Performances

I am very, very excited to have been asked to play with Aaron Bennett’s phenomenal ensemble Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra at CNMAT (1750 Arch St., Berkeley) at 8pm on Fri 27 Apr.

I’ll be adding MSP and piano into the mix.

If you’ve already heard the first album released by Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra (cover below) you know exactly what I’m talking about, and you’re already coming to this great show. If not, run, don’t walk, to get a copy at http://emtpo.bandcamp.com/ and hear what the fuss is about.

Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra (cover art: Nancy Bennett)

Among Aaron’s many stellar contributions to the Bay Area improv and new music scenes (like sax trio arrangements of Bollywood standards!)  are fantastic “breathing chart” compositions for large improvising groups that deliver heightened coherence and adventure at the same time. They stand as Himalayas of group improv music. And Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra is the Mt. Everest.

Vapor Trails of Structure in Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Improv

To quote Aaron: “The members of this ensemble utilize the electro-magnetic field of their collective mind to attain a unitive transcendent state of sonic consciousness and in turn, create sublime and/or unusually expanded sonic experiences for their listeners.”

‘Nuff said…

Aaron Bennett in Space

Bio note: Saxist/composer Aaron Bennett has been bending space in the Bay Area jazz and improvised music communities for more than 15 years. Beyond his studies in composition and performance of western music at California Institute of the Arts, Aaron has also studied and played the music of West Africa, Indonesia, India, and Traditional Japanese 雅楽 (Gagaku) music. He has performed throughout the United States and abroad including performances with Wadada Leo Smith, Peter Kowald, John Butcher, Donald Robinson, Marco Eneidi, Gianni Gebbia, Weasel Walter, Adam Lane, Larry Ochs, Steve Adams, John Raskin, Victoria Williams, Aphrodesia, Lagos-Roots, The Rova Saxophone Quartet and many others.

Aaron Bennett in Time

He leads his own groups Go-Go-Fightmaster, Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra and performs in the Oakland Active Orchestra , Lisa Mezzacappa’s Bait & Switch, Vijay Anderson Quartet, and Guerilla Hi-Fi. Aaron has composed for large ensembles, chamber groups, plays, films, dance performances, wind quintet, saxophone quartets and trios as well as pieces for solo instruments.

In addition to Aaron Bennet (sax & compositions), the line-up will also include:

Darren Johnston – trumpet

Rob Ewing – trombone

Rob Ewing

Jeff Hobbs – violin

Bob Marsh – cello (and spiritual guidance counselor)

Jeff Hobbs (L) & Bob Marsh (R), performing in OPEYE ORCHESTRA @ Tuva Space

Eli Crews – bass

Joe Lasqo – piano & MSP

Meridian Gallery, 11 Jan 2012 (Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)

Set 2: Aram Shelton: Octet & others, for sax quartet & processing

Aram Shelton composed three minimalist works for an octet of winds and strings via loop pedal back in 2002. For this concert, he’ll re-imagine the first of these, Octet, for saxophone quartet and processing via Max, bringing the piece close to its initial form. Each saxophone will be live-sampled, and the processed sound will be distributed through the space at CNMAT. Aram will be joined by Ritwik Banerji, Cory Wright and Jacob Zimmerman. They may also play A Rare Thing (Shelton, 2003), originally played by the 774th Street Quartet (Bloody Murder).

Aram Shelton

Aram is very familiar to Bay Area lovers of jazz and new music, leading many ensembles and playing in even more (for example, Cylinder, one of my favorites)

Beginning on tenor while growing up on a small ranch in southeast Florida, Aram switched to alto in college, moved to DC and then Chicago, where he played creative jazz and improvised music in many groups, including Dragons 1976, Arrive, and Rapid Croche. Over time he began to use computer-based electronics for the live sampling and manipulation of acoustic instruments, and with Johnathan Crawford formed the group Grey Ghost.

Aram moved out west to study electroacoustic music at Mills College and developed compositions that focused on the technique of phrase modification, wherein written phrases played by orchestral instruments are recorded in real time and rearranged via custom built patches in MAX/MSP.

Aram has performed with a wide variety of talented musicians including Tim Daisy, Ken Vandermark, Jason Ajemian, Josh Berman, Audrey Chen, Darren Johnston, Fred Lonberg-Holm, Dave Rempis, Damon Smith, Steve Bernstein, Weasel Walter, Jason Roebke, Liz Albee, Rob Mazurek, Matt Bauder, Jessica Pavone, Håvard Wiik, Josh Abrams, Harris Eisenstadt, Jeb Bishop, Tim Perkis, Kevin Drumm, Kjell Nordeson, Frank Rosaly, Guillermo Gregorio, and Chris Brown.

