Performances

Viracocha

I’m honored to host two of the Bay Area’s most talented shakuhachi players, Cornelius Shinzen (深禅) Boots and Karl Young, for two special acoustic sets at 4pm and 5pm, Wed 12 June during my regular booking at Viracocha (NW corner of 21st & Valencia, San Francisco).

Long-time disciples under masters of the traditional Japanese honkyoku (本曲) repertoire, Karl & Cornelius have also taken the shakuhachi into explorations beyond its usual space with unique élan, ranging the gamut from “heavy chamber” covers of Black Sabbath to unique Asian takes on jazz classics, while keeping musical company with virtuosi of trad-shak like Michael Chikuzen (竹禅) Gould and Riley Lee.

Karl Young (L) & Cornelius Shinzen (深禅) Boots (R), as members of the shakuhachi section for Undercover Presents' re-mix concert of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid", 19 May 2012

Cornelius Shinzen (深禅) Boots (L), Philip Gelb, & Karl Young (R)

Cornelius is bringing a special mix which including honyoku classics like:

— Shika No Tōne (The Distant Call Of The Deer, 鹿の遠音, duet with Karl Young)

— Fūrin (Wind Forest, 風林, on the 2.4 shakuhachi)

— Half Of The Beast, an original mukyoku (無曲) piece for the 2.8 taimu (大無) flute, in the spirit of the classic Kyorei (Empty Bell, 虛鈴)

— The Hills, renegade nature music “duology” (arrangements for the 1.8 shakuhachi of 2 classic rock tunes with “Hills” in the title:

> Run to the Hills (Iron Maiden)

> Over the Hills And Far Away (Led Zeppelin)

Cornelius Boots playing shakuhachi (尺八)

“The Rod Serling of chamber music composition, the David Lynch of the bass clarinet, and the Luke Skywalker of the bamboo flute.”

East Bay reed renegade Cornelius Boots is a progressive rock & “heavy chamber music” composer, bass clarinet virtuoso, wu wei woodwind instructor & Zen flute adept. He is a dabbler in Tibetan mysticism and Taoist wizardry, & a devotee of the Respirational Arts.

Cornelius Boots playing taimu shakuhachi (大無尺八)

Recent projects include the composing, calligraphic notation and recording of a series of 27 études (mukyoku, 無曲) for taimu shakuhachi (大無尺八, large Zen bamboo flute), performances and recordings with the elemental sound-structuring ensemble, Sabbaticus Rex (taimu shakuhachi, throat singing, large overtone gongs), and the collaborative composing of an avant-orchestral rock opera, An American Faust.

Cornelius Shinzen (深禅) Boots & Karen Stackpole performing as Sabbaticus Rex (not pictured- Mark Deutsch)

Since 1996 he has led and written virtuosic “heavy chamber music” for Edmund Welles, the world’s only original bass clarinet quartet, with whom he’s released 3 albums: Imagination Lost, Tooth & Claw, and Agrippa’s 3 Books. The quartet had featured recitals at Clarinetfest and Switchboard Music Festival, received a Chamber Music America New Works grant, and has shared the stage with Medeski, Martin and Wood, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, and Extra Action Marching Band.

In addition to receiving a Jun Shihan (準師範) ranking from shakuhachi Grandmaster Michael Chikuzen (竹禅) Gould, he has music degrees from Indiana University (BM Clarinet Performance, BS Audio Recording, MM Jazz Studies) where he studied with Howard Klug, David Baker, Alfred Prinz, David Pickett and Wayne Jackson.

Karl Young

I’m also very much looking forward to duet with Karl Young.

In addition to the solo honkyoku (本曲) piece Sagari-Ha (Falling Leaves, 下り葉) by Karl, Karl and I will do special shakuhachi+piano duets, including pieces such as:

Ornette Coleman

— Lonely Woman, by Ornette Coleman

— Chōshi (調子), after the Neo-Gaku arrangement on my album, Turquoise Sessions.

Steve Adams

— #39, by Bay Area saxophonist Steve Adams of ROVA Saxophone Quartet

Bishu Chatterjee (বিষু চ্যাটার্জি)

— Nile Shobuj (Green in Blue, নীলে সবুজ) by Bay Area bassist Bishu Chatterjee (বিশু চ্যাটার্জি)

Larry Ochs & friend

— Failure, by Bay Area saxophonist Larry Ochs of ROVA Saxophone Quartet

— and other surprising pieces for shakuhachi (like Eleanor Rigby, Miles’s Davis’ So What, etc.…)

Murasaki Ensemble (紫アンサンブル) - Karl Young above bass

After an initial period as a jazz tenor saxophonist, Karl Young embarked on a career as a physicist and entered an intensive study of the shakuhachi. Over the past 20 years he has studied with a number of teachers; his primary sensei are Kaoru Kakizakai (柿堺香) and Riley Lee, both masters in the dokyoku (道曲) tradition, and students of Katsuya Yokoyama (横山勝也).

While his focus has been on the traditional solo honkyoku repertoire in the dokyoku tradition he also plays sankyoku (三曲) or traditional ensemble music with shamisen & koto, as well as min’yō (民謡) or Japanese folk music. He is co-founder of the group Ensohza (縁囃座), specializing in traditional minyo and Japanese folk dance, in which he plays the shinobue (篠笛) or transverse bamboo flute in addition to the shakuhachi. He also participates in the East-West Murasaki Ensemble (紫アンサンブル), led by Shirley Kazuyo Muramoto (村本和世).

