of early music and contemporary music in the world today. He has sung in many of Europe's leading festivals and opera houses. Isherwood has worked closely with composers such as Sylvano Bussotti, Elliott Carter, George Crumb. Hans Werner Henze, Mauricio Kagel, György Kurtág, Olivier Messiaen, Giacinto Scelsi, Iannis Xenakis, among many others. He has improvised with Steve Lacy, Joelle Léandre, David Moss and Sainkho Namtchilak. Isherwood collaborated with Karlheinz Stockhausen for 23 years, singing numerous world premieres, including Montag, Dienstag, and Freitag from Licht. PROGRAM Morton Feldman - Followe Thy Faire Sunne Eda Er - I feel the Nail in my Heart PREMIERE George Papajohn - Response PREMIERE Luke Dzwonczyk - The Oratory of Saint Philip Neri PREMIERE Ho Chung Shih - Mantra of the Heart Sutra Eve De Castro Robinson - Hau Veronika Krausas - The Alchemist Suite Artyom Kim - Earth Music |
| MAY 6 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
JOSH ALLEN DIANE GRUBBE MATTHEW WELCH in a concert of solo compositions and improvisations  
MATTHEW WELCH presents a solo set focusing on Anthony Braxton's #247, a species of Braxton's Ghost Trance Music written especially for Welch's bagpipes. Woven around the long-form Braxton #247, Welch will present more of Braxton's smaller solo works, fragments of Philip Glass's music and selections of Welch's bagpipe compositions and improvisations. DIANE GRUBBE performs Mario Lavista's Lamento for bass flute and Orlando Jacinto García's cuando el mar besa al malecon for piccolo, flute, alto flute, bass flute, and electronics. Tenor Saxophonist JOSH ALLEN performs a solo improvisation that strives to present non linear visual concepts in sonic linear form. Josh uses technique; multiphonics; poly and pan tonality; rhythmic units based in cell structure composition; an array of cycling tones; and the performance space itself as part of his instrument. JOSH ALLEN has created his own personal language on the tenor saxophone, with an emphasis on polytonal and asymmetrical phrasing, as well as extending the range and sonic ability of the instrument. He does this with constant emphasis and study of the overtone series, and the generation of multiphonics from the application of this process. He is currently teaching Fellowship students at the Brubeck Institute at the University of Pacific. He was born in Berkeley, California in 1972. Like many of today’s prominent musicians, Mr. Allen was a product of the Berkeley public school system, studying saxophone starting at the age of nine under Phil Hardymon. He went on to study with such prominent Bay Area musicians as Bill Aron, Joe Henderson, and Rory Snyder. With his focus squarely on jazz composition and performance, Mr. Allen moved to Southern California in the early nineties to study with Rick Helzer at San Diego State. He became active in the Latin Jazz community, and worked with various musicians such as Dennis Chambers, and Eddie Palmieri. Mr. Allen’s return to the Bay Area in the mid 90s to finish his Bachelors degree at Sonoma State. His association with saxophonist Marco Eneidi led to working relationships with musicians such as Glen Spearmann, Matthew Goodheart, Damon Smith, and eventually Cecil Taylor. Drawn to the evolving tonal possibilities of the flute, DIANE GRUBBE enjoys studying and performing contemporary works. Notable performances include the US premiere of John Wolf Brennan’s solo flute piece, Drei ver-flix-te Stücke and appearances in the Bay Area retrospective of Pauline Oliveros’ work where she performed Trio for Flute, Piano and Page Turner with Sarah Cahill and Monique Buzzarté. She often performs with the contemporary music ensemble sfSoundGroup and has been a guest performer with Earplay, Eco Ensemble, Santa Cruz New Music Works and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players. Diane has appeared as a soloist with the Siena Music Festival in Italy, the San Francisco Concerto Orchestra, L’Orchestre de Notre Dame in San Francisco and the Calabasas Chamber Orchestra in Southern California, with whom she recorded the Vivaldi Piccolo Concerto for their CD The Baroque. Since 2004, Diane has been the flautista in Quinteto Latino, the Bay Area wind quintet specializing in classical music from Latin America. Hailed as “The Eddie Van Halen of the bagpipe” (PopMatters), MATTHEW WELCH is a virtuoso bagpiper, critically acclaimed composer, improviser, husband and dad living in the SF Bay Area, California, USA. As a virtuoso-piper, he is both an established master of the traditional repertoire, and a leading pioneer of new innovative techniques and improvisations, as well as collaborations with Philip Glass, Anthony Braxton, Julia Wolfe, Alvin Lucier, David Watson, Zeena Parkins and John Zorn. He has recorded for Tzadik, Cataloupe, Mode, Orange Mountain Music, Leo, New World, Carrier and Room40 labels, and founded his own label Kotekan Records in 2018. He has led his pipe-rock ensemble Blarvuster since 2002. “Pushing the bagpipes to their limit, Welch’s exploration of the bagpipes' sonic potential is thrilling to witness.” - The Wire Magazine |
| MAY 13 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
ANGST HASE PFEFFER NASE SFSOUNDGROUP: GRISEY + OLIVEROS + SCIARRINO 
SFSOUNDGROUP performs three iconic chamber music works from the late 20th century: GÉRARD GRISEY - Talea (1986)ANGST HASE PFEFFER NASE performs a structured improvisation on guitar and electronics exploring metallic resonances, perception and spatialization, and the multi-hued pleasures of feedback. The "house band" for the Mosswood Sound Series, SFSOUNDGROUP is a unique collection of performer-composers that have presented their own compositions, improvisations, new commissions, electronic music, and standard avant-garde repertoire for over two decades. With a mix of works from the European, American, and contemporary Californian avant-garde, their concerts explore the continuum between notated composition and free improvisation, often sounding more “electronic” than “acoustic.” Musicians performing on this program are: Sam Weiser, violin ANGST HASE PFEFFER NASE is the project of Chris Cooper, with frequent help from others. Live performances typically use prepared guitar and electronics as a portable lab to explore electroacoustic crevices with cartoon-like precision. Freed from the constraints of real time, recordings - released since the early 90s on labels such as Menlo Park, Ultra Eczema, and Senufo Editions - follow a more home-made musique concrete aesthetic. AHPN's “Slugwater” was one of only 571 pieces to be selected for inclusion in the exhibition Audiosfera, organized by Francisco Lopez at the Reina Sofía museum in Madrid, Spain. As a member of Bhob Rainey's improvising octet The BSC (also including Greg Kelley and Howie Stelzer), Cooper has collaborated with Pauline Oliveros, Andrea Neumann, and Axel Dorner. And let's not forget skewed rock-ish band Fat Worm of Error, fritzy-electronic trio White Limo, a nameless duo with Bill Nace, or the long-running Massachusetts-based improv trio Barn Owl (with Matt Weston). |
| MAY 20 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
THE SCRIVENERS: MYLES BOISEN + TIM ROWE + SAFA SHOKRAI CHRIS BROWN + BEN DAVIS a concert of improvised music 
THE SCRIVENERS (MYLES BOISEN, TIM ROWE, SAFA SHOKRAI) are a tightly knit improvisational trio looking for a groove that may not exist. When they find the groove they will comment on it from a safe distance using extended instrumental techniques and careful, focused listening. The groove will most likely be implied. Maybe the groove will be connective tissue that exists below the surface. We'll find out when we get there. CHRIS BROWN and BEN DAVIS bring together an electroacoustic contemporary improv approach with avant-garde jazz and classical resulting in a warm conflation of ideas toward infinite possibility. M U S I C I A N S SAFA SHOKRAI (acoustic bass) is inspired by solid objects and abstract concepts. He strives to create the soundtrack for the film we all live in. Based in the Bay Area, Safa Shokrai has performed in many bands as both a freelancer and band leader in his 25 years as a professional musician. He has had the opportunity to study with jazz legend Ray Brown, the late great Jeff Chambers, and local stalwart Marcus Shelby. Safa has had the opportunity to travel around the world making music, and brings all the music styles he has absorbed into his practice, from Tuareg to South Indian to European Romani. Currently he is working on composing new music for several bands he is involved with, including The Lost Shapes and Levitator, and is looking forward to recording some TIM ROWE (drums) is the host of the moderately popular video satire How to Play the Drums. He studied with Andrew Cyrille and wrote his master's thesis on George Jones. He played numerous solo shows in the 1990s, including one at the original Knitting Factory a week after it closed. Tim is a painter and videomaker, but trying to coax something interesting out of a drum-set is still his favorite activity. BEN DAVIS (cello) has been concentrating on fusing his playing and ideas into a raw vehicle of acoustic expression. Playing with Ingrid Laubrock, Ellery Eskerlin, John Edwards, Wadada Leo Smith has greatly informed his playing and writing. His improvising string group Basquiat Strings was nominated for the 2007 Mercury Prize. MYLES BOISEN (guitar) (cheese graters) (chipped flint and barbed wire) (played with blah, Blah-Blah, Splatter Trio, chicken bones, Tom Waits, fake fireplace) CHRIS BROWN (piano, electronics) is well known for his work with acoustic and electroacoustic instruments, interactive software, computer networks, microtonal tunings in both composition and improvisation. He has performed and recorded his music extensively, his latest entitled Occhio (soon to be released) with cellist Theresa Wong and oboist Kyle Bruckmann deals with rational (untempered) tuning. Chris is a founding member of the pioneering computer network music band The Hub, which received the 2018 Giga-Herz Award for Lifetime Achievement in Electronic Music. |
| MAY 27 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
JASON KAHN + KEVIN CORCORAN KIM NUCCI 
Visiting from Switzerland, JASON KAHN (analog electronics) performs a set of improvised music with local percussionist KEVIN CORCORAN. KIM NUCCI performs three solo compositions for electronics with voice. Born 1960 in New York, JASON KAHN is a artist, musician and writer. He lives and works in Zürich. His work with electronics involves chaotic feedback systems and placing his body in the circuit flow. Grabbing open leads with the hands makes and breaks circuits, causing the synthesizer to overload or momentarily collapse. Various contact microphones, electromagnetic inductors and the synthesizer's own output via a mixing board are used to modulate the parameters of the synthesizer. This results in a very dynamic system, often difficult to control, but allowing great expressivity—much like any acoustic instrument, but electronic. Live radio captures during the concert and recordings made beforehand in the performance space and its environs provide further working material for each concert. In the end, these performances are essentially site-specific works, improvising with the space at hand, both in the sense of its physicality and the sounds found there. Every performance is different, not only because the music is improvised but also because the source material used pertains directly to each space being played in. KEVIN CORCORAN works with percussion, field recordings and electronics with an open interest in sound as medium as it moves through contexts of music, art, communication and place. As a percussionist he is focused on techniques emphasizing textural sound, friction, sympathetic vibration, sustained tones and the use of found objects with a preference for freely arranging sounds in duration rather than marking time by rhythm. Whether working in sparse sound with a single drum and cymbal or frenetic contexts on the drum kit, improvisation is crucial to his practice as generative method and non-hierarchical exchange of ideas. KIM NUCCI is an Oakland-based media artist, composer, and technologist. Kim claims to be the Pope of facebook and worships dollar slice pizza as the one true god, while living in the god(pizza)less land of California. As a musician, they perform on electronics, modular synthesizer, and saxophone. As a visual and sound artist, they create interactive installations using architectural interventions, sculpture, arduino and other microcontrollers, idiosyncratic interactive design, painting and projections. They also VJ, and create generative and audio-reactive video art for live musical performance.  