Aram’s partners in crime for this outing include monster saxists Ritwik Banerji (pathfinding creator of AI improvising agent, Maxine), Cory Wright (creator of uniquely structured jazz/post-jazz compositions, member in many ensembles, and leader of Green Mitchell & the Cory Wright Quintet), and Jacob Zimmerman (organizer/member of the Lawson Ensemble performing music inspired by the rich cultural heritage of the Lawsonite people and Anteater, specializing in rhythmically complex original music).

Ritwik Banerji (ঋত্বিক ব্যানার্জী)

Cory Wright

Jacob Zimmerman

Join us for an amazing and unique evening in one of the world’s foremost computer music centers!

Joe

Available by direct order for $12 + any applicable shipping/tax (write: joe@joelasqo.com, buy-button coming…), as well as at shows, at Viracocha, Bird & Beckett, at other retail, & the usual e-commerce outlets.

Long-awaited CD of Indo-modernist and Neo-Gaku piano solo repertoire pioneered at San Francisco’s legendary Viracocha: Ancient musics from Japan and India in 21st-century modernist piano interpretations.

Available on Edgetone Records. From their description: “Pianist Joe Lasqo plays elegantly startling ragas, played in a style as if Debussy had lived in Mumbai, and ancient Japanese shakuhachi and gagaku “standards” refracted through the serialist prisms of Messiaen, early Stockhausen, and Paul Bley.”

We have crafted a beautiful physical object and encourage you to enjoy it in physical form.

Reviews:

Max Level of KFJC: Lasqo, Joe – “Turquoise Sessions” – [Edgetone Records] | KFJC On …

El Valenciano - Home of the Next Now series

A solo show as part of a great ticket in the spatially-aware Next Now series @ El Valenciano (1153 Valencia Street, SF; BART: 24th & Mission).

Many of you have traveled to new musical planes on Thursdays at El Valenciano under the obliquely brilliant direction of Eric Moffat and/or guest curator Mika Pontecorvo. I am honored to be a part of Mika’s Next Now 4 @EV on 12 April.

OBAFGKM Star Spectra

Continuing focus on a period of inner musical exploration, practice as meditation, & new solo work, this show will feature interplay of computer/piano at the edge of melodic space, luminous and dark harmonic spectra, and doppler’d time on both sides of the light speed barrier.

Cassini Saturn Probe Spectra - Melody, harmony, or sound-color?

Neo-gaku extensions of Japanese/Korean 調 modes + multi-dimensional Indo-modernist “meta-rāgas”, where the “notes” are changes in sound-color, harmonization, or degree of randomization as well as changes in pitch, will be the basis for improvisation structures to relate synthesized spectra, melody and harmony in forms  like Rāgam-Tānam-Pallavi or “Jō-ha-kyū” (序破急).

One of the featured pieces will be “Dark Matter Music via Gravity Lens” in the Saturnian meta-rāga Śani-Haṭakaṅgi (शनि-हटकङी). The program will also include material from my recent album, Turquoise Sessions.

Note or instrument...?

The Polychromatic Mika Pontecorvo

My set will be the 1st wave of Next Now 4, part of the ongoing Next Now series organized on some Thursdays at El Valenciano by guitarist, flutist, live electronicist, composer, improviser, & process architect, Mika Pontecorvo (for a few persepctives on Mika, see left).

Mika’s music specializes in in emergent structures of improvisation based on live interaction between an ensemble of musicians and generative sound architectures and systems he constructs in MAX/MSP and other hardware/software elements .

Playing in set 2, Mika’s band Cartoon Justice melds free and modal improv with structured song and experimental noise processes. The resulting sound often draws on elements from world musics, jazz, dark psychedelic rock and funk, and European modern / post-modern experimental traditions, and is a sound like no other you’ve heard.

Cartoon Justice - Apr 12th's personnel will include Mika Pontecorvo: guitar/flute/live processing, Kersti Abrams: alto sax/rhaita (غيطه‎)/flute, Greg Baker: clarinet/percussion/live processing, Aaron Levin: drums/percussion, Elijah Pontecorvo: electric bass

More Mika & Cartoon Justice:

http://cartoonjustice.edgebuzz.tv

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Cartoon-Justice/87384782854

Set 3 closes out the show with Mutual Aid Project, who do in music what Kropotkin proposed in politics.