He couldn’t help wandering back to his roots and recently worked with jazz flutist Ali Ryerson on developing an approach to jazz shakuhachi. He subsequently released Lost In The Wood, a CD of jazz standards and original pieces in an exploration of the expressive possibilities for shakuhachi in jazz. He has recently been playing jazz in various ensemble formats around the San Francisco Bay and “Mendonoma” areas.

Karl Young's recent jazz shakuhachi CD - Lost In The Wood (I guarantee you've never heard a version of Polkadots & Moonbeams like this...)

Viracocha is a unique polyvalent zone spread over several levels at the NW corner of 21st & Valencia, San Francisco, that functions as post-modern antique shop, piano lounge / performance space, lending library, gallery, and all-purpose cultural node. It has been my pleasure and honor to play there weekly for the last 2½ years. (Here’s a lovely article on Viracocha with a picture of me playing from the back).

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

Warmly hope to see you at this special show!

Joe

Eliane Lust performs "Chronicle of a Piano Woman", Paris

Internationally renowned concert pianist Eliane Lust was raised in Belgium and has performed to critical acclaim on the world’s most prestigious concert stages from Paris to New York.

Those who have been fortunate enough to hear her can attest to her amazing ability to melt into the piano and control it from the inside.

Le Piano Studio

Her Le Piano Studio is the elegant epicenter of her rehearsal and teaching activities, and the site of a glorious Fête-Concert on Sun 23 June.

Following on to playing Cage in the last 2 Fêtes-Concert, I’m very excited to rejoin a party of some of the most fascinating pianists in the Bay Area who will together present an exciting and eclectic program ranging from classical to avant-garde, and spanning continents from Europe to Persia, India, and Japan (plus definitely… more Cage!)

John Cage at the piano

The event will start around 6:30pm and end around 11pm, during which many of the works will be repeated between bouts of food, laughter and good company.

The Fête-Concert is a private rather than public affair, but I can wrangle some invitations to this unique event.

If you’d like to come, please contact me at joe@joelasqo.com as soon as possible, and I’ll see what I can do to get you in and let you know more details.

Patti Deuter performs Cage's "Four Walls" @ Berkeley Arts Festival

My partner in crime for the two-piano/two-pianist piece Two² by Cage will be the delightful and brilliant pianist Patti Deuter, organizer and ringleader of the last September’s Satie/Cage Vexations at Berkeley Arts.

Patti Deuter (left, at toy piano): "Violette Nozieres, Revenant". (Performance-Installation with toy piano & projection of Surrealist Book; Patti Deuter & Anna Wexler @ Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, MA, 2009) Photo: ©Jane Wang

Often found in Paris as well as California, and a student of Eliane Lust’s, Patti is an indefatigable macherin of the new music and piano scenes of the Bay Area. From her studio-cottage nestled in the trees, where everything is keyed to one of four vibrant synesthetic colors (forming, I would say, a visual rootless 13th chord in second inversion… Scriabin would approve), passionate strains of Rzewski, Cage, Wolff, and other masters of 20th and 21st century piano escape to infuse the air.

John Cage and D.T. Suzuki (鈴木 大拙 貞太郎)

As is well known, John Cage was heavily influenced by Zen Buddishm and Japanese culture in general, and the piece we’ll perform, Two², is his remarkable musical re-imagining of the fascinating traditional Japanese linked-verse form, renga (連歌).

With beginnings in the time of the Man’yōshū (万葉集), c. 760 A.D., renga evolved into a very sophisticated game played by connoisseurs who used its 5-line stanzas consisting of a 5-7-5 syllable haiku (俳句) + a 7-7 syllable response in an interplay of group-improvised linked-verse, exchanged among the members of a (usually saké-soaked) poetry party (not unlike the similar game of cadavre exquis played in graphical form by the Paris surrealists).

Renga paper of poet Nishiyama Sōin (西山宗因連歌懐紙)

Japanese poetry fiends took renga to remarkable heights of sophistication, defining an elaborate aesthetic of seasonal symbolism, pivot-stanzas referring to moon and cherry blossoms, and special gold-and-silver dusted papers of different shapes, sizes and colors, corresponding to distinct parts of the symbolic program, to brush their poems onto whilst sipping from cups of saké brought to them sushi-boat-style by special garden streams constructed for this purpose.

John Cage performs "Water Walk" on "I've Got A Secret"

Cage’s luminous and serene Two² for 2 pianists uses the 36-stanza kasen (歌仙) form of renga, re-imagining each of the 5-line stanzas as 5-measure musical units, each filled with 5 or 7 piano sound-events which replace the syllables of the original poetic form.

Say hello to my little friend...

Like many of the other Cage “number pieces”, the timing of the musical events in Two² is not strictly determined, but unlike the “time bracket” approach to indeterminacy found in many of the number pieces, here instead Cage sets up a marvelous game of simple rules to let the two pianists create an interlinked joint control of fluid time, a game in which they can support or subvert each other, creating meditative kaleidoscopic ripples of piano sound which will be uniquely different in each performance.

Similar to Western classical music forms having 3 movements, renga-sequences employ 3 sections, called Jō-ha-kyū (序 • 破 • 急).

While Patti and I will do the full hour+ version of Two² in a concert setting later in 2013, for this event, we’ll do stanzas 7-18 of the ha “movement”, including one of the three “moon stanzas” and one of the two “flower stanzas” of the kasen form. (In Eliane’s last Fêtes, we did the final and first movements, so naturally here we continue with the middle…)

Modern Renga Banquet at the Shusuitei in the Kyoto Imperial Park (連歌の会席〜京都御苑内の拾翠亭にて）

And we will honor the tradition of alcohol-assisted creativity, as we’ll be marking the end of each stanza with ceremonial libations (which may lead to some interesting musical results as we repeat performances during the event…).