|
| JUNE 3 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
ROCO CÓRDOVA + THERESA WONG BJLL DINGALLS (TOM DJLL + MATT INGALLS + BILL HSU)  
 
ROCO CÓRDOVA (voice, electronics) and THERESA WONG (cello, voice) dialogue in a realm beyond language where timbre, textures, noise, and melodies are shaped through the alchemy of improvisation. In the blur between acoustic and amplified, synthetic and analog, algorhythm and improvisation, clarity is forged anew only if you look ahead. Swinging serious sonic sledgehammers for a threefold lifetime now, BJLL DINGALLS [TOM DJLL (trumpet & electronics) + MATT INGALLS (clarinet & electronics) + BILL HSU (electronics)] lay the railroad into terra incognita. M U S I C I A N S THERESA WONG is a composer, cellist, and vocalist active at the intersection of improvisation, composition, and the synergy of multiple disciplines. Following inquisitive paths into song forms, just intonation, and visual media, her primary interest lies in finding the potential for transformation for both the artist and receiver alike. Her works include As We Breathe, an installed song commissioned by Long Beach Opera, She Dances Under Naked Palm Trees, commissioned by pianist Sarah Cahill, and Harbors, co-composed with Long String Instrument inventor Ellen Fullman and chosen as one of Wire’s top 50 releases of 2020. Recent commissions include works for San Francisco Girls Chorus, NakedEye Ensemble, San Francisco Conservatory of Music Clarinet Ensemble, Splinter Reeds, and Del Sol String Quartet. Wong has shared her work internationally at venues including Café Oto (London), The Stone (New York), and Fabbrica Europa (Florence), and is founder of fo’c’sle, a record label dedicated to adventurous music from the Bay Area and beyond. Born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, baritone ROCO CÓRDOVA is a vocalist, composer, producer, and improviser, with a B.Mus. in Composition from the Puerto Rico Conservatory of Music and an M.A. in Composition from Mills College. They have studied voice with countertenor Paul Flight, and have participated in vocal advancement workshops with Meredith Monk. Voice is at the core of Roco’s compositions, which incorporate techniques like throat singing, overtone singing, falsetto, yodeling, and vocal clicks and pops into live performances. Their music has been described as "slow-boiling, apparently timeless" with "an odd momentum of its own" (The Washington Post). As a touring vocalist and improviser with the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Roco has performed in venues including the Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago; SESC Pompéia in São Paulo, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.. They have also toured internationally and published recordings with the improvising bands Monopiece and Temoleh. BILL HSU works with electronics and real-time video. His work mostly involves using gestural interfaces to control animation and sound synthesis, and building real-time audio-visual systems that interact with human performers. He has built interactive pieces and installations in collaboration with Peter van Bergen, Chris Burns, John Butcher, James Fei, Matt Heckert, Lynn Herschman, Jeremy Mende, and Gino Robair, among others, and performed in the US, Europe, Asia, and Australia. Articles about his projects have appeared at huffingtonpost.com and slashdot.org. He is a founding member of the Beanbender’s collective, which organized over 150 concerts of new music in the San Francisco Bay area. He teaches and does research in the Department of Computer Science at San Francisco State University. Reviled for his "shapeless sonic tinkering" by the Los Angeles Times, oakland musician MATT INGALLS is a composer, clarinetist, concert producer, and computer music programmer. Often incorporating elements of improvisation, his music is heavily influenced by his long involvement in computer music. His composerly solo improvisations explore extended clarinet techniques that interact with the acoustic space, often as combination tones. Matt is the founder and co-director of sfSound, a new music series, ensemble, and internet radio station devoted to new ideas and traditions of experimental music, performance art, live electronic music, Bay Area composition, and the various facets of contemporary improvisation. TOM DJLL studied electronic music with Stephen Scott at the Colorado College, working with the EMS Synthi 100 system at Packard Hall. He spent the years 1981-1993 working with the Serge Modular Music System before enrolling in Mills College Contemporary Music Program, where he extended his quest to develop and integrate a personally developed extended trumpet language into an electronic sound environment, while also pursuing advanced improvisation studies, formally, with Pauline Oliveros, and, informally, with Jack Wright. While at Mills, Djll concentrated on microtonal composition, split-tone trumpet technique, and computer music. He also worked extensively with Chris Brown, resulting in contributions to Brown’s recordings LAVA (Tzadik) and DUETS (Artifact). Further refinement of trumpet languages and free improvisation with his band GROSSE ABFAHRT was undertaken from 1999 – 2010, with international CD releases resulting on the Emanem, Creative Sources, and Setola di Maiale labels. Beginning in 2012, Djll gradually re-introduced electronics into his sound-set. The results are heard in projects such as hackMIDI (extreme electro-mechanical piano music), the hardcore free-noise trio BEAUTY SCHOOL, piano + analog electronics in TENDER BUTTONS (with Tania Chen and Gino Robair), delicate environments in EUPHOTIC (with Cheryl Leonard and Bryan Day), austere acoustic spaces with KOKUO (Kanoko Nishi-Smith, John McCowen, Jacob Felix Heule, and Kyle Bruckmann) and ongoing sessions and performances within the lively and ever-evolving Bay Area scene, with playing partners old and new (including but not limited to Tim Perkis, Amanda Chaudhary, Jordan Glenn, Rova, Clarke Robinson, Suki O’Kane, Matt Ingalls, Tom Nunn, bran(…)pos, and Karen Stackpole. |
| JUNE 10 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
A Concert Exploring the Influence of Anton Webern works by WEBERN, FELDMAN, BOULEZ, OLIVEROS, SPAHLINGER, and improvisations by THE OAKLAND REDUCTIONIST ORCHESTRA 
The music of Second Viennese School composer ANTON WEBERN (1883-1945) has influenced countless musicians for over 100 years. We present a concert of a selection of 20th and 21st century composers and improvisers who have adopted and transformed various facets of his innovative style. Twelve-tone technique, small forms, timbre exploration, reductionism, athematicism, and Klangfarbenmelodie will be in full display. P R O G R A M 4 Pieces for Violin and Piano, Op. 7 (1910) - Anton Webern Quartet, Op. 22 (1930) - Anton Webern Durations I (1960) - Morton Feldman Domaines (1968) - Pierre Boulez 128 erfüllte augenblicke (1975) - Mathias Spahlinger Two Selections from Four Meditations for Orchestra (1996) - Pauline Oliveros Improvisation (2022) - oakland reductionist orchestra M U S I C I A N S Monica Scott, cello Danishta Rivero, voice Kanoko Nishi-Smith, koto Lisa Mezzacappa, bass Janis Mercer, piano Hadley McCarroll, soprano/piano Ricardo Martinez, saxophone Joshua Marshall, saxophone Daniel Lewin, violin Matt Ingalls, clarinet Jacob Felix Heule, percussion Andy Guthrie, french horn Kyle Bruckmann, oboe |
| JUNE 17 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
BRETT CARSON + JOSHUA MARSHALL THEA FARHADIAN + TIM PERKIS a concert of improvised music 
BRETT CARSON is a composer, pianist, improviser, and occasional theater artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. He has performed internationally in the realms of new music, free improvisation, jazz, and rock, working with a wide variety of musicians, including Bill Baird, Brian Baumbusch, Nicolas Collins, George Lewis, Nicole Mitchell, Roscoe Mitchell, Bill Noertker, Zeena Parkins, Rent Romus, and William Winant. As of 2019, he performs as the pianist for the legendary jazz unit the Art Ensemble of Chicago. His compositional work, which has been described as "fascinatingly intense" (Stephen Smoliar, SF Classical Voice), explores the creation and investigation of a modern mythological idiom. He draws inspiration from an eclectic diversity of musical influences, along with the writings of Western esotericism, surrealist poetry, and visionary science fiction. His work frequently features original texts detailing his own personal mythos. Notable projects include "Mysterious Descent", a mytho-dramatic song cycle partially written in an invented language "Kôktimo", a one-act play "Mary's Dilemma, or That Sinking Feeling," and the experimental chamber opera "Just Visiting (X-Ray Vision)". His latest project "The Killing Jar" was released in May of 2021, and he is currently working on a new song cycle based on the work of Dutch microscopist Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, to be premiered in September, 2022. THEA FARHADIAN is a performer/composer based in San Francisco Bay Area and Berlin. Her projects include solo violin and interactive electronics, acoustic improvisation, solo laptop, radio art, and video. Her solo pieces for violin and electronics combine a classical music background with extended technique and digital processing using the program Max/MSP. Her work has been seen internationally at venues which include the Issue Project Room, and Alternative Museum New York City, Galerie Mario Mazolli, Sowieso, and Quiet Cue in Berlin, the Room Series, and Meridian Gallery in San Francisco, the Center for Experimental Art and the Aram Kachaturyan Museum in Yerevan, Armenia, International Women's Electroacoustic Listening Room Project at Bimhaus in Amsterdam. Thea is a former member of the Berkeley Symphony orchestra where she played under Kent Nagano for ten years. She has an M.A. in Interdisciplinary Arts from San Francisco State and an M.F.A. in Electronic Music from Mills College. In 2009, she was a lecturer in the Art Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz. JOSHUA MARSHALL is an Oakland-based saxophonist and composer/improviser. His work involves architectural innovation, narrativity, systematic improvisatory practice, and live digital media. He has studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Evan Parker, Zeena Parkins, Butch Rovan, I.M. Harjito, and Steve Adams of the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. Joshua has played and/or recorded with ROVA (filling in for Larry Ochs), Opera Wolf, The Lords of Outland, Rent Romus' Life's Blood Ensemble, Architect/Enchantress, Bill Noertker's Moxie, Medium Sized Band, ELL3, Cheer Accident, Josh Allen's Deconstruction Orchestra, Key West, Mister Sister, Ikue Mori, Robocop, the Andrew Weathers Ensemble, Modest Machine, and MDK amongst many others.. His music has been featured in festivals and conferences nationwide, including Providence Pixilerations events, the 2010 International Computer Music Conference and several years worth of the Bay Area's Outsound Summit. Joshua graduated from Brown University, earning a B.A. through the MEME program, and holds an M.F.A. in music from Mills College. Joshua has devised several long-form works under the "Mythopoetics" heading, the ambition of which is to unfold abstract narratives in real-time by working within improvisatory systems determined by conceptual constraints particular to the subjects involved. Highlights include Volume II, a series of "Free Jazz Ballets" inspired by Charles Mingus, and Volume IV (Pharaoh Lunaire), which syncretizes a host of trinities (Sanders/Ayler/Coltrane, Webern/Berg/Schoenberg, Spirit/Father/Son) while repurposing the form of Schoenberg's famed melodrama. TIM PERKIS has been working in the medium of live electronic and computer sound for many years, performing, exhibiting installation works and recording in North America, Europe and Japan. His work has largely been concerned with exploring the emergence of life-like properties in complex systems of interaction. In addition, he is a well-known performer in the world of improvised music, having performed on his electronic improvisation instruments with hundreds of artists and groups, including Chris Brown, John Butcher, Eugene Chadbourne, Fred Frith, Gianni Gebbia, Frank Gratkowski, Luc Houtkamp, Yoshi Ichiraku, Matt Ingalls, Joelle Leandre, Gino Robair, ROVA saxophone quartet, Elliott Sharp, Leo Wadada Smith and John Zorn. Ongoing groups he has founded or played in include the League of Automatic Music Composers and the Hub -- pioneering live computer network bands -- and Rotodoti, the Natto Quartet, Fuzzybunny, All Tomorrow's Zombies and Wobbly/Perkis/Antimatter. |