Взаимопомощь: The MAP is the territory...

“Through our music and recent projects, Decolonizing the Imagination: Arts Practicum and R&D (Research and Development), Mutual Aid Project is a Creative Music collective engaged in discovering of our connections to our histories and ourselves.”

Band members:
Tracy Hui (guitar)
Nick Obando (alto saxophone)
Marshall Trammell (percussion)

Rangshar Tracy Hui is an Oakland improvisor/composer/guitarist living in CA.  He has lived and played in protean formations often unrecognizable from previous incarnations and studied/played/observed intently with/about/(   ) a plethora of musical entities. He has a deep commitment to realizing a better society through a persistent practice and theoretical searching. He actively musicks in the communities he serves, expressing indignation, joy, suffering, love and collectivity.

Nick Obando is a Bay Area native saxophonist. After studying jazz at a southern CA State University, he moved back to Oakland & began to educate youth through different media. Nick also continues to be a student emerging himself in his Filipino culture by studying & teaching traditional folk music. Working in free improv he makes sure to keep a deep root in blues and R&B.

Marshall Trammell was raised in Oahu, Hawaii. His  Multi-Aesthetic approach to Improvisation is a framework for his development as a percussionist. His other projects include: film, curation, cognitive embodiment video projects, the Oakland Tenderness Project, a mutual aid, alternative currency and participatory research pilot project, and composition. A very versatile player, who can play in very different styles on different nights with different people.

Together they forge a powerful but spacious meta-jazz force field that will energize you into the night.

Mutual Aid Project: Tracy Hui (guitar), Nick Obando (sax), & Marshall Trammell (percussion) [photo: Stuart Dixon]

More Mutual Aid Project:

http://www.mutualaidproject.com

Look forward to join you in the revolutionary re-folded space of Next Now 4.

Joe

Next Now 4 @ El Valenciano, 12 Apr 2012

A solo show at the wonderful musical and literary gem of Glen Park  - Bird & Beckett! (653 Chenery, SF CA 94131; BART: Glen Park; www.birdbeckett.com)

Bird and Beckett - the cozy in-spot for poetry, jazz & much more

As many of you know, I’m refocusing on a period of inner musical exploration, practice as meditation, and new solo work.

This solo show will bring some of this new work out, exploring new blends of MSP computer sound synthesis + piano in an extended electro-acoustic space.

A special area of exploration will be the oceanic expanse of Indian music, pursued both in relatively traditional as well as highly extended ways — including further developments in multi-dimensional “meta-rāgas” using unorthodox scales where the “notes” can be changes in sound-color, harmonization, or degree of randomization as well as changes in pitch, and adapting Indian classical structures like Pallavi-Charanam to compositions and improvisation in these meta-rāgas.

Along with these explorations, I seek to travel further down a road that is at once among the most simple and challenging for all musicians — to better use (i.e., to better get out of the way of…) silence, quietness, and space.

In this show my aim will be to explore as if listening to the wind in the reeds under the moon by a river via a gently avant combination of MSP sound synthesis, traditional rāgas, Indo-modernist meta-rāgas, and some surprises.

Of course, since it is my great pleasure to present this work at Bird & Beckett, I’ll also play from my jazz repertoire to honor the wonderful tradition of B&B jazz that has so enriched San Francisco over a period of many years. The program will also include material from my album, Turquoise Sessions (on sale at B&B).

If you don’t know the wonderfully intimate Bird & Beckett space and its creator, Eric Whittington, now is the time to acquaint yourself with this marvelous & highly BART-accessible San Francisco treasure. You’ll not only find the cosiest jazz boîte in SF, but wonderful home for words, books, and poetry guaranteed to put you in contact with ideas and writers you’ll find essential.

The man who makes it possible:

Eric Whittington, Bookseller & Friend of Jazz, at the Bird & Beckett piano (Photo: Paula Levine)

Setting the words to music…

Jerry Logus, flute & Don Prell, bass @ Bird and Beckett (Photo: Michael Waldstein)

I look forward to see you at this contemplative show….

Joe

Some photos from our fabulous show on 15 Feb 2012 with Bob Marsh and Jack Wright!