Some of the most exciting pianists in the Bay Area will be joining us. A full list is not in hand, but here are some of the pianists who will perform:

Luciano Chessa performing Joan La Barbara's "Hear What I Feel" @ Pamela Z's VOICECAGE, 21 Aug 2012

Luciano Chessa: 3 pieces by 2 Argentine composers – Miguel Galperin: El preludio como Eco, + Federico Salesi: Tucuman 2032 and Novembre-Dicembre ’84.

Frank Clare

Frank Clare – Original compositions and improvisations

Patti Deuter (solo) – Satie: Gnossienne nº 4, Morton Feldman: Piano Piece (1952)

Lynea Diaz-Hagan

Lynea Diaz-Hagan (special guest vocalist) – Duets with Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون), see below.

Trained from a young age as classical vocalist, Lynea made the transition to jazz after several years of vocal exploration and experimentation in New York, where she was influenced by the avant-garde jazz scene.

Her influences range from jazz greats Sarah Vaughan, Ella Fitzgerald and Betty Carter, to the hard-edged Betty Davis and Gal Costa, to contemporary vocal pioneers Bobby McFerrin, Iva Bittová, Meredith Monk, and Sussan Deyhim (سوسن دیهیم).

.

David Hatt

David Hatt — Marcel Dupré: Prelude in F Minor & works by Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel

Jim Jowdy

Jim Jowdy – Fugue from Brahms-Handel Variations, Op. 24

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

Joe Lasqo – Original MSP/piano electroacoustic and Indo-modernist pieces:

— Auto-duets, laptop & piano

The Saturnian meta-rāga Śani-Haṭakaṅgi (शनि-हटकङी).

These electroacoustic auto-duets are often based on extended meta-rāgas incorporating timbal as well as pitch-based melodies, and employ a variety of signal-processing and AI techniques for direct electronic synthesis as well as the processing of diverse sound sources such as space probes, manipulated vowel formants, crowds and animals, etc.

Formants - Hot, Hat, Hit, Head

Also, an Indian classical piece adapted for the piano:

Tyāgarāja (త్యాగరాజు)

— Brochevārevarurā by Tyāgarāja (Rāga: Śrīranjani) [త్యాగరాజు: ப்ரோசே வாரவெருரா (ராகம்: ஸ்ரீ ரஞ்ஜனி, தாளம்: ஆதி)]

(Tyāgarāja, 1767–1847, was a member of the South Indian “Trinity” of composers, contemporaneous with Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven and occupying a similar position in S. Indian music history.)

Roger Rohrbach at the piano

Roger Rohrbach — Toru Takemitsu (武満徹), Litany I. Adagio & II. Lento misterioso, 1989

Melissa Smith

Melissa Smith — J.S. Bach: Toccata in E minor

Kelly Walker at the piano

Kelly Walker — Corigliano: Fantasia on an Ostinato, 1985

Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون)

Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون):

— Persian classical music adapted for piano and duets with Lynea Diaz-Hagan (see above)

I must call a bit of attention to Ramin’s pioneering and inspiring work in adapting the unique modes (dastgāh (دستگاه‎)), motivic inventories (radīf (ردیف)), and microtonal tunings of Perisan music to the piano.

It has been fascinating to compare notes with him in our respective journeys in the encounter between perhaps the most Western of instruments and aspects of Asian and Middle Eastern music which fall between the cracks of the piano keys.

Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون) with tools for Persian-tuning a piano

In this endeavor, Ramin has become adept at retuning pianos to accommodate the super-flat thirds and other microtonal intervals of Persian music.

Getting In Tune by Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون)

The wonderful results can be heard on his album, Getting In Tune.

Eliane Lust at Old First Church, San Francisco (Photo credit: Panithi Damrongkul)

The highlight of the Fête-Concert will no doubt be the brilliantly intimate sound of Eliane Lust, who’ll play selections from her brilliant Hot New Tangos program and/or Chopin. Those who heard the premier of this program at Old Saint Mary’s in November will attest to it’s vivid freshness and virtuosity.

Eliane’s innovative programming and adventurous musicianship have garnered her award recognition from the California Art Council and invitations as the featured piano soloist in several multi-media productions. Her uncommon piano repertoire ranges from classical masterpieces to brand new works being written for her by today’s leading contemporary composers. As concert curator Eliane has also created groundbreaking musical events such as the “O Solo Milhaud” 100th Anniversary Piano Marathon, to the Musicalliance Concert Series, to Mozart Madness, simultaneously presenting her dynamic master classes, lecture-recitals and clinics throughout the United States, Europe and French Polynesia.

Eliane has participated in the Aspen, Banff, Ernen, Montalvo, Spoleto and Tanglewood Music Festivals and performed at Carnegie Recital Hall, the Paderewski Festival, Chateau LaGesse, the Dame Myra Hesse Series, Musiconcerts, the Legion of Honor, Les Journées de Périgueux, and others. She’s appeared as soloist with the NJ Philharmonic, the Schubert Society of New York, Boston’s Orchestra & Chorale Society, the Diablo Symphony & the New England Contemporary Ensemble, among others. Her chamber music collaborations include performances with such luminaries as Anner Bylsma, Walter Trampler, Ron Leonard, Aurèle Nicolet and Frederic Rzewski.