| JULY 1 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
DAN PLONSEY BRAN(…)POS 
DAN PLONSEY (reeds) performs new compositions with RANDY MCKEAN (reeds), MANTRA PLONSEY (voice), WARD SPANGLER (percussion), and CORY WRIGHT (winds). BRAN(…)POS performs The Shitty Karma of Swatting Flies, a broken meditation involving noises. BRAN(…)POS is the ongoing audio-visual-performance-noise-musique-brain-bend of Jake Rodriguez from the San Francisco Bay Area, CA. Rodriguez has been performing and recording under this moniker since 1996 with releases on Rubber City Noise, Tymbal Tapes, Resipiscent, C.I.P., Ratskin Records, Animal Disguise, and Chitah! Chitah! Soundcrack. DAN PLONSEY is a composer and multi-instrumentalist living in El Cerrito. Born in Cleveland, OH, Plonsey studied composition and improvisation with Martin Bresnick, Anthony Braxton, and more briefly with other members of the AACM at the fabled Creative Music Studio. Plonsey's most notable commissions have come from Bang on a Can, the SF Jewish Music Festival, and Real Time Opera, for which he wrote an opera with a libretto by underground comic book writer, Harvey Pekar. Plonsey has released 40 CDs of his music, most of which are available at danplonsey.bandcamp.com. He is at present working on the 27th CD of music called "Concert Band 1," for which he plays all the instruments. Plonsey has worked with Randy McKean, Cory Wright, Ward Spangler, and Mantra Plonsey for decades. They can all read Plonsey's mind better than he can himself. The music will be approximately 2/3 improvised. Texts, by Mantra, tend to be eerily human. |
| JULY 15 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
JORDAN GLENN NATHAN CLEVENGER TRIO 
JORDAN GLENN makes a rare solo drum set appearance. As a drummer/percussionist/collaborator for many local creative music outfits, JG solo is a distillation of what he values most... spontaneity, space, texture and groove. A document of this work can be heard on his first solo recording "Flustered", released this past May on Full Spectrum Records. For this performance he will be highlighting some home-constructed instruments in conjunction with the traditional drum set and acquired junk. NATHAN CLEVENGER TRIO Oakland musicians Nathan Clevenger, Jordan Glenn, and Cory Wright share a long and entwined history of collaboration across various projects, including Wiener Kids, Ashen Cleric, and Fellow Hominids. In early 2021, in the depths of the Covid-19 quarantine, Nathan was asked to assemble a small ensemble for a socially distanced online music festival – the Karl Evangelista-curated Unsolitary Series – and this ensemble was born. Working from, between, and against Clevenger’s compositional frames and utilizing the multi-instrumental flexibility of each player, the trio weaves between non-idiomatic improvisation and often gnomic composed material, with focus on spaciousness and timbral detail. Since relocating to Oakland in 2006, JORDAN GLENN has found himself in a variety of creative music scenes. He is most associated with Fred Frith (FF Trio, Gravity Band), William Winant, Zeena Parkins (The Adorables), Roscoe Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Lisa Mezzacappa, Kyle Bruckmann, Michael Coleman, Karl Evangelista, Matthew Welch and bands Jack O' The Clock, Secret Chiefs 3, The Rova Sax Quartet, tUnE-yArDs and the collective Sifter with Rob Ewing, Beth Schenck and Lisa Mezzacappa. As a leader, he composes and conducts the large, percussion heavy band BEAK, and since 2007 has led the saxophone/percussion trio Wiener Kids. He also has been commissioned to create scores for evening-length dance pieces by Sharp & Fine and Liss Fain Dance. NATHAN CLEVENGER is an Oakland born composer and multi-instrumentalist, working on the margins of modern composition, jazz, and improvisation. In 2022, Clevenger released ‘i had a dream about amnesia’, an album compiling 2 suites for solo, duo, and trio configurations, composed and recorded during the Covid-19 lockdown. The eight-piece Nathan Clevenger Group has released three albums, including ‘Stateless’ (2019, Slow & Steady Records). Current projects include a trio with Jordan Glenn & Cory Wright and the improvising chamber ensemble, Ashen Cleric. Notable recent performances include the premieres of extended compositions at the SF Contemporary Jewish Museum (‘for david berman’, performed by Ashen Cleric) and the Exploratorium (‘Ice Hours’, a multimedia collaboration with violinist/composer Kristina Dutton and artist Kim Miskowicz). Reeds player and composer CORY WRIGHT studied music at Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Southern California and has been involved in both the jazz and creative music worlds for the past 20 years, including time spent in New York, Los Angeles and his current home in the San Francisco Bay Area. His recent projects reflect his interest in blurring the distinction between composed and improvised music, and in combining the harmonious with the atonal, the grooving with the arrhythmic. Wright has performed in ensembles led by Anthony Braxton, Vinny Golia, Todd Sickafoose, Adam Rudolph and Yusef Lateef. He is currently a member of Bristle, the Nathan Clevenger Group, and Goggle (saxophone quartet) and leads his own projects Fellow Hominids and The Green Mitchell Trio. |
| JULY 22 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
GIACOMO FIORE SFSOUNDGROUP  
Guitarist GIACOMO FIORE presents a pair of just intonation works: CATHERINE LAMB'S point/wave (2015) and LARRY POLANSKY'S freeHorn (2004). Both pieces harness electronics to generate novel harmonic spaces for the guitar to inhabit and ornament, weaving cyclical arc-like patterns in Lamb, and freely following a progression between related harmonic series in Polansky. SFSOUNDGROUP performs two iconic 20th century works of chamber music: GÉRARD GRISEY'S bracing Talea (1986) and the premiere of a transcription of BRUNO MADERNA'S rarely performed, beguiling Serenata N.2 (1956). P R O G R A M Italian-born guitarist and musicologist GIACOMO FIORE has premiered more than two dozen new works for justly-tuned, electric, and classical guitars, and released several recordings for Populist, Cold Blue, Pinna, Spectropol, Paper Garden Records, and his own impressum. As a scholar his research focuses on U.S. experimental music, intonation, and performance; he has published articles in Music Theory Spectrum, the Journal of the Society for the American Music, and TEMPO, and writes occasionally for Classical Guitar and SFCV. He teaches a wide range of historical and practical music courses at the University of San Francisco and UC Santa Cruz. The "house band" for the Mosswood Sound Series, SFSOUNDGROUP is a unique collection of performer-composers that have presented their own compositions, improvisations, new commissions, electronic music, and standard avant-garde repertoire for over two decades. With a mix of works from the European, American, and contemporary Californian avant-garde, their concerts explore the continuum between notated composition and free improvisation, often sounding more “electronic” than “acoustic.” Musicians performing on this program are: Sam Weiser, violin |
| JULY 29 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
NATALIA BADZIAK MOE STAIANO ENSEMBLE 
NATALIA BADZIAK performs three contemporary works for solo viola Giacinto Scelsi - Manto I MOE STAIANO guides an ensemble of musicians in a composition written specially to be performed at Mosswood Chapel. Musicians will be distributed among its hallways and rooms surrounding the main performance space. The seated audience will experience the work acoustically "mixed and mastered" in real-time as the instrumentalists roam throughout the building. This will be Moe's first performance of his ensemble since 2018. His one online guided improv performance from 2020 doesn't count. NATALIA BADZIAK is a graduate of the Oberlin College and Conservatory of Music, where she completed Bachelor’s degrees in viola performance and comparative literature, and the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, where she completed her Master’s degree. Natalia has performed in many music festivals including the International Ensemble Modern Academy and Spoleto Festival USA, as well as in ensembles such the San Francisco Contemporary Players and in a piano quintet through Lincoln Center Stage. She performs as a substitute with the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra. An avid new music performer, Natalia has worked with members of the Ensemble Modern and Klangforum Wien, is a Lucerne Festival Fellow, and has attended the Darmstadt Summer Music Courses. She has commissioned several new works for the viola that involve experimental techniques. MOE STAIANO is a musician and composer of new music works and angular rock music. Since 1995, he has been at the forefront of the Bay Area improvisation scene, playing drums and percussion through innovative solo shows that can feature prepared drum kit, found objects, audio looping and the inventive use of a "percussion guitar." All this is woven in with a performance art aspect that gets the audience involved and wondering what might happen next. He will play (or smash into pieces) just about anything he can get his hands on, and somehow make a compelling musical statement out of it. Moe's compositional work has included music for large ensembles, a piece for two bass clarinets, and a work for percussion quartet. He has also conducted aleatoric improvisatory ensembles, using a glossary of handcues as well as composed sections cued in the moment. As conductor and composer for the Moe Staiano Ensemble, (formerly Moekestra!), he has composed pieces that can include over 30 musicians playing instruments ranging from violins, clarinets and cellos to drum kits, wine glasses, sirens, oscillators and electric guitars. Moe Staiano Ensemble performances are high-energy, electrifying experiences that create unique and intriguing soundscapes. Moe is currently the leader and frontman for Surplus 1980, a post-punk band that continually evolves its percussive, no-wave progressive musical exploration. Surplus 1980 features Moe's bracing guitar and wry wordplay and a wide palette of timbres from the multi-instrumentalist members of the group. They have released three albums, 2011's "Relapse In Response," 2014's mini-album "Arterial Ends Here," and 2019's "Pigeon Obstacle Course." Additionally, Surplus 1980 appears on one side of the shared 7" record, "International Static Split," with Dutch band King Champion Sounds. They have a forthcoming album in the works for 2022 and a single with G.W. Sok. In 2018, a collaboration with vocalist G.W. Sok (Formerly with The Ex) led to the creation of a 14-piece expanded version of the band--the Surplus 1980 Collectiv Ensembl. This unique group recorded "Forget All This," an album featuring Sok's poetry set to Moe's music, which was released in 2019. Later that year, the group, including Sok, brought this album to the stage in full for a pair of shows in the San Francisco Bay Area. From 1999-2004, Moe was a percussionist for metal progsters Sleepytime Gorilla Museum (and appeared occasionally for live guest performances afterward). He appears on their albums "Grand Opening And Closing," and "Of Natural History," as well as the "Live" album. He played and recorded with San Jose collective Vacuum Tree Head (also doing percussion first, then as drummer) from 1996 to the early 2000's. In 2006 he formed Mute Socialite, an angular no-wavish punk band, in which Moe played drums (and occasional guitar), along with second drummer Shayna Dunkelman, and guitarist Ava Mendoza. They released one album, "More Popular Than Presidents And Generals." Over the years, Moe has worked with a veritable who's-who of the Bay Area creative music scene, including Gabby Fluke-Mogul, Fred Frith, Ron Anderson (the Molecules, RonRuins, PAK), Tom Nunn, Vacuum Tree Head, Thollem McDonas, Z'ev, Amy X Neuburg, Ava Mendoza, Nurse With Wound, David Slusser, Karen Stackpole, Ches Smith, Michael Evans (God Is My Co-Pilot), Caroline Kraabel & John Edwards (Shock Exchange), Gino Robair, William Hooker, Tom Dimuzio and has performed with all these plus Henry Kaiser, Mark Growden's Electric Pinata, Amy Denio, Jordan Glenn, Telepathic Birds, Feona Lee Jones, Jon Raskin (ROVA), Cheer-Accident and has performed in the sfSoundGroup, Rova::Orkestrova, Terrie Hessels (the Ex), Rhys Chatham (A Secret Rose for 100 guitars) among others. |