Joe Lasqo processes Mr. Mercury, Turquoise Yantra Grotto, 15 Feb 2012 (Photo: David Samas)

新年快樂！

“Sparkling, fiery, flowing like molten iron, the Fire Dragon’s flying dance greets Spring!”

Start things out with a *bang* and join us to open the Dragon Year with special guests: extraordinary East Coast saxophonist Jack Wright, and Bob Marsh, performance artist, musical agent provacateur/éclatiste, mad cellist/bassist/pianist/guitarist/found-instrumentist/vocalist/+++ (& tap-dancer!)

We’re also privileged to present Bob Marsh’s unique invented instrument, the Silver Park, as played by its invented musician, Mr. Mercury (see more below).

I’ll be joining our guests throughout on the Gamelan Piano, laptop & the Steinway and also play some meta-rāgas and material from my album Turquoise Sessions during the between-set candlelight tea.

Fellow TYG-Host David Samas will sing and play in both sets with extended vocal techniques of Хөөмей (Tuvan throat/overtone singing), Inuit vocal competitions, bird & whale song, as well as a virtuoso performance on his Zen Industrial Carillon.

大坑舞火龍

Part of this unique experience will be based on MSP (laptop) transmigrations of field recordings from the 大坑舞火龍 (Tai Hang Dancing Fire Dragon), made when I lived in Hong Kong. The Fire Dragon is a grand and awesome creature made of thousands of huge lit incense sticks that does a triumphant dance on Lunar New Year in its district of Tai Hang.

Check it out:

大坑舞火龍

Bob Marsh will channel the Fire Dragon in one of his unique sonic suits, with added sparkle from laser light FX for an immersive son et lumière (optionally, he may also chase a flaming pearl…).

Sonic suits are part of Bob’s poetry technology toolbox, simultaneously instrument, costume, and shamanic sound device.

Bob in performance with Brenda Hutchinson at the 2011 Outsound Festival:

Bob Marsh & Brenda Hutchinson @ Outsound Music Festival 2011 (Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)

We’ll also be visited by Mr. Mercury, world’s foremost player of the unique Silver Park.

The Silver Park (Photo: Amar Chaudhary - http://www.catsynth.com)

Mr. Mercury on the Silver Park, with Massimo Falascone at R-de-Choc, 21 May 2010.

M. Mercure à R-de-Choc, 21 mai 2010 (pour plus de détails sur R-de-Choc et son organisateur, Pascal Marzan, svp. voir: http://r-de-choc.blogspot.com)

Joining us also will be (in)famous East Coast saxist Jack Wright.

Jack Wright with Guillaume Viltard, St. Marks Church, London, Nov 2007

After teaching at Temple University in the 60s and leaving academia in the early 70s to engage in radical politics and community organizing, Jack directed his energies into music. Through years of near constant touring throughout the US and Europe, often performing for audiences in cities and towns where improvised music had never before been heard, he came to be regarded as something of an underground legend, “the Johnny Appleseed of Improvised Music”. He is accused of impersonating pigs, ducks and human blowhards, but lately has been remembering the proper use of the saxophone –to support up the tottering universe. He and his partners are true believers in absolutely free, unrestrained, unstructured, unselfconscious improvisation.

Er wächst in einen Klang-Fluß... Jack Wright auf Toulouse

The Washington Post says, “In the… world of experimental free improvisation, saxophonist Jack Wright is king”.

The German publication, Bad Alchemy, says: “Wright does not make music, he embodies it, he transforms it with a naiveté of another order. It grows into a sound river, he is part of the diaphragm through which the heterogeneous whispers.”

Jack says: “…and yet because I feel I‘m working with a certain material the end result is not mine… I‘m not expressing myself so much as aiding the material to express or organize itself.”

Bob Marsh & Jack Wright - 2 Great Tastes That Taste Great Together!

More Bob:

http://www.bobmarsh.net/

http://edgetonerecords.com/marsh.html

More Jack:

http://www.springgardenmusic.com

Turquoise Yantra Grotto music circle takes place in a unique space near Glen Park in San Francisco, offering, in addition to a normal piano, site-specific invented instruments like the Gamelan Piano, Zen Industrial Carillon, and the new Ventifacto Crystalithophone (pictured below) — a cozy laboratory to explore the world chamber music of the future in an unexpected dialog between global roots traditions and modernist music.