A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Eliane’s musical roots lead directly to the historic pedagogies of both Beethoven and Liszt through her close studies with legendary pianists György Sebök and Leonard Shure. Other important influences include American pianists Richard Goode, Claude Frank, Aube Tzerko, Leon Fleisher, Joseph Kalichstein, Menahem Pressler and chamber coaches Yo-Yo Ma (馬友友), Gilbert Kalish, Eugene Lehner (Léner Jenő) and Louis Krasner (Луис Краснер). A notoriously inspiring coach, Eliane maintains an active master class studio for highly dedicated musicians and performers in San Francisco, California. More information at elianelust.com.

Join us for a unique gathering of musical friends at this Fête-Concert by contacting me at joe@joelasqo.com as soon as possible for one of a limited number of invitations.

じゃまたね。。。

Joe

After a series of private performances at the musical rituals of the secret society IBIM, Don Robinson and I are presenting the initial findings of our paranormal researches into rhythm at 8pm Wed 26 Jun, 2013 at Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA).

It’s a great pleasure for both of us to once again play at the East Bay’s essential hub for new and creative music, a venue that’s delivered an amazing stream of cutting-edge music to the Bay Area community — especially in this very hot double bill with Tango № 9 (Set 2, 9pm).

Don Robinson performing w the Kris Tiner Trio @ In The Flow Festival, Sacramento, 14 May 2012 (photo by George Thomson)

Described by Coda as a “percussive dervish”, Don Robinson is a technical master of the drums. He is a stalwart of the of San Francisco Bay Area avant-garde jazz scene, playing and recording with many of the area’spast and current improvisational players, from saxophonists John Tchicai, Marco Eneidi and Larry Ochs to koto player Miya Masaoka (正岡みや) and pianist Matthew Goodheart, and with prominent visitors like Cecil Taylor, Wadada Leo Smith, George Lewis, trumpeter Raphe Malik and Canadian pianist Paul Plimley. Much of this work has featured the combination of Robinson and bassist Lisle Ellis as rhythm section: ‘the best bass-drums tag team on the scene’ (Jazz Times). His longest musical association, dating from the 1970′s, was with the late tenor saxophonist Glenn Spearman.

Don Robinson (up), Fred Frith (down), & Larry Ochs (L) @ Starline Social Club, 31 Aug 2012

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1953, Don first studied classical percussion at the New England Conservatory. During the early 1970′s he served his musical apprenticeship in the jazz world of Paris, studying with Kenny Clarke and playing with Alan Silva, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake and Bobby Few among many others. He first played with Spearman as a duet partner during this period in Paris, an association which continued through various configurations and many recordings until the saxophonist’s death in 1998.

Don Robinson (L) & Larry Ochs (R)

Fresh from a European tour with Larry Ochs of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Don will be joined by myself on laptop & piano.

Don Robinson & Biggi Vinkeloe perform @ Eld Records / Studio Fabriken, Göteborg, Sweden

In working with Don, I’ve reached back into my percussion studies in South India as a performer on the mṛdangam (மிருதங்கம்) & into the stochastic rhythm theories of Xenakis, projecting these rhythmic structures through the prisms of signal flow code & keyboard — my drum kit has hammers, strings & recursive filters.

Vidwan V. Nagabhushanachar (V. ನಾಗಭೂಷಣಚಾರ್, L) & Joe Lasqo (R)

Position for strokes NAM and DHIM on the mṛdangam (மிருதங்கம்)

Klangfarben - Einfluss der Grundströmung auf den Klang der Blockflöte

Together, Don and I open a sophisticated new space of interlocking rhythmic energy, distressed tālas, and unexpected re-mappings.

Free jazz, Indian, or electronic?

Rhythmelodics or „Klangfarben-Hoquetus“?

Whatever you decide it is, you’ll not have heard anything like it before…

Tango № 9 (Photo by Kat Nyberg)

Set 2: Tango № 9 (9pm)

Catharine Clune – violin
Zoltan DiBartolo – voice
Joshua Raoul Brody – piano
Greg Stephens – trombone
special guest: Isabel Douglass – accordion

Presenting music old and new, Tango № 9 embarks on a fascinating musical adventure, borrowing from the rich tango tapestry, beginning with Astor Piazzolla and then adding a touch of Kurt Weill, a dash of humor and a pinch of West Coast modernism.

Tango № 9 (Photo by Kat Nyberg)

Tango № 9, born in the Mission District in 1988, began by exploring where Piazzolla and jazz met. Today, it has become an all-star Bay Area ensemble, recognizable by its unique instrumentation of violin, trombone, piano, and voice. The group delves deeply into the world of tango, recording 4 critically acclaimed albums, presenting numerous concerts and is constantly exploring different facets of the tango.

If you don’t know their music, I would warmly recommend any of the following brilliant albums (if you do know their music, you’ll be coming to this show….):

— Live at the Columbarium

— Here Live No Fish

— Radio Valencia

— All Them Cats in Recoleta

All of the musicians in this marvelous group are superb, but as a pianist, my mouth never fails to drop open at the dizzying command of ALL 20th-C piano styles on the part of Joshua Raoul Brody (also a founding member of the infamous Club Foot Orchestra).

Join us for an energizing evening that will leave your ears much wider…

Hope to see you there!

Joe

Note: Shows, releases, and other events below are only in approximate chronological order.

Aaron Bennett’s phenomenal post-jazz ensemble Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra returns to the East Bay at 9pm, Wed 15 May at Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA – map).