| AUGUST 5 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
TING LUO TRIO: JESSICA ACKERLEY + PHILLIP GREENLIEF  
Pianist TING LUO premieres two works by french sound artist and composer ARIES MOND. Ting also performs improvisation pieces for prepared piano, field recordings and electronics and two of her recent compositions Through Time and Dream Improvisor that explore a theme of healing. TRIO: ( JESSICA ACKERLEY - PHILLIP GREENLIEF ) performs electro-acoustic improvisation with guitar, saxophone, electronics. These musicians can move easily between ambient textural landscapes and skronky noise events that emerge from the deep listening approach of Oliveros and a boundary-free love of contemporary music. Pianist TING LUO has performed and lectured in prestigious venues in China and the U.S. that advocate contemporary music. She is the director of New Arts Collaboration Ting Luo has curated a multimedia music and art project New Arts Collaboration since 2020. She actively collaborates with artists from multiple disciplines including visual artists, composers, and sound artists. Works by NAC have been featured in The San Luis Obispo Museum of Art’s Digital Shorts Film Festival, Fresh Inc Festival, New Music Gathering Conference/Festival, and are programmed in Old First Concert Series, T he Center of New Music, Thailand New Music and Arts Symposium, Tokyo International Short Film Festival and Pune Shorts International Film Festival. Ting currently resides in Bay Area, California. JESSICA ACKERLEY has established themselves on the music scene as a unique and versatile guitarist, and composer. Born in Alberta, Canada, Jessica now resides in Honolulu. They have worked alongside notable musicians such as Tyshawn Sorey, Daniel Carter, Marc Edwards, and Luke Stewart, to name a few. In 2017 and 2019, Ackerley released two albums as a bandleader - Coalesce and A New Kind of Water - to much acclaim. In 2019, they founded The Brink Guitar Festival, featuring Miles Okazaki, Wendy Eisenberg, and Dan Lippel, among others. They has been commissioned by Adult Swim to compose and record a track for their 15-song compilation entitled New Jazz Century. Since his emergence on the west coast in the late 1970s, saxophonist/composer PHILLIP GREENLIEF has achieved international acclaim for his recordings and performances with musicians and composers in the post-jazz continuum as well as new music innovators and virtuosic improvisers. He has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, Meredith Monk, Rashaun Mitchell and They Might Be Giants. Albums include LANTSKAP LOGIC with Fred Frith and Evelyn Davis, THAT OVERT DESIRE OF OBJECT with Joelle Leandre, ALL AT ONCE with FPR (Frank Gratkowski and Jon Raskin), and OH THAT MONSTER with LA punk pioneers Thelonious Monster. Recent residencies have included the Banff Center for Art and Creativity, Neue Muzik Koln, and Headlands Center for the Arts. His critical writing has been published in Artforum, Open Space (SFMOMA), and Signal to Noise. "The Bay Area's do-it-yourself ethos has produced a bevy of dazzlingly creative musicians, but few have put the philosophy to work as effectively as Phillip Greenlief." – Andrew Gilbert, San Francisco Chronicle |
| AUGUST 12 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
LIA KOHL BRENDAN GLASSON 
Chicago-based cellist and composer LIA KOHL performs material from her most recent solo album, a continuous soundscape of cello, live radio, synthesizers, and field recordings. Oakland-based BRENDAN GLASSON performs a series of pieces for reed organ and wind quartet (Mitch Stahlmann, Kim Nucci, Michelle Lee, and Cole Pulice). LIA KOHL is a cellist, composer, and multidisciplinary artist based in Chicago. She creates and performs music and multimedia performance that incorporates sound, video, movement, theater, and sculptural objects. She has presented work and performed at the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Walker Art Center, Chicago Symphony Center, and Eckhart Park Pool, and held residencies at Mana Contemporary Chicago, High Concept Labs, dfbrl8r Performance Art Gallery, Mills College and Stanford University. She is a curator and ensemble member with poly-disciplinary performance ensemble Mocrep. As an improviser and collaborator, she has participated in cultural exchanges in Mexico, France, Germany, Denmark, China and the UK, and toured on four continents. She has played with Makaya McCraven, Whitney, OHMME, and Circuit des Yeux. An active recording artist, she has arranged and recorded with Steve Gunn, Claire Rousay, and Steve Hauschildt, among others. Lia tours regularly with puppet theater company Manual Cinema and helps create 60 Songs in 60 Minutes, a quarterly show with the Neo-Futurists. Recent albums include duos with Macie Stewart (Astral Spirits), Zachary Good (Parlour Tapes+), ZRL (American Dreams Records) and a solo album on Shinkoyo/Artist Pool. BRENDAN GLASSON (b. Providence, RI) is a composer living and working in Oakland, CA. He is interested in detail, texture, and slowness as launching points for a kind of augmented experience of duration and listening. Much of his work is centered around reed organ—a ubiquitous instrument in the 19th and early 20th century that has fallen into wide disuse. His relationship with reed organs is influenced by his background in electronic music, and he makes use of the buzzy tone, infinite sustain, and limited dynamics to create a music reminiscent of synthesis. By necessity he has come to develop an interest in repairing, tuning, and maintaining these antique instruments, and he explores novel techniques for amplifying and capturing the fine details of the sound. His recent body of work, The Reality of People and Other Works for Reed Organ, has focused on finding tone clusters that activate resonances in the organ, creating a pulsing, throbbing music of intentionally limited gesture. Brendan has performed and shown work at SFMOMA, Centre Pompidou-Metz, the MUDAM museum, G16, the Lab, and more. He holds an MFA from Mills College, where he is the technical director at the Center for Contemporary Music. |
| AUGUST 19 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
CHIKO LORIN BENEDICT + RON HEGLIN MOSSWOOD IMPROVISERS GROUP   
Visiting from Japan, violinist CHIKO performs a set of 20th century classics: Morton Feldman's for aaron copland; Toru Takemitsu's Distance de Fee; Igor Stravinsky's Elegy; Astor Piazolla's Ave Maria; and and Ennio Morricone's Love Theme from Cinema Paradiso. She will joined by HADLEY MCCARROLL on piano. Improvisations by LORIN BENEDICT and RON HEGLIN - Two vocalists, improvising together, each of whom sings in his own invented language. Closing the concert, THE MOSSWOOD IMPROVISATION GROUP, a collection of local improvising musicians, will perform a set of free improvisation. Performers include: TIM PERKIS, electronics; KANOKO NISHI-SMITH, koto; BRENDAN LAI-TONG, trombone; MATT INGALLS, clarinets; TOM DJLL, trumpet; BEN DAVIS, cello; KEVIN CK LO, violin/flute/piano/electronics. CHIKO is currently one of 1st violin players of the City of Kyoto Symphony Orchestra. In addition to the orchestra, she promotes and plays her own concerts including solo, duets and chamber music. She also works on collaborative creations between violin and various artists in other fields. With the theme of “awakening of the five senses” with her “sound” as the starting point, she incorporates improvisation and creates a unique world view through her variety of music. She studied mental coaching and Ericsson Hypnosis, and adopted a spiritual approach to help the sound and music reach deeper into the human heart. Recently she has started doing sound healing in private sessions. RON HEGLIN is a trombonist and vocalist working with extended technique on the trombone and with spoken and sung imaginary languages as a vocalist. His vocal music has been influenced by his study of North Indian vocal music. He works both compositionally and in an improvisational mode and is a member of the Bay Area music context as well as performing internationally. He is a founding member of the groups MUSIC FOR ALL OCCASIONS, ROTODOTI, and BRASSIOSAURUS, and has performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Leo Smith, Henry Brant, Logos Duo, Tim Perkis, John Bischoff, Tom Djll, and Toyoji Tomita. LORIN BENEDICT is an improvising vocalist (scat singer, essentially) who works in the areas of jazz and related music. He co-leads several small groups dedicated to playing highly structured music in a manifestly loose and playful way. This includes the duo Bleeding Vector, the trio The Holly Martins, and duo projects with drummer Sam Ospovat and bass player Logan Kane, respectively. He has also, over the past two decades, appeared as a side-man in groups led by musicians such as Howard Wiley and Sheldon Brown, among many others. |
| AUGUST 26 2022 7:15p $10-$25 |
|
a tribute to TOM NUNN with GHOST IN THE HOUSE and friends 
TOM NUNN was a free spirit dedicated to practice and discipline. He could play for hours on any of his invented instruments with any other musician. Regardless of his intuitive approach to improvisation, his musical success was grounded in a solid technical mastery of his instruments. – Ed Herrmann THE SENDOFFIX (MICHAEL KNOWLTON - guitar, STEVE SHAIN - aluminum upright bass, BIG SKIN - trumpet/voice, GARY KNOWLTON - chase plate, waterphone, windwands) DYNOSOAR (TOM DJLL - trumpet, RON HEGLIN - voice/trombone, KAREN STACKPOLE - gongs) THOMAS DIMUZIO - electronics, SCOTT LOONEY - Hyperpiano DSP GHOST IN THE HOUSE (DAVID MICHALAK - phantom harp, lap steel; TOM NUNN - inventions; KYLE BRUCKMANN - double reeds; KAREN STACKPOLE - gongs, percussion, waterphone; BRUCE ACKLEY - soprano saxophone; POLLY SPRINGHORN - bass flute, JOHN INGLE - saxophone; with special guest pianist, THOLLEM) plus surprise sets! A free CD with Tom Nunn included with admission. |
| SEPTEMBER 2 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
DEL SOL STRING QUARTET 
Extreme sounds / extreme emotions. DEL SOL STRING QUARTET finds the range of expressivity through the exploration of sound, noise, silence, and musical restrictions. Featuring the music of composers ANDREW RODRIGUEZ, deVON RUSSELL GRAY, DU YUN, and JULIUS EASTMAN. Fascinated by the feedback loop between social change, technology, and artistic innovation, the San Francisco-based DEL SOL STRING QUARTET is a leading force in 21st-century chamber music. They believe that live music can, and should, happen anywhere – whether introducing Ben Johnston’s microtonal Americana at the Library of Congress or in a canyon cave, taking Aeryn Santillan’s gun-violence memorial to the streets of the Mission District, or collaborating with Huang Ruo and the anonymous Chinese poets who carved their words into the walls of the Angel Island Immigration Station. Since 1992, Del Sol has commissioned or premiered thousands of works by composers including Terry Riley, Gabriela Lena Frank, Tania León, Frederic Rzewski, Vijay Iyer, Mason Bates, Michael Harrison, Huang Ruo, Pamela Z, Chinary Ung, Chen Yi, Erberk Eryilmaz, Theresa Wong, Reza Vali, and Kui Dong. The quartet regularly works with composers through workshops, universities, as well as Del Sol commissioning and incubator programs. They especially value their ongoing relationship with the Gabriela Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music in Boonville, CA. Del Sol’s eleventh album "A Dust in Time" debuted at #3 on Billboard in October 2021. Called “excavations of beauty from the elemental” (NY Times), this hour-long meditation was released in the form of a coloring book. Their previous album “Kooch-e Khamân” (February 2021) features 7 new works by young Iranian composers and charted #5 on Billboard. In the 2021-2022 season, Del Sol continues its Joy Project, performing outdoor pop-ups around the Bay Area of music written to inspire joy. They also are producing two large projects: “The Angel Island Project,” an immigration-themed oratorio by Chinese American composer Huang Ruo, and “Between Worlds of Sound,” a collaboration with North Indian musicians Alam Khan & Arjun Verma. In 2021, the quartet were featured artists at the Venice Bienalle’s Arts Letter and Numbers Pavilion. They are current artists on the ImmerSphere roster, a groundbreaking platform that produces performances in augmented reality. |