The New Cookie: David Samas' Ventifacto Crystalithophone

As usual, on hand will be a shamanic healer and a neo-tea practitioner (our hosts) to facilitate your listening experience.

Planning continues for Wayang Turquoise puppet opera accompanied by the gamelan piano in the new year.

A scene like nowhere else.

Tea from 7:30pm, show starts at 8pm. $12-$15 donation. Due to limited seating, by advance reservation only.

To reserve, send me an email at joe@joelasqo.com, and I’ll confirm and send location and details. (Please note in case of allergies: Birds are present in the venue).

Look forward to see you at this once-in-a-lifetime show!

Joe

As a venue showcasing invented instruments like the Gamelan Piano and Zen Industrial Carillon, we’re especially pleased to present some of America’s leading instrument inventors and their fantastic kits in this special show, beginning from 7:30pm on Fri 20 Jan 2012.

Opening Tea Music (7:30): Joe Lasqo (Meta-rāgas & stuff from Turquoise Sessions)

Set 1 (8:00pm): Tim Thompson’s Space Palette

Candlelight Tea Intermission and “Touch the Gear” Time: (8:50pm)

Set 2 (9:15pm): Music for Hard Times (Tom Nunn + Paul Winstanley)

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[1] TIM THOMPSON & the SPACE PALETTE

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Tim Thompson

Tim is a software engineer, musician, and installation artist who’s worked in high-tech for almost 35 years.

To quote from Tim’s web-site:

I’m interested in programming languages, algorithmic composition, networked collaboration, atypical controllers, event-driven graphics generation, and realtime video processing. I’ve been inspired in recent years by something described in this quote by Larnie Fox:

“There is a yet unnamed art movement that may prove to be of some significance, and Burning Man is close to its center. It often manifests itself as circus, ritual, and spectacle. It is a movement away from a dialogue between an individual artist and a sophisticated audience, and towards collaboration amongst a big, wild, free and diverse community. It is a movement away from galleries, schools and other institutions and towards an art produced in and for casual groups of participants, more akin to clans and tribes, based on aesthetic affinities and bonds of friendship. It is a movement away from static gallery art and formal theater and towards site-specific, time-specific installation and performance. It is a rejection of spoon-fed corporate culture and an affirmation of the homemade, the idiosyncratic, the personal. It is profoundly democratic. It is radically inclusive, it is a difficult challenge, and it is beckoning.”

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A fruit of these endeavors is the Space Palette, a fantastic large-scale group or solo computer-controlled, electronic “casual instrument” — field tested and design-iterated over many Burning Mans and an incredible musical experience for musicians and non-musicians alike.

Generating not only sound but also video in response to simple gestural control, and most recently presented (triumphantly!) at the recent dorkbot-61 in San Francisco, the latest version of the Space Palette has new sounds, new control paradigms and a sleek new design.

Here, have a look:

The current version of the Space Palette relaxing chez soi...

A previous version of the Space Palette in the field

There will be ample opportunity for audience members to control the Space Palette and “Touch the Gear”, including a short segment at the end of the set where the control interface paradigm of the Space Palette will be extended to live musicians — myself and David Samas (extended techniques vocals & Хөөмей (Tuvan throat/overtone singing)) — who can then also be controlled by audience members.

More Tim: http://timthompson.com

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[2] MUSIC FOR HARD TIMES (Tom Nunn & Paul Winstanley)

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Moving from electronic invented instruments to acoustic invented instruments, we’re proud to follow Tim Thompson with the unique duo of Tom Nunn & Paul Winstanley, Music for Hard Times (who, by the way, will donate proceeds to the Occupy Wall Street Movement).

Tom Nunn has designed, built and performed with original musical instruments since 1976, and has built over 200 instruments.  His instruments typically utilize commonly available materials, are sculptural in appearance, utilize contact microphones for amplification, and are designed specifically for improvisation with elements of ambiguity, unpredictability and nonlinearity.  Tom has performed extensively throughout the San Francisco Bay Area for over 30 years, as well as in other parts of the U.S., Canada, Europe, and New Zealand, both as soloist and with other musicians.  Tom also performs with T.D. Skatchit, RTD3, and Ghost in the House and has appeared on a number of recordings, including his solo CD, Identity (2007), T.D. Skatchit & Company (2009) and Skatch Migration (2010) (Edgetone Records).  In 1998, he self-published Wisdom of the Impulse: On the Nature of Musical Free Imrpovisation.