It’s a great pleasure to once again play at the East Bay’s essential hub for new and creative music, a venue that’s delivered an amazing stream of cutting-edge music to the Bay Area community — especially in this very hot double bill of post-modern jazz & post-jazz modernism with Myles Boisen’s Ornettology (Set 1, 8pm).

If you’ve already heard the first album of Aaron Bennett’s unique compositions released by Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra (cover below),  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.”

The electro-magnetic field is tuned and amplified by means of unique “breathing chart” compositions using a special graphic notation Aaron has designed for large improvising ensembles to focus and unleash aural energies. The resulting sound is like nothing else and has amazed audiences in a string of orgone-accelerating Bay Area performances over the last year.

(For a more detailed interview with Aaron about this music, please check out Craig Matsumoto’s post: Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Improv).

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 Bennett (sax & compositions), the line-up for this show will also include:

Rob Ewing – trombone

Rob Ewing

Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς) – trumpet

Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς)

Crystal Pascucci – cello

Crystal Pascucci

Bob Marsh – accordion (and spiritual guidance counselor)

Jeff Hobbs (L) & Bob Marsh (R)

Lisa Mezzacappa – bass

Lisa Mezzacappa

Joe Lasqo – MSP & piano

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

Ornette Coleman

Beginning the show at 8pm in Set 1 will be Ornettology, Myles Boisen’s ongoing multidimensional re-prisming of one of the greatest modern masters.

Ornette Coleman

Myles has assembled a squad of players with deep knowledge of Ornette Coleman‘s music, bringing fresh arrangements of the free jazz iconoclast’s tunes, so expect a tornado of energy and trickster wisdom.

Ornette Coleman's Skies of America

Tonight’s Ornettology program will feature premieres of new pieces from Ornette’s Skies of America and the Naked Lunch film soundtrack.

A bar listener from Naked Lunch...

Myles Boisen

Myles’ vibrant stream of explorations in music, audio engineering and photography have made him a pillar of the Bay Area cultural scene.

Often sensed before he is seen — by the telltale scent of 13♯9 chords, earth after rainfall, and Martian wisteria — Myles Boisen is a recording and mastering engineer, album producer, film and television composer, journalist, and guitarist/bassist.

Myles Boisen (Photo by Michael Zelner)

His résumé includes hundreds of studio and live recordings for independant groups and labels, as well as for MTV/Comedy Central, CBS, Warner Bros., Polydor, PBS, et. al.

Myles was the engineer on The Gorey End CD by The Tiger Lillies and Kronos Quartet (EMI Classics), nominated for a Grammy award in 2004. His production and restoration work on Clarence “Guitar” Sims‘ Born To Sing The Blues CD (Mt. Top Records) garnered two awards from Real Blues Magazine in 1999: “Best West Coast blues reissue” and “Best studio sound technique”.

Myles Boisen (Photo by Michael Zelner)

In addition to musical performances with Tom Waits, John Zorn, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne, Splatter Trio, and The Club Foot Orchestra, Myles has contributed to a number of independent film soundtracks, plus director David Lynch‘s films Twin Peaks and Wild At Heart.

Throughout the 1990′s Myles was a composer and bassist in The Club Foot Orchestra, which is generally acknowledged as the first national touring ensemble to revive the art of original music performance with classic silent films and cartoons. During this period the CFO collective appeared at Lincoln Center (New York City) and Disney World (Orlando, FL) performing their scores for such vintage classics as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Pandora’s Box, and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr.

The softer side of Myles Boisen (Photo: Joel Deuter)

As a composer, Myles has scored original work for the award-winning Onsite Dance Co (ODC; San Francisco/New York), Rova Saxophone Quartet, and numerous Bay Area new music ensembles. He’s currently the music director of Orchestra Nostalgico, a CFO spinoff dedicated to the live performance of film music (Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, John Barry). Myles pursues his musical interests in Oakland, where he’s the chief engineer at Guerrilla Recording, a full service recording studio.

Steve Adams

A special bonus for tonight’s performance — Ornettology will be playing all of the arrangements for the group by Steve Adams, whom it has recently been my pleasure to collaborate with in duo and trio formats.

Steve Adams (M), Joe Lasqo (L), Aaron Bennett (R) @ the Makeout Room, 6 May 2013 (Photo by Michael Zelner)

Steve Adams needs little introduction to lovers of jazz and new music, having been a long-standing key player in various East & West Coast scenes. His work on various saxes, flutes, electronics and as a composer combines probing originality, playful improv structures and swing with a very specific angular momentum.

Steve Adams

Steve is best known as a member of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, whom he’s been with for more than 20 years. Steve is also a member of the Bill Horvitz Band, various Matt Small ensembles, and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, as well as leading his own projects.

Steve lived in Boston in the ’70s and ’80s, where he was a member of Your Neighborhood Sax Quartet, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and Composers in Red Sneakers among others. A remarkable collaboration with avant jazz bassist Ken Filiano, which we in the Bay Area have the pleasure of hearing on his swings to the West Coast, was formed in this period.

Steve’s versatility, powerful musical imagination, commanding technique, and personal warmth and great sense of humor make him a wonderful collaborator, and it’s been great to have my ears expanded by his beautiful ideas.