| SEPTEMBER 9 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
KARL EVANGELISTA + LEWIS JORDAN ALEX HEIGL 
KARL EVANGELISTA and LEWIS JORDAN perform improvisations for saxophone and guitar. Newly relocated to Berkeley, ALEX HEIGL performs works for guitar & electronics influenced by La Monte Young and Pauline Oliveros. Filipino-American guitarist/composer KARL ALFONSO DEFENSOR EVANGELISTA ranks among a new wave of musicians pushing the traditions of jazz, experimentalism, and political music into the 21st century, performing with the likes of Andrew Cyrille, Fred Frith, Oliver Lake, Louis Moholo-Moholo, Bobby Bradford, Ben Goldberg, and Francis Wong. Signal to Noise magazine hails Evangelista as "one of the most original instrumentalists and composers of his generation," and as the creative force behind boundary-breaking group Grex, Evangelista's music has been called an "otherworldly experience" (Eugene Weekly) LEWIS JORDAN is an international touring and recording musician and poet. He focuses on creative structures for improvisation, which has led to his work with artists from a range of practice: dance, poetry, theater and visual arts. He continues to produce interdisciplinary and multicultural productions and to seek out performers who strive for modes of expression that honor their traditions while speaking to the urgency of the present. ALEX HEIGL'S guitar work focuses on the intersection of American Primitive-style fingerpicking and long-form drones and soundscapes, augmented with tape loops and other electronics. He relocated from Brooklyn to Berkeley in 2021 after a decade-plus of playing in bands there, and his first solo album under his own name was released in August. |
| SEPTEMBER 16 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
OCHS + JOHNSTON + PERKIS + MERKEY + NORDESON B DAY + S GLASS  
A rare chance to hear the reconvening of LARRY OCHS'S (saxophones) stellar quartet with DARREN JOHNSTON (trumpet), MADALYN MERKEY (electronics), TIM PERKIS (electronics), and special guest KJELL NORDESON (percussion). If the 2019 and 2020 and 2021 quartet shows are any indication of how high this music can take both the listeners and the musicians, expect a set of healing-force music this Friday evening. B DAY and S GLASS, two well-established virtuosos of collage, cobblecore, and clutter-clobber come together for full of tactile toybox sound-worlds, warbling electronic transmissions, and surreal environmental invasions. MADALYN MERKEY is a composer and performer of live computer music based in the San Francisco Bay Area. Merkey creates sound events with elemental sonic material—voice, sine waves, and pulses—to generate lush synthetic environments with the aid of acoustic readings from microphones and sensors. . Her recent work observes the principles of acoustic instruments and material spaces to design real-time sound synthesis programs. She has performed solo computer music compositions at Yale Union, Issue Project Room, and Block Cinema, and designed sound installations for Robert Irwin’s Central Garden at the Getty Center in Los Angeles. Her CD "Oranges" is a selection of songs from various online performances presented in July and September of 2020. TIM PERKIS is a well-known figure in the worlds of improvised and electronic music. He is also a founding member of several electronic music ensembles, including Fuzzy Bunny, Splendor Generator and the pioneering computer network band The Hub. Recordings of his music are available on the Artifact, Tzadik, New World and EMANEM labels, among others. His documentary film NOISY PEOPLE (2007) and NOISY PEOPLE podcast (2015) are available at noisy people.net and perkis.com. Since settling in San Francisco in 1997, Canada-born trumpeter/composer/songwriter DARREN JOHNSTON has collaborated and recorded with an extremely diverse cross-section of artists, yet always finds ways to be true to his own unique voice in each context. For example he has worked with straight-ahead jazz luminaries such as bassist/composer Marcus Shelby, to experimental icons like Rova Sax Quartet, Fred Frith and Myra Melford, to multiple tours with rising star, singer/songwriter Meklit Hadero, or traditional Balkan brass band giants Brass Menazeri. As a bandleader he has made his mark with the award winning The Nice Guy Trio, The Darren Johnston Quintet, the category defying Broken Shadows, Reasons for Moving, and more. Johnston was featured as one of Downbeat Magazine’s “25 Trumpeters for the Future,” and has been listed multiple times in the critic’s polls. His debut quintet recording, “The Edge of the Forest” received four stars by four very different critics in the Downbeat “Critics Polls,” and was given an honorable mention by the Village Voice for the top 10 CDs of the year. Johnston has a BA from the Cincinnati Conservatory of music, and an MFA in composition from Mills College. He has received commissions from dance companies such as Kunst-Stoff, Robert Moses’ Kin, and AXIS Dance, and from presenting organizations such as the De Young Museum, and the Yerba Buena Garden Festival; his music has been used in a few independent films. As a member of Rova Saxophone Quartet since 1977, LARRY OCHS has made more than two-dozen CDs and 40 tours to Europe and Japan. He has recorded dozens of CDs with his other touring bands including Larry Ochs Sax & Drumming Core with Scott Amendola, Don Robinson, Satoko Fujii, and Natsuki Tamura (4 CDs) and Kihnoua with vocalist/performance artist Dohee Lee, Scott Amendola and special guests (“The Sybil’s Whisper”- 2012 CD). He is performing in and composing for more “collective” bands such as: East-West Collective – with Didier Petit, Sylvain Kassap, Miya Masaoka, Xu Fengxia (“Humeurs” – 2014 CD); Ochs-Robinson Duo with drummer Don Robinson (2021 CD = A Civil Right); Jones Jones – with Mark Dresser and Vladimir Tarasov (“A Jone4s in Time Saves None”- 2019 CD); Maybe Monday – with Miya Masaoka and Fred Frith (Unsquare -2008 CD); Shelton-Ochs Quartet with Aram Shelton, Kjell Nordeson and Mark Dresser (Continental Drift – 2020 CD); Trio Dave Rempis- Darren Johnston- Larry Ochs (2 CDs + 1 live digital release). He has performed with Kronos Quartet, John Zorn, Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, Nels Cline, John Lindberg, Scott Amendola, Andrew Cyrille, Butch Morris, Marilyn Crispell, Henry Kaiser, Wadada Leo Smith, Peggy Lee and many others. KJELL NORDESON is a Swedish percussionist and drummer living in San Francisco. In the early '90s, he formed AALY Trio with fellow Swede Mats Gustafsson. AALY Trio became one of the leading groups in the Swedish experimental scene in the '90s. He has toured extensively in Europe, North America, North Africa, and Japan with various groups; altogether over 1200 performances in around 30 different countries and recorded over 60 CDs. He has performed with Peter Brötzmann, Barry Guy, Ken Vandermark, Joe Morris, William Parker, Mark Dresser, Gerry Hemingway, Frank Gratkowski, Stefano Scodanibbio, and many others. Nordeson has worked as a musician and composer in numerous theatre performances at Sweden's Dramaten (Royal Dramatic Theater), Riksteatern (Swedish National Theater), and Stockholm's Stadsteater (City Theater). In 1994 he founded Co. Alba with choreographer Nathalie Ruiz. Ruiz and Nordeson jointly produced numerous dance performances; their latest piece, a short film entitled Désire, was commissioned by the Swedish Television. In 2004, he relocated to California and is now active in the San Francisco Bay Area scene with its thriving community of free-improvised, experimental, and new music. He has a Ph.D. in music from UC San Diego, where he wrote a dissertation named "Why do you play the way you do? - Musical Improvisation, Identity, and Social Interaction.” S GLASS (Seymour Glass) is a long-time member of Bren't Lewiis Ensemble and Glands of External Secretion, two groups where a prowess-averse anti-sophisto can flourish in any number of roles: abuser of instruments, ignorer of proper technique, found sound gourmand. B DAY (Bryan Day) is a sonic adventurer, painter and inventor of curious things based in the East Bay. Using scavenged electronics, repurposed mechanical components and amplified materials that you might find in your garage or your great uncle's office, he re-imagines them into constructivist sound sculptures. Day has performed, taught workshops, and built sound installations across Europe, Asia and the Americas. |
|
SEPTEMBER 22 2022 6:30pm(promptly) SPECIAL EVENT @ BERKELEY'S LIVE OAK PARK |
|
WENDY REID'S AMBIENT BIRD 
sfSound members join WENDY REID and others in a special fall equinox outdoor performance of WENDY REID'S ambient bird - live oak M U S I C I A N S Lulu, african grey parrot Wendy Reid, violin Krys Bobrowski, glisglas Ron Heglin. tuba Brenda Hutchinson, long tube Aurora Josephson, voice David Samas, percussion Kanoko Nishi-Smith, koto Brendan Lai-Tong, trombone Matt Ingalls, clarinet Diane Grubbe, flute Kyle Bruckmann, oboe WENDY REID'S site-specific work ‘ambient bird - live oak’ is a 44-minute interspecies sonic landscape which reflects a philosophy of connecting with all living creatures and the environment. The ensemble includes the musicians of sfSOUND and others working with the sounds of the birds, the crickets, the creek and the trees of Live Oak Park. The structure of this work can be described as a musical process which attempts to reflect nature’s manner of operations: sonic fragments of an African grey parrot become the cells of a spatially notated score to be interpreted and performed by the musicians within the ambient environment. Contextual in nature, the work allows performers to act according to unpredictable conditions and variables which arise within the musical continuity. In performance, an attempt is made at a spontaneous unforced growing of sound and silence in which emphasis is placed on formation rather than pre-established form, as in the building and shaping of cell-like units in living processes. The first incantation of ambient bird entitled ‘ambient bird 433’, pays homage to John Cage’s composition 4’33”(1952). This fall equinox performance with sfSound celebrates its 70th-year anniversary. *LOCATION OF PERFORMANCE: Live Oak Park 1301 Shattuck Ave. Berkeley, just north of the recreation/theatre building, near the creek, under the trees. There is no formal seating: stand and watch or wander, sit on the grass, ground, steps, distant picnic tables or bring your own chair/blanket. |
| SEPTEMBER 23 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
THOMAS CARNACKI GRALE  
THOMAS CARNACKI is a variably-sized organism that has been trundling forward for well over a decade, having been as many as eight individuals, and as few as one. (Or, in some instances, none at all.) Tonight’s instantiation will be on the more modest end of that spectrum, being Cheryl E. Leonard and Gregory Scharpen. Carnacki’s output tends towards the textural, the durational, the nuanced, and — on occasion — the absurd. Over the years, numerous guests have participated in either live or recorded proceedings, including the likes of Carla Bozulich, Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi, Emily Jane White, Marielle Jakobsons, irr. app. (ext.), and Moe! Staiano, to name but a few. Carnacki music has somewhat inexplicably found its way into multiple theatrical performances, HBO and PBS documentaries, avant-garde and experimental short films, internationally-touring evenings of dance, the Whitney Biennial, the Illuminated Corridor, 23five’s Activating The Medium festival, and performance venues from the Bay to New York. Around a dozen or so physical releases exist at present to serve as recorded documents of Carnacki’s work, with several more currently looming on the horizon. GRALE has performed as a multi-faceted and cinematically rooted ensemble, morphing its electric shadows along with its shifting lineups. Initially a duo of Dale Sophiea (MX-80 Sound, O-Type, etc.) and Gregory Hagan (Pale Reverse, Thomas Carnacki Ensemble, Common Eider King Eider, etc.) that sprung from a series of after-hours underground film and music salons in Berkeley, the project grew to include percussionist/composer Nico Sophiea and Dale's longtime collaborator and fellow MX-80 founder Bruce Anderson. Swimming through the whole history of music and sound-work, and often graced by projections courtesy of Lorin Murphy and Jerry Smith, the group ranges from sublime Feldman-esque spacious textures to thunderous beat driven dirges. Closing a circle of some sort, this performance sees Grale return as a duo of Dale and Gregory, in what is in all likelihood their last live performance. |