Paul Winstanley is an improvising electric bass player from New Zealand who specializes in extended techniques. In addition to trying to make his bass sound like electronics he is interested in making electronic music that sounds like natural environments. He has several solo projects including Sci Hi (electronic feedback), Speed Cook (music from sound samples and non-musical sounds) and The Complete Recordings (artificial simulations of field recordings).  Paul lived in Auckland, New Zealand for 10 years where he was part of the growing local and national experimental/improvising music scene, playing in groups w/luminaries like instrument inventor Phil Dadson, percussionist John Bell, radical concert brass band The NZ Dominion Centenary Concert Band, folk icon Fats White, abstract electronic supergroup Plains and improvising electronic trio Audible 3.

Music For Hard Times – Paul was working in the capacity of a sound technician when he 1st met Tom at an instrument inventors symposium in Auckland and was pleased to renew their friendship when he relocated to San Francisco last year. An exciting musical rapport quickly developed between the two, and Paul considers Music for Hard Times a great opportunity to play with instruments almost completely devoid of idiomatic reference, allowing him to extend and refine his extended sounds and improvising approaches to establish a group aesthetic which accommodates the particular strengths of Tom’s unique instruments.

Check out these righteous dudes!:

Would you buy a used skatch box from these guys?

Here’s a peek into Tom’s secret prototyping facility for skatch boxes and other new tools for sonic adventure:

'Āli Bābā's Cave - مغارة علي بابا

This is your mind on Lukie Tubes Resonance Plates:

Are You Experienced...?

More Tom: http://bayimproviser.com/artistdetail.asp?artist_id=91

Turquoise Yantra Grotto is a unique space near Glen Park in San Francisco offering, in addition to a normal piano, site-specific invented instruments like the gamelan piano and zen industrial carillon — a cozy laboratory to explore the world chamber music of the future in an unexpected dialog between global roots traditions and modernist music.

As usual, on hand will be a shamanic healer and a neo-tea practitioner (our hosts) to facilitate your listening experience.

Planning continues for Wayang Turquoise puppet opera accompanied by the gamelan piano in the new year.

A scene like nowhere else.

$12-$15 sliding scale. Due to limited seating, by advance reservation only.

To reserve, send me an email at joe@joelasqo.com, and I’ll confirm and send location and details. (Please note in case of allergies: Birds are present in the venue).

Look forward to see you at this amazing show!

Joe

I’m very excited about my upcoming solo show at the Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell Street, SF (map), 7:30pm, Wed 11 Jan…

… especially since it will the first peek out of the tent for some laptop/MSP work I’ve been developing using the tools of of warped time.

This work will be part of a laptop-assisted piece refracting Miles Davis through linguistic theory: So What: Surface Structures #2.

[Photos below by Peter Kaars added after performance]

Meridian Gallery, 11 Jan 2012 (Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)

Circling the solar furnace of the piano (in rather irregular orbits…) will be other instruments like Indian and Middle Eastern percussion, harmonium, voice, and MSP (laptop).

Meridian Gallery, 11 Jan 2012 (Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)

Besides jazz time-resynthesis, I’ll do some Indo-modernist and “Neo-Gaku” pieces inspired by the musics of India, East Asia, and the post-war European avant-garde…

… like pieces composed in non-traditional rāgas (e.g., the same tone rows used in Stockhausen’s “Mantra” or the “All-Interval Hexachord” of post-WW2 composers), developed in Indian forms.

A new frontier here is an invented “meta-rāga” राग म्यॉबिउस कुंडलित वक्रता बोधिचित्त (Rāga Möbius Helix Bodhicitta), whose serial scale steps (which can be functions or procedures as well as pitches) trace a spiral in multiple dimensions of musical sound. I’ll do an ālāp in this meta-rāga which has been very popular in my gig at Viracocha.

Rounding out the show will be some quite unusual short pieces from a modernist project based on Southern Italian folk songs (Canzoniere 8½-centesco del futuro), “Neo-Gaku” transmigrations of traditional East Asian pieces like 陽關三疊 (3 Variations on Parting at the Yang Pass), and, time permitting, a traditional rāga from my recent album Turquoise Sessions.

For more info, see: http://www.meridiangallery.org/en/concerts.htm.

It will be a great pleasure to play the fantastic, focused space of the Meridian, and I hope to see you at this show!

Joe

P.S. If coming by car, I recommend the Stockton-Sutter garage (map).