In addition to Myles Boisen and Steve Adams, tonight’s Ornettology line-up will include:

▪ Vijay Anderson – drums

Vijay Anderson (L), John Finkbeiner (M), Aaron Bennett (R), performing in the Vijay Anderson Quartet

▪ John Finkbeiner – guitar

▪ Chris Grady – trumpet

Seth Ford-Young (L) & Chris Grady (R), @ Darkroom Theater, 29 Oct 2008 (Photo by Ron Bosia)

▪ Phillip Greenlief – tenor saxophone

Phillip Greenlief performing in Vexations [Re-vex'd] @ Berkeley Arts, 24 Mar 2013 (Photo: Joel Deuter)

▪ Lisa Mezzacappa – bass

Noah Phillips & Lisa Mezzacappa @ LSG, 31 Jan 2013 (Photo- PeterBKaars.com, http-:www.peterbkaars.com)

Strap in and join us for a wild and unforgettable night of music!

Joe

Viracocha

I’m honored to host one of the Bay Area’s most talented avant / classical cello stars, Crystal Pascucci, for two special acoustic sets at 4pm and 5pm, Wed 17 Apr during my regular booking at Viracocha (NW corner of 21st & Valencia, San Francisco).

Crystal Pascucci, cellist/composer/improviser, is a high-impact émigrée to the Bay Area scene; before relocating from the East Coast, she worked passionately in new music ensembles and studied under improvising masters, Robert Black of the Bang On a Can All-Stars and Anthony Braxton. Her current personal projects, Opera Wolf and Wild Hen, are both small improvising ensembles. Opera Wolf is a free improv trio of tenor sax, amplified cello and drum set, and performs text-based and graphic scores. Wild Hen is a quartet of clarinet, cello, vibes and drum set, which plays loosely composed material with free improvisation.

Crystal Pascucci

Crystal’s approach to improvisation and composition are influenced greatly by her training in chamber music. Her music utilizes delicate communication amongst musicians in order to facilitate response and expression. She recently performed the works of Roscoe Mitchell at Yoshi’s Jazz Club, participated in the 2012 Outsound Summit Festival and has presented her solo set at several Bay Area music series. She performs regularly with Lisa Mezzacappa’s String Band and Oakland Active Orchestra, which performed at the 2013 SF Switchboard Festival, and she is my band-mate in Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra. More info @: www.crystalpascucci.com.

Crystal Pascucci performing in the Vexations (Re-vex'd) 2013 improv marathon at Berkeley Arts Festival

Crystal will be doing some fantastic cello solo pieces, ranging from classical to avant to avant classical:

Johann Sebastian Bach - Colossus of counterpoint

— J.S. Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suite V, Prélude & Allemande

György Ligeti, composer of Poème Symphonique for 100 Metronomes, with some friends

— György Ligeti: Sonata for Solo Cello

— plus solo improvisations

Also in the sets will be compositions for improvisers from the œuvre of two Bay Area masters from the ROVA Saxophone Quartet:

Steve Adams

—#39 by Steve Adams

Larry Ochs & friend

— Failure by Larry Ochs.

It will be my privilege to join Crystal for these.

Before and after these special sets, I’ll do pieces from my usual Viracocha repertoire of modern jazz, Indian / Asian musics reconfigured for the piano, and sparely avant improv.

Viracocha is a unique polyvalent zone spread over several levels at the NW corner of 21st & Valencia, San Francisco, that functions as post-modern antique shop, piano lounge / performance space, lending library, gallery, and all-purpose cultural node. It has been my pleasure and honor to play there weekly for the last 2½ years. (Here’s a lovely article on Viracocha with a picture of me playing from the back)

Warmly hope to see you at this special show!

Joe

The Makeout Room (Photo by Kelly Allen, kellyallen.com)

I’m delighted to join the great Monday Makeout series, which has been curated and nurtured by Bay Area greats like Lisa Mezzacappa, Darren Johnston, and Karl Evangelista — a series that has made one of the best lounges in SF one of the best places to hear ground-breaking new music as well.

Even more exciting is to be joining it with wind giants Steve Adams and Aaron Bennett…

C0ordinates: Makeout Room, SF, Mon 6 May, 8pm, 3225 22nd St, SF (between Mission & Valencia – map)

Steve Adams

Steve Adams needs little introduction to lovers of jazz and new music, having been a long-standing key player in various East & West Coast scenes. His work on various saxes, flutes, electronics and as a composer combines probing originality, playful improv structures and swing with a very specific angular momentum.

Steve Adams

Steve is best known as a member of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, whom he’s been with for more than 20 years. Steve is also a member of the Bill Horvitz Band, various Matt Small ensembles, and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, as well as leading his own projects.

Steve lived in Boston in the ’70s and ’80s, where he was a member of Your Neighborhood Sax Quartet, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and Composers in Red Sneakers among others. A remarkable collaboration with avant jazz bassist Ken Filiano, which we in the Bay Area have the pleasure of hearing on his swings to the West Coast, was formed in this period.

Steve’s versatility, powerful musical imagination, commanding technique, and personal warmth and great sense of humor make him a wonderful collaborator, and it’s been great to have my ears expanded by his beautiful ideas.

Aaron Bennett in Space

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, ROVA Saxophone Quartet and many others.

Aaron Bennett in Time

Over the last year it’s been my honor and pleasure to play in Aaron’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra and have my mind thoroughly blown by his remarkable compositions for improvising ensemble, utilizing his unique graphic notation. If you don’t know this band, download its first album (cover below) at http://emtpo.bandcamp.com/ today and hear what the fuss is about.

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

Featured in the set will be various graphic-score and state-transition-diagram compositions for improvisers by Steve Adams, such as #30 and #39.

#39, Ⓒ Steve Adams

It is too much fun to rehearse these witty, game-like pieces! You’ll love them too.