| SEPTEMBER 30 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
ADRIANA CAMACHO TORRES + LISA MEZZACAPPA SARAH GRACE GRAVES 
In the spirit of classic international community-building and in-the-moment musical communication, Mexico City bassist/composer, improviser, bandleader, tireless organizer ADRIANA CAMACHO TORRES and local bay area bassist/composer, improviser, bandleader and tireless organizer LISA MEZZACAPPA will meet for the first time and engage in a dialogue of contrabass improvisations. These two are kindred spirits who have never met ... identical twins separated at birth? Come out and listen and find out for yourself. Bay Area composer/vocalist SARAH GRACE GRAVES performs a solo set of original compositions and improvisations alongside selections from Giacinto Scelsi’s Canti del Capricorno. (1962-1972), Carol Robinson's Back into the Gaping Again-ness (2020), and a new collaboration with Jon Yu. Mexico City based contrabassist ADRIANA CAMACHO TORRES is active in the free improvisation and free jazz scene in CDMX, and has performed in international and local festivals, c ycles and forums such as the Bosque Sonoro Museum of Modern Art CDMX, the Cervantino Festival, Chalton Gallery London, Ugo Cara Museum of Modern Art, the Knulp Forum in Trieste, Pavillion 02 in Venice, the RESIST! Festival in Vienna, the Sala de Arte Publico Siquieros and others ... Her work in free improvisation has led to many collaborations with musicians, poets and the plastic artists: Anne Waldman, Elliott Levin, Guro Moe, Phillip Greenlief, Aram Shelton, Antonion Griton, and many more. She is currently active in several groups: Cihuatl, Kóryma Band, Sociedad Acústica de Capital Variable, Eyi Xochimeh, Cataratas del Niágara, Sesión Libre Trío, Cuerdas no tan Cuerdas, Los Verdaderos Subterráneos, David Contreras Trío and her solo project Loope. Bay Area composer/vocalist SARAH GRACE GRAVES is an experimental singer and composer externalizing an internal sensory landscape via nameless space, wordless sounds, and charged silence. From 2021-2022, she was a Harriet Hale Woolley fellow at the Fondation des États-Unis in Paris, conducting an artistic residency on interdisciplinary collaboration with the voice. Notable collaborators include EXAUDI, Carol Robinson, Radical 2, Helēna Sorokina, and the Italian new vocal music ensemble Fragmente. Festival appearances include Voix Nouvelles Academy at Royaumont, ilSUONO Academy, and Westben Performer-Composer Residency. In 2022 she was awarded the Michiko Hirayama Scholarship dedicated to contemporary vocality by a joint committee from Fondazione Isabella Scelsi and Associazione Nuova Consonanza. She is currently in the PhD program in composition at the University of California, Berkeley. Berkeley, CA-based composer and bassist LISA MEZZACAPPA has been part of California’s vibrant music community for nearly 20 years. Her activities as a composer and ensemble leader include ethereal chamber music, electro-acoustic works, avant-garde jazz, music for groups from duo to large ensemble, and collaborations with film, dance, and visual art. Recent projects include Cosmicomics, a suite for electro-acoustic jazz sextet based on Italo’s Calvino’s stories about the cosmos; Organelle, a chamber work for improvisers grounded in scientific processes; Glorious Ravage, a song cycle for large ensemble and films drawn from the writings of Victorian lady adventurers; and Touch Bass, a collaboration with choreographer Risa Jaroslow for three dancers and three bassists. She also co-leads the community improvisation ensemble, the duo B. Experimental Band, with drummer Jason Levis, and is creating the serial audio opera The Electronic Lover in collaboration with writer Beth Lisick. |
| SUNDAY OCTOBER 9 2022 7pm $10-$1,000,000 |
|
MEET THE NEW PIANO! FUNDRAISER 
Come meet our new piano! - a 92-key (down to a Low F!) 1953 Bösendorfer 7’4” Model 225, in polished ebony, made of spruce in Vienna. (This model is known for its incredible range of tone, because of a huge resonance board and additional strings). Through a generous donation, sfSound's MOSSWOOD SOUND SERIES has received this lovely instrument. To welcome the piano to its new home, we present an evening of short works performed by local pianists. All proceeds go to the ~$2,000 cost for moving, installation, tuning, and instrument insurance. Alternatively, (or if you are unable to attend the concert) you can make a tax-deductible donation through sfSound's DONATION PAGE. Expect many piano-centric performances in the following months! PROGRAM John Cage - In a Landscape Henry Cowell - Aeolian Harp Reena Esmail - Rang de Basant Colin Farish - Allison's Nocturne Greg Goodman - Improvisation Donivan Johnson - Kinderstück nach Webern: Laughing Man Györgi Ligeti - Etude #10: Der Zauberlehrling Scott Looney - Improvisation Martha Stoddard - Row Motion Ting Luo - Two New Works Anton Webern - Kinderstück PERFORMED BY PATTI DEUTER KYMRY ESAINKO GREG GOODMAN SCOTT LOONEY TING LUO HADLEY MCCARROLL JANIS MERCER |
| SATURDAY OCTOBER 15 2022 8pm $10-$25 |
|
METHODS BODY (portland) KINDA GREEN (emeryville/albany) 
Portland-based duo METHODS BODY creates original sound art and music using custom tuning systems, involuted polyrhythms, and the cadences of language. John Niekrasz (drums and percussion) and Luke Wyland (keys and electronics) use bespoke live-sampling technologies and meta-cognitive compositions to inhabit waves of subliminal melody and deep, uncanny grooves. KINDA GREEN is the long-standing duo project of Bay Area improvisers/composers stalwarts TIM PERKIS (electronics) and TOM DJLL (trumpet/electronics). METHODS BODY (Portland) builds on the non-traditional tunings of Terry Riley, the experimental energy of Éliane Radigue and Silver Apples, and the refracted electronics of Aphex Twin to create a sonic language completely their own. Together, Wyland and Niekrasz have been pushing the bounds of rhythm and melody for more than a dozen years. Their duos, AU and Why I Must Be Careful, were lauded as groundbreaking and breathtaking. Both Niekrasz and Wyland are idiosyncratic innovators on their instruments and use performance as an arena for legitimate connection and energetic exchange. Methods Body’s first full-length album (released in 2020) is born from long-term composing and recording sessions held in old-growth forests and remote deserts. When people such as TIM PERKIS and TOM DJLL decide that a musical enterprise will work better if a "drone-fart" is used in conjunction with "fucked" Hendrix samples, or simply because fragments of pop music are the ideal prologue to a world of hums and buzzes from outer space radios, then we're in for surprises. KINDA GREEN is chock full of these revelations, but also abounds in what's worryingly similar to the stillness of the brain, the listener perceiving only small fractions of sound, intruders in an empire of unconventional sub-telluric movements and sarcastic decorations. The hoi polloi might not understand it but this is a great duo, increasingly revealing its importance under amassed layers of unassumingly fascinating microcosms that probably not even their discoverers can give a name to. — Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes |
| SUNDAY OCTOBER 23 2022 7pm $10-$25 |
|
STEVIE RICHARDS (australia) + JON BAFUS + MARC ZOLLINGER DIASPORA FOCII    
Visiting from Australia, STEVIE RICHARDS performs analog electronics and saxophone with local percussionist JON BAFUS and guitarist MARC ZOLLINGER in a set of trio improvisation. DIASPORA FOCII (KERSTI ABRAMS, Alto Sax Flute + Kalimba; MIKA PONTECORVO - Guitar + Electronics; JAROBA - Tenor Sax + Bass Clarinet) performs freely improvised electroacoustic atmospheric chamber music. JON BAFUS is a drummer/percussionist, composer and creator of things based in Sacramento. With interest in both free improvisation and intricate composition, Current projects include his band Gentleman Surfer, percussion duo Invasive Species, and Trio JO(H)NS. Bafus has performed with many great musicians including (but not limited to) Jon Raskin, John Shiurba, Vinny Golia, Steuart Liebig, Ross Hammond, Randy McKean, Kevin Corcoran, Tatsuya Nakatani, Phillip Greenlief, Rent Romus, Nick Reinhart, Stevie Richards, Michael Saalman, Tony Passarell, Clifford Childers, Joshua Marshall, Eli Wallace, and Carson McWhirter. STEVIE RICHARDS is a woodwind player and DIY Electronics performer currently based in Melbourne, Australia. He has been touring Europe, the United States and South-East Asia regularly for the last 8 years and is an active participant in the avant-garde / improvisation environment of Naarm / Melbourne. He has been the sound engineer, one of several curators and a committee member of Make It Up Club in Melbourne since 2002. He started performing in the alternative music scene in Sydney in the eighties, where he found and appreciation for improvisation and electronic music. As a musician, he has moved through noise, free jazz, ambient and electroacoustic music both as a soloist and through deliberate international collaboration. Brazillian-born and Oakland-based MARC ZOLLINGER is a guitarist and composer. As a composer, Marc has premiered works for chamber ensembles ranging from large ensemble to solos. As a performer he has played alongside musicians such as Kamasi Washington and William Winant at venues like the Watts Jazz Festival, the San Francisco Jewish Museum, and the ODC Theater. Marc has a BA in Composition from Berklee College of Music and an MA in Composition from Mills College where he studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, and Zeena Parkins. KERSTI ABRAMS plays alto sax and flute in this ensemble. She also currently performs with the Evidence Trio as well as other experimental groups present and past. Her interest in other cultures and musics has led to living and travelling extensively in Japan, Southeast Asia and elsewhere, and to experiments with mbira and North African reed instruments. Another interest is in the possibilities of improvisation and creative collaboration in addressing our current social/political crisis and creating a liveable future. JAROBA (JAmes RObert BArnes) hales from upstate New York.He is a multi-instrumentalist, playing saxophones, clarinets, and electronics. This is augmented by his musical instrument inventor/crafter inventing and crafting of musical instruments and solutions. In Diaspora Focii trio he performs primarily on Bass Clarinet and Tenor Sax. He has studied saxophone with Frank Littel and Steve Adams. He has work with brings his innovative inventive nature to the practice of collective improvisation and composition. MIKA PONTECORVO plays electric guitar and designs and codes subtle computer-based realtime electronic process architectures around the acoustic instrumental dynamics of Trio. His life has taken him across a wide area of art. science, and technology. He began as a self-defined experimentalist musician learning his art living isolated in the western U.S. Desert, playing guitar and composing tape and electronic music, later studying composition with electronic music pioneer Vladimir Ussachevsky, He went on to work/research in areas of AI and VR systems. His latest research is on Complex Adaptive Systems and their application to visual art and music. This has brought him back to being an improvising guitarist experimentalist. |
| SUNDAY OCTOBER 30 2022 7pm $10-$25 |
|
TRIO LMNTS (SCOTT R LOONEY + LISA MEZZACAPPA + KJELL NORDESON) TOM WEEKS 