Whale Form, © Aaron Bennett

We’ll also do the improv-ensemble composition Whale Form by Aaron Bennett. Like the “alphabet pieces” we do in Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra, it encodes the perfect amount of info in its specialized language to ensure the contradictory fusion of structure and openness, with each performance like a fresh encounter with a complex ecosystem in a new season.

I’ll contribute improv compositions combining musique concrète concepts with laptop synthesis and live acoustic instruments, such as Emergent 2, first heard earlier this year in performances at Berkeley Arts Festival and Trinity Chamber Concerts, and a new piece based on linguistic operations, Saxo Grammaticus.

Saxo Grammaticus (drawing by Louis Moe)

Saxo Grammaticus was a 12th-C scholar who wrote the first history of Denmark, the Danmarks Krønike, containing the original story of Hamlet.

Improv Grammar Diagram from "The WIsdom of the Impulse", by Tom Nunn

Saxo Grammaticus is an improvisatory structure of state transitions for saxes and electronics/laptop based on syntactical concepts from generative and phrase-structure grammars and the Japanese poetry form renga (連歌).

Big Bang radiation echo imaged at various frequencies by Planck satellite

It will also be my pleasure to introduce into this mix some reprocessed signals from the universe’s longest and most primal vibration, the Big Bang, which has been going on for about 13.7 billion years… so far. The portion of the signal available thus far will be projected into various time-warps and convolutions, often sped up approx. 100 septillion times to come into human audio range. This has been fascinating new material to work with.

Plank satellite scanning a slice of the Big Bang

Lovely Builders - Ross Hammond (L) and Scott Amendola (R)

Set 2: Lovely Builders (Ross Hammond: guitar and Scott Amendola: drums & electronics)

Ross Hammond

To let Ross Hammond speak for himself:

“I’m a guitarist, improviser and composer living in Sacramento, CA.  I never really know how to answer when people ask what type of music I play.  I suppose it’s rooted in jazz and folk and rock and soul, and then it’s heavy on the improvisation, except when it’s a composed piece.  Oftentimes the music I make is totally improvised.  Sometimes there’s no music at all and it’s just sound.  And then again I’ve been known to play a lot of acoustic, roots based music with other like-minded folks.  Sometimes I’ll accompany singers, songwriters, poets and dancers.   From time to time I’ll also get chances to write music for films and other art projects.  I’m not sure there’s any easy way to describe all of that, so I just say that I play the guitar.”

Those who have heard Ross Hammond are familiar with the problem of describing his fluid music, always unpredictable (except you can be sure it will always be warm, ear-opening, and very, very hip).

And those who know the music scene of the Greater East Bay stand in awe of Ross’ role in organizing Nebraska Mondays at Luna’s and many other events that keep the flame creative music burning brightly in Sacramento, Davis and points beyond.

Some of his current projects are:

— Ross Hammond Trio (w Shawn Hale: bass, Dax Compise: drums)

— Electropoetic Coffee (w poet NSAA)

— Lovely Builders (w Scott Amendola)

— V Neck (w Tom Monson [FB link])

— Amy Reed [FB link] (accompaniment)

Scott Amendola. Photo by Peak (Piyanari Scott), www.peakness.com

For Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn’t so much an instrument as a musical portal. As an ambitious composer, savvy bandleader and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians, Scott applies his wide-ranging rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His closest musical associates include guitarists Jeff Parker, Nels Cline and Charlie Hunter, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, ROVA saxophonist Larry Ochs, and Tin Hat clarinetist Ben Goldberg, players who have each forged a singular path within and beyond the realm of jazz.

While rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area scene, Scott has woven a dense and far-reaching web of bandstand relationships that tie him to influential artists in jazz, blues, rock and new music. A potent creative catalyst, the Berkeley-based drummer become the nexus for a disparate community of musicians stretching from Los Angeles and Seattle to Chicago and New York. Whatever the context, Scott possesses a gift for twisting musical genres in unexpected directions. By employing custom designed electronics, including looping machines, pedals and ring modulators, he’s continually expanding his sonic palette, exploring textures and rhythms with an improvisational sensibility.

Scott’s stature as a composer has also been growing at a rapid rate. In April 2011, he premiered Fade to Orange, a New Visions/New Vistas commission funded by the James Irvine Foundation. A collaboration with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the extended work fully integrates the mercurial jazz trio with Nels Cline and bassist Trevor Dunn into the orchestra.

Set 3: Ben Goldberg’s Brainchild

Ben Goldberg (photo by Ken Weiss of Cadence Magazine)

Some brief excerpts from Ben’s longer bio:

“While getting a B.A. in music from UC Santa Cruz, I studied clarinet with Rosario Mazzeo, the dean of twentieth century clarinet teachers. I started playing and studying klezmer music, which has a virtuosic clarinet tradition. I began to think about how to use the clarinet in jazz and improvised music…

Steve Lacy provided a good example. He had devoted himself solely to the soprano saxophone and his music really touched me. I was playing in The Klezmorim and for some reason there were a bunch of tours in France that included hanging out for a week or two in Paris between gigs. I used to go down to the Sunset to listen to Steve and ask him for a lesson. Finally he relented…

In Sweden I met Ziya Aytekin (Зия Айтекин), a traditional zurna player from the Caucasus.  I heard how much his music had in common with, for example, the late work of John Coltrane. I wondered if I could use klezmer music to explore this connection between the traditional and the “avant-garde.”