TOM WEEKS performs compositions & improvisations for solo saxophone. TRIO LMNTS (SCOTT R LOONEY - prepared/unprepared piano, electronics, LISA MEZZACAPPA - bass, KJELL NORDESON - percussion) have been mutually exploring their shared sonic landscape since shortly before the pandemic. The resulting lockdown situation resulted in an extended hiatus until it was decided to try playing in a completely remote manner over an application called Sonobus. This forced the group to adhere to only improvising freely so that audio latency would be less noticeable. The trio met several times regularly, sharing not only music, but also their minds in lengthy discussions on many diverse topics. SCOTT R LOONEY has always been interested in the creation and performance of compelling sounds across a broad spectrum of contemporary, improvised, and experimental music. He has studied composition and improvisation with Roscoe Mitchell, Wadada Leo Smith, Morton Subotnick, David Rosenboom, and Frederic Rzewski, obtaining his MFA in Composition from California Institute of the Arts. After moving to New York, and finally to the San Francisco Bay area, he became more interested in expanding the timbral possibilities of the piano, and using pianists such as Denman Maroney as a starting point, has forged a signature style using the inside and outside of the piano, plucking strings, using metal implements and other quick preparations, in combination to playing the piano normally. He has also developed a flexible, expressive voice with electronics which is as effective as his many piano textures are. LISA MEZZACAPPA is a San Francisco Bay Area-based bassist, composer, and musical instigator. An active collaborator and curator in the Bay Area music community, she leads her own groups Bait & Switch, Nightshade, the Lisa Mezzacappa Trio and the Tangle Trio, and co-leads the ensembles duo B., Cylinder, the Mezzacappa-Phillips Duo, and the Caribbean folk band Les Gwan Jupons. Lisa has released her music on the Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, NotTwo, Evander, Odd Shaped Case and Edgetone record labels, and has recorded as a sideperson for the Tzadik, Kadima and Porto Franco labels. She collaborates frequently on cross-disciplinary projects in sound installation, film/video, sculpture and public music/art. KJELL NORDESON divides his time between Stockholm and San Francisco. Together with saxophonist Mats Gustafsson, he formed AALY Trio in 1986. AALY Trio became one of the leading groups in the Swedish experimental scene in the 90's. Nordeson has toured extensively in North America, Europe, North Africa and Japan with various groups. He has performed with Peter Brötzmann, Barry Guy, Ken Vandermark, Joe Morris, William Parker, Paul Rutherford, Gerry Hemingway, Frank Gratkowski, Stefano Scodanibbio, and many others. Since 2004, Nordeson has been active in the San Francisco Bay Area's thriving community of free-improvised, experimental and new music. He regularly plays with musicians Larry Ochs, Jon Raskin, Greg Goodman, Scott Looney, John Ingle, sfSoundGroup, Darren Johnston, Lisa Mezzacappa and many others. TOM WEEKS is a composer, improviser, and saxophonist from Oakland, CA. He has received a Bachelor's degree in Jazz Composition from Berklee College of Music, Boston, MA, and a Master's degree in Composition from Mills College, Oakland, CA. He has studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, Pauline Oliveros, Steve Adams, Richard Evans, and Phil Wilson, among others. His music is influenced by various African-American musical traditions, the historical avant-garde, and the heavy metal and hardcore traditions; utilizing improvisation, extended techniques, and traditional and experimental notational practices. He has worked with musicians such as Alvin Curran, Gerald Cleaver, Makoto Kawabata, Ricardo Descalzo, The MolOt Ensemble, Hans Koch, Walter Thompson, William Winant, G. Calvin Weston, members of the ROVA saxophone quartet, and Henry Kaiser, among many others. In addition to leading the bands Ero Guro and BEER, as well as performing and composing with the ensembles Nine Dog Dick and TONED, his frequent collaborators include Camille Emaille, Nathan Corder, Kazuto Sato, James McKain, and Kevin Murray. |
| SUNDAY NOVEMBER 13 2022 7pm $10-$25 |
|
ANNE RAINWATER ERIC THEISE + KRYS BOBROWSKI 
 photo: The Exploratorium ANNE RAINWATER performs San Francisco composer Danny Clay's Ten Pages for piano and electronics, written for her in 2016. The program also features Ian Power's Ave Maria: Variations on a Theme by Giacinto Scelsi, which takes a melody by the Italian composer and augments it and distorts it through meditative and penitent variations. ERIC THEISE and KRYS BOBROWSKI present real time cartographic improvisations using projected, manipulated digital maps, and custom-built electro-acoustic instruments. Evenings of street grids, rivers, islands, and curiosities from the built environment. Saturated colors. Glitches in crowdsourced data. Orphaned information and free-floating symbology. KRYS BOBROWSKI is a sound artist and musician. In addition to concert works, she has created interactive installations and designed day long performances. Krys often transforms natural and everyday objects such as kelp and bowls into musical instruments. As part of her residency in the Learning Studio, Krys played with air- and helium-filled balloons as resonators for her music, and with steel plates and electric conduit tubing as sound sources. Bay Area pianist ANNE RAINWATER is a dexterous musician known for her vibrant interpretations of works from J.S. Bach to John Zorn. Recognized for her “boldly assertive rhetoric” (San Francisco Examiner) and “bright golden honeycomb for a brain” (Roy Doughty, poet), she appears as a soloist, chamber musician and lecture artist. Anne has performed in venues and festivals throughout the US and Europe, including the Donau Festival in Austria, Kampnagel in Germany, the Kennedy Center, Princeton University, University of California San Diego, Louisiana State University, and Le Poisson Rouge, among others. She holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory and the Manhattan School of Music. Anne curates a monthly musical gathering, founded in 2016, called the Vernon Salon Series, which is currently streaming online. She has released 2 solo albums – J.S. Bach’s Goldberg Variations (2018) and Anywhere But Here (2020), featuring electronic keyboard works by Jude Traxler. Anne is a 2019 recipient of an InterMusic SF Grant. She is working on her first book, which explores the internal and external ecosystems that contribute to the understanding, practicing, and performing of music. Highlights of the 2022/2023 season include speaking and performing engagements at the University of Baltimore, San Francisco State, and UC Berkeley, as well as a joint, 4-school residency in the Philadelphia area and an appearance on the Cal Performances Series with the Eco Ensemble. When not at the piano or writing, she is playing tennis, reading, or obsessively watching baseball. ERIC THEISE is a San Francisco-based artist and geospatial software developer. Through video and realtime performance tools he reinvigorates the perceptual inquiries of structural filmmakers, experimental animators, op artists, and the light and space movement as new possibilities in the realm of digital cartography. His 16mm films have screened across North America and France; he’s held residencies at Hangar (Lisbon), Signal Culture. and the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; and he’s received grants from the Interbay Cinema Society, Bay Area Video Coalition, and Film Arts Foundation. |
| SUNDAY NOVEMBER 20 2022 7pm $10-$25 |
|
BRISTLE KEN UENO + MATT INGALLS 
BRISTLE combines an intuitive chamber music sensibility with an off-kilter improvisational approach, seamlessly mixing fierce solo statements with intricate group textures in its pieces. Wheezing accordions, errant looping machines, the kids’ game Butts Up, typographic glyphs, Donkey Kong Level 3 (the one with the elevators) and Monty Python’s Dead Parrot sketch all serve as inspirations for Bristle’s compositions, as does individual members’ past work with Anthony Braxton, Yusef Lateef, and Henry Threadgill. For over a decade, the duo of KEN UENO (vocals) and MATT INGALLS (clarinet) has presented their unique arsenal of extended techniques for an experience that defies classical expectations of sounds that can be made on voice and clarinet. Ueno sings overtones, multi-band multiphonics, sub-tones, and throat sings. Ingalls' clarinet technique includes circular-breathing, multiphonics, and various breath effects, as well as an unique hybrid-timbre polyphonic effect. M U S I C I A N S BRISTLE began in 2009 when Randy McKean invited fellow reeds player and composer Cory Wright to form a group to play their original compositions; both share a love of traditional jazz and its experimental, creative offshoots. Lisa Mezzacappa was drafted to anchor the group on bass, and brought her formidable talents as composer and bandleader to the mix. The addition of Murray Campbell, with his rare talent of doubling on violin and oboes, gave the foursome an agile, elastic quality that influences the writing and performances of this drummerless quartet. In addition to its two recordings Future(s) Now(s) (Queen Bee) and Bulletproof (Edgetone), Bristle has performed at venues throughout California and the Northwest, including San Francisco’s Center for New Music, Seattle’s Racer Sessions, the Eagle Rock Center for the Arts in LA, and Sacramento’s In the Flow Festival. Alto saxophonist/clarinetist RANDY MCKEAN’S music draws upon methods of distillation and synthesis pioneered by composers such as Anthony Braxton and Iannis Xenakis in order to fashion an individualized but systematically coherent musical world. A multitude of sources inform McKean’s work: the abstract expressionist films of Stan Brakhage and the paintings of Mark Rothko, the multi-tiered writings of Julio Cortazar, Alain Robbe-Grillet and Philip K. Dick, concepts from chaos theory and modern physics, all have influenced his use of form and representation. In addition to Bristle, McKean leads or co-leads several bands, including the African-trance ensemble Tumble, the saxophone quartet Goggle, the sax/drums duos Pac and Seep and TMBR, and the acoustic-electronics duo The Gargantius Effect. He studied with trumpeter Paul Smoker and composers Anthony Braxton and David Rosenboom. He has lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City, and since 2002, he has lived in Grass Valley, California, located in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. Reeds player and composer CORY WRIGHT studied music at Oberlin Conservatory and the University of Southern California and has been involved in both the jazz and creative music worlds for the past 20 years, including time spent in New York, Los Angeles and his current home in the San Francisco Bay Area. His recent projects reflect his interest in blurring the distinction between composed and improvised music, and in combining the harmonious with the atonal, the grooving with the arrhythmic. Wright has performed in ensembles led by Anthony Braxton, Vinny Golia, Todd Sickafoose, Adam Rudolph and Yusef Lateef. He is currently a member of Bristle, the Nathan Clevenger Group, and Goggle (saxophone quartet) and leads his own projects Fellow Hominids and The Green Mitchell Trio. Berkeley, CA-based composer and bassist LISA MEZZACAPPA has been part of California’s vibrant music community for nearly 20 years. Her activities as a composer and ensemble leader include ethereal chamber music, electro-acoustic works, avant-garde jazz, music for groups from duo to large ensemble, and collaborations with film, dance, and visual art. Recent projects include Cosmicomics, a suite for electro-acoustic jazz sextet based on Italo’s Calvino’s stories about the cosmos; Organelle, a chamber work for improvisers grounded in scientific processes; Glorious Ravage, a song cycle for large ensemble and films drawn from the writings of Victorian lady adventurers; and Touch Bass, a collaboration with choreographer Risa Jaroslow for three dancers and three bassists. She also co-leads the community improvisation ensemble, the duo B. Experimental Band, with drummer Jason Levis, and is creating the serial audio opera The Electronic Lover in collaboration with writer Beth Lisick. Well-versed in the traditional fiddle styles of his native Scotland, MURRAY CAMPBELL is equally adept as an oboist and cor anglais specialist in the European classical music tradition. As an oboist he performs regularly with numerous Northern California symphony orchestras including North State, the Auburn Symphony and InConcert Sierra. Campbell’s work in the experimental world began as a member of the Church of Sonology in the Netherlands, and has included stints with Lisa Mezzacappa’s Interlopers, the duo B. Experimental Band, guitarist Han-Earl Park, and the acoustic-electronics duo The Gargantius Effect. Currently living in the Sierra Foothills of Nevada County, CA, Campbell is a member of the Euro Cafe band Beaucoup Chapeaux and the Balkan mini-orchestra Chickenbonz. A recipient of the Rome Prize and the Berlin Prize, KEN UENO is a composer/vocalist/sound artist who is currently a Professor at UC Berkeley, where he holds the Jerry and Evelyn Hemmings Chambers Distinguished Professor Chair in Music. Ensembles and performers who have played Ken’s music include Kim Kashkashian and Robyn Schulkowsky, Mayumi Miyata, Teodoro Anzellotti, Aki Takahashi, Wendy Richman, Greg Oakes, BMOP, Alarm Will Sound, Steve Schick and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, the Nieuw Ensemble, and Frances-Marie Uitti. His music has been performed at such venues as Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MusikTriennale Köln Festival, the Muziekgebouw, Ars Musica, Warsaw Autumn, Other Minds, the Hopkins Center, Spoleto USA, Steim, and at the Norfolk Music Festival. Ken’s piece for the Hilliard Ensemble, Shiroi Ishi, was featured in their repertoire for over ten years, with performances at such venues as Queen Elizabeth Hall in England, the Vienna Konzerthaus, and was aired on Italian national radio, RAI 3. Another work, Pharmakon, was performed dozens of times nationally by Eighth Blackbird during their 2001-2003 seasons. A portrait concert of Ken’s was featured on MaerzMusik in Berlin in 2011. In 2012, he was a featured artist on Other Minds 17. In 2014, Frances-Mairie Uitti and the Boston Modern Orchestra premiered his concerto for two-bow cello and orchestra, and Guerilla Opera premiered a run of his chamber opera, Gallo, to critical acclaim. He has performed as soloist in his vocal concerto with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project in New York and Boston, the Warsaw Philharmonic, the Lithuanian National Symphony, the Thailand Philharmonic Orchestra, and with orchestras in North Carolina, Pittsburgh, and California. Ken holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University. A monograph CD of three orchestral concertos was released on the Bmop/sound label. His bio appears in The Grove Dictionary of American Music. Reviled for his "shapeless sonic tinkering" by the Los Angeles Times, Oakland musician MATT INGALLS is a composer, clarinetist, concert producer, and computer music programmer. Often incorporating elements of improvisation, his music is heavily influenced by his long involvement in computer music. His composerly solo improvisations explore extended clarinet techniques that interact with the acoustic space, often as combination tones. Matt is the founder and co-director of sfSound, a new music series, ensemble, and internet radio station devoted to new ideas and traditions of experimental music, performance art, live electronic music, Bay Area composition, and the various facets of contemporary improvisation. |
| SUNDAY DECEMBER 4 2022 2pm $10-$25 |
|
MOTOKO HONDA + DANNY KAMINS + JORDAN GLENN TASNEEM KHAN + SKYLER LEE BAYSA + NAOMI HO   
Pianist MOTOKO HONDA and saxophonist DANNY KAMINS first met and played together at Moody Center for the Arts, Houston, Texas in 2018 for an event celebrating Graphic Scores and Avant-Garde Jazz. This concert is their first long-awaited musical reunion with the addition of local drum master JORDAN GLENN who also performs in Honda’s Simple Excesses Quartet. These seasoned improvisers/composers, fluent in a wide range of musical languages, can take you on an exciting sonic adventure going from textural and experimental soundscapes to unexpected rhythmic and melodic constructs. New compositions from UC Berkeley! Cellist NAOMI HO premieres TASNEEM KHAN'S Cello Suite - a collection of musical ideas inspired by Bach's second cello suite and Benjamin Britten's Suite for cello. The work uses sounds derived from vocalization techniques used in its creation. SKYLER LEE BAYSA presents Narrative - an exploration of Javanese Gamelan music, storytelling, and vocalizations. Khan joins Lee Baysa performing on Indonesian sarons with voice relaying a transcribed sonic narrative. Critically-acclaimed Japanese-born pianist/composer/interdisciplinary creator MOTOKO HONDA has created a distinctive sound through her holistic approach to music, her collaborative sensibility to multiple art forms and inspired use of innovative technologies. Portrayed as a “Keyboard Alchemist” (Chris Barton, L.A.Times) and the “Embodiment of a Muse” (Greg Burk, metaljazz.com), Honda has fascinated critics and audiences alike with her genre-defying innovative approach to piano playing and composing: “Imagine Radiohead teaching Franz List how to rock a Kaoss Pad; or John Cage facing off with Bud Powell over prepared piano”(Matthew Duersten, stompbeast.com). With stylistic influences ranging from jazz to world music and contemporary prepared & electrified piano, Honda is a musical force of nature, bringing a unique creative sound to her solo works and wide-ranging collaborations at both national and international venues. DANNY KAMINS is an improvising saxophonist based out of Houston, TX. His current musical endeavors include playing in the Houston based groups Relative Dissonance, CARL, El Mantis, and Etched in the Eye as well as directing the jazz program at Rice University. He has also been booking shows in Houston that specialize in experimental/avant-garde music since 2016. Musicians he has presented include Peter Brotzmann, Jaime Branch, Claire Rousay, Michael Foster, Chris Pitsiokos, Brandon Lopez, Lisa Cameron, Illicit Relationship, and Gaute Granli. Musicians he has performed/recorded with include Tatsuya Nakatani, Alvin Fielder, Ra Kalam Bob Moses, Aaron Gonzalez, Stefan Gonzalez, Susan Alcorn, Thomas Helton, Lisa Cameron, Adam Goodwin, Vinny Golia, Antonio Borghini, David Leon, Jeb Bishop, Sandy Ewen, Damon Smith, Luke Stewart, Kamila Drabek, Marc Edwards, Natan Kryszk, Paulina Owczarek, Wiktoria Zakubowska and NewMusic groups Le Train Bleu, Loop 38, and Transitory Sound and Movement Collective. Oakland based drummer JORDAN GLENN has worked closely with Fred Frith (FF Trio, Gravity Band), William Winant, Zeena Parkins (The Adorables), Roscoe Mitchell, Ben Goldberg, Todd Sickafoose, John Schott, Lisa Mezzacappa, Kyle Bruckmann, Michael Coleman, Matthew Welch and bands Jack O' The Clock, Secret Chiefs 3, The Rova Sax Quartet, tUnE-yArDs and the collective Sifter with Rob Ewing, Beth Schenck and Lisa Mezzacappa. He composes/conducts the large, percussion heavy band BEAK, and since 2007 has led the sax/drum trio Wiener Kids. He also has been commissioned to create scores for evening-length dance pieces by Sharp & Fine and Liss Fain Dance. NAOMI HO is a pianist and cellist currently pursuing a double degree in History and Music at UC Berkeley. As a cellist, she has studied with Abraham Aragundi and currently studies with Elisabeth Reed. She is a member of Berkeley's University Baroque Ensemble and UC Berkeley Chamber Orchestra. Beyond classical music, Naomi is also a big fan of musical theatre and enjoys performing in pit orchestras. Musician and composer at UC Berkeley, TASNEEM KHAN, has been exploring and developing her personal musical sound and style with the help of established composer and distinguished professor Ken Ueno. She has been commissioned to compose a piece for an original short film that was screened virtually at the American Trailer Film Festival in 2020. This will be her debut of compositional work in the bay area ahead of graduation in 2023. She has been developing her compositional knowledge and approach over the last year with the guidance of Ken. Tasneem has been focused on examining the realm of tonality through the work of J.S Bach, and Ben Britten as well as the exploration of modality to create her own unique sound for this upcoming performance. SKYLER LEE BAYSA is an 18-year-old composer living in Albany, California. He started learning the piano at 5 years old and began to compose music at age 11. His first composition “Otatop’s Variations” received an Honorable Mention from the Morton Gould Young Composer Award Competition. Skyler’s compositions have been performed by various professional musicians in the San Francisco Bay Area, including the Friction Quartet and players from the SF Symphony. He was the youngest composer to be commissioned for Musaics of the Bay’s inaugural Stay-at-Home Symposium in July 2020. Currently, he attends UC Berkeley and will graduate in 2023 with a double major in Music and Linguistics. |
| SUNDAY DECEMBER 11 2022 2pm $10-$25 |
|
QUINTETO LATINO BRUNO RUVIARO  
QUINTETO LATINO presents three works: Gabriela Ortiz’ Puzzle-Tocas, Orlando Jacinto Garcia’s multiple winds in the distance, and a QL commission, C U Z A – four nocturnes for wind quintet, by Felipe Nieto-Sáchica. Happy to share this concert with long-time colleagues from Quinteto Latino, BRUNO RUVIARO will play a set of live coding electronic improvisations based on reworked samples of Brazilian music. Since 2004 QUINTETO LATINO has grown from a classical wind ensemble exclusively performing music from Latin America to a regionally and nationally recognized music education and advocacy organization with a mission to disrupt racial and economic disparities within the classical music field by championing past, present, and future contributions by Latino composers and musicians. The quintet has commissioned numerous works, expanding the body of woodwind quintet repertoire. Quinteto Latino is flutist Diane Grubbe, oboist Kyle Bruckmann, clarinetist Leslie Tagorda, bassoonist Shawn Jones and Armando Castellano, founder and French hornist. (Season guest artist Jamael Smith replaces bassoonist Shawn Jones for this performance.) BRUNO RUVIARO is an Oakland-based Brazilian electronic musician and composer. He teaches music at Santa Clara University, where he founded SCLOrk (the Santa Clara Laptop Orchestra). Much of his music utilizes other musical sources as raw material -- from Brazilian popular music to Classical sources, directly or indirectly through sampling, quotations, allusions, or collage. |
| SUNDAY DECEMBER 18 2022 7pm $10-$25 |
|
ERIC GLICK RIEMAN BRAN(…)POS + INGALLS + NISHI-SMITH + STAHLMANN 
An opening improv set: BRAN(…)POS, electronics; MATT INGALLS, clarinets; KANOKO NISHI-SMITH, koto; and MITCH STAHLMANN, flute. ERIC GLICK RIEMAN offers a piece for ensemble that includes improvisation with friends from the SOUTH BERKELEY CHAMBER ENSEMBLE (Masha Albrecht, violin; Tracy Randolph, English horn; Laurence Lewis, viola). Reiman also performs his explorative solo work for prepared and augmented Rhodes electric piano -- an instrument designed to show off the mechanical sounds of the Rhodes piano that are usually unheard. Digging out after Covid, I have this feeling like I did when it had just snowed when I lived in the Midwest. The ground is new, the landscape is changed, and I can choose what to do. There is a new space here. In this case, I have put together an ensemble to play my piece, "Broken Ice Slides Down The Frozen Sea” (2016), which seemed relevant. Inspired by a sound (my kids throwing slabs of ice as large as they can pick up down an icy hill of frozen water in Maine’s Frenchman’s Bay), but not referential in a physical sense, this piece is about memory, loss, and a hint of forboding. The sense that the ice is about to break, and this is a harbinger of the next situation. -- EGR ERIC GLICK RIEMAN Performing on a variety of instruments, including the prepared/extended Rhodes electric piano, as well as piano, melodica, celeste, organ, Waterphone, and toy piano, SF Bay Area composer/improviser Eric Glick Rieman performs improvised and previously structured music in several settings, both solo and in groups, He has performed with the Mills College Contemporary Performance Ensemble in Oakland, CA, USA since 1999, and received an MFA from Mills in Electronic Music and the Recording Media in 2001. Rieman writes for piano, Rhodes electric piano, and ensembles. Rieman has recorded with Fred Frith, Lesli Dalaba, Carla Kihlstedt, Stuart Dempster, Zoe Keating, and Tom Heasley. He has performed with Ikue Mori, Fred Anderson, Daniel Godston, David Boykin, Marcos Fernandes, Amy Denio, Matt Ingalls, David Slusser, Kristin Miltner, and John Ingle, and he has performed the work of Roscoe Mitchell, Eliane Radigue, Meredith Monk, Fred Frith, Cecil Taylor, Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, Terry Riley, James Tenney, George Lewis, and Alvin Lucier under the composers' supervision. |
|
history | group | radio | sponsors | contact | home Copyright © 2022 sfSound. All rights reserved. |