One day I got together with Dan Seamans and Kenny Wollesen, with whom I had often played traditional klezmer music… This group became New Klezmer Trio.

Joe Lovano said that Mel Lewis could play a downbeat that was so strong it would last for eight bars.  Perhaps there are some downbeats that keep ringing for the rest of your life.  For me, New Klezmer Trio was this downbeat…

I received a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition from Mills College, where I studied musical analysis with David Bernstein, and composition with Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, and Christian Wolff [and received…] a Jazz Study Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts which funded private study with the saxophonist Joe Lovano.

Guitarist John Schott and I began working on music of the bebop era — Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. We soon found the songs transformed through elongation, repetition, dwelling, thickening the melody, and other approaches… Further study involved the post-serialist notion of combinatorial structures containing a specified number of notes…”

Among many awards, a recent one is 2011 Downbeat Critics’ Poll, which named Ben as the #1 Rising Star Clarinetist. Ben has also been nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association for a 2013 Jazz Award in the category of Clarinetist of the Year.

Ben Goldberg

Line-up for his ensemble, Brainchild, in this show includes:

— Ben Goldberg: clarinet & leader

— Steve Adams: flute

— Scott Amendola: Drums

— Karl Evangelista: guitar

— Dan Fabricant: bass

— Jordan Glenn: drums

— Dan Plonsey: alto sax

— Josh Smith: tenor sax

As you can see, this will be an amazing evening — hope to see you there!

Joe

Here are some pictures from the recent Vexations [Re-vex'd] 22-hour improv marathon on a theme of Satie’s at Berkeley Arts Festival.

It was a great honor to organize this event and extraordinary to hear the richness and originality of the different approaches these great musicians took to it.

All photos below by Joel Deuter (thank you, Joel!), sometimes with further processing by me. (Note: Not all musicians who played were photographed).

In the background of many of these photos can be seen the luminous encaustic paintings of Mari Marks.

Steve Adams: 3:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Steve Adams: 10am, Sun 24 Mar

Nancy Beckman & Tom Bickley, in the Gusty Winds May Exist duo: 5:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Myles Boisen: 12:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Mark Clifford: 7pm, Sat 23 Mar

Joseph Colombo (L) and Adam Fong (R): midnight, Sun 24 Mar

Joseph Colombo: 4am, Sun 24 Mar

Patti Deuter: 2pm, Sat 23 Mar

Thea Farhadian and Dean Santomieri: 11:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Adam Fong: 9:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Adam Fong: midnight, Sun 24 Mar

Matthew Goodheart: 6:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Phillip Greenlief: 1am, Sun 24 Mar

Diane Grubbe: 3am, Sun 24 Mar

Ron Heglin: 8:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Jeff Hobbs: 4pm, Sat 23 Mar

Jason Hoopes: 7:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Bonnie Hughes and Dean Santomieri, 2:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Matt Ingalls (L) and John Ingle (R): 2:30 pm, Sat 23 Mar

Sung Kim (김숭): 9pm, Sat 23 Mar

Sung Kim (김숭) (L) and Rent Romus (R): 10:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Heikki Koskinen: 11pm, Sat 23 Mar

Joe Lasqo: 10:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Joe Lasqo and Ron Heglin: 8:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Scott R. Looney: 8:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Scott R. Looney and Rent Romus: 2am, Sun 24 Mar

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano y El Dinosaurio: 6pm, Sat 23 Mar

Bob Marsh (in Sonic Suit #1): 8am, Sun 24 Mar

Joshua Marshall and Crystal Pascucci: 6am, Sun 24 Mar

Noah Phillips: 7:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Rent Romus: 10:30pm, Sat 23 Mar & 2am Sun 24 Mar

[ruidobello] (aka Jorge Bachmann): 9:30am, Sun 24 Mar

John Schott: 6:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Christina Stanley: 3pm, Sat Mar 23

Eli Wallace: 2:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Thanks again to all these amazing musicians and to Berkeley Arts Festival!

Joe

Noisebridge 5-Year Party & Benefit!

Noisebridge, San Francisco’s Hackerspace, is having some hard times, so there’s an epic benefit and party, to include eclectic performers, interactive art, and more. If you don’t know Noisebridge, see the end of this post for a brief summary of its importance to the Bay Area maker community.

Johny Radio

Naturally, I’m honored to join the digital section of the Noisejam Orchestra at this event on laptop under the conduction of inimitable homebrew sound device guru & DJ Johny Radio. Other sections of the orchestra will include anything homebrew, invented, patched, or coded – so be prepared for anything from circuit-bent toys to tin-can-resonator banjos and Frankenvegetables.

This unique sonic event unfolds for your listening pleasure at Noisebridge, 2169 Mission St., SF (map), 6:30-6:50pm, Sat 30 Mar.

Lesley Flanigan & Tristan Perich leading the Loud Objects workshop @ Noisebridge

Our set as Noisejam Orchestra is part of a much larger eclectic music/dance program starting from 5:50pm and going to late, also including

— Carl & Beatrice

— Justin Morrison, Christine Bonansea, Katie Duck, & Alfredo Genovesi

— Dubious Ranger

— Thunderground Collective

— SBVRSV

For details about the music schedule and more at this fantastic event for Noisebridge Hackerspace, see: here. (Open admission, but please donate, that is the point).

Noisebridge

If you can’t come, you still have the opportunity to donate to keep SF’s beloved hackerspace in good financial health (various ways to do this outlined: here).

Noisebridge

Why is Noisebridge important? What do you get when you support it?

I can’t say it better than Danny O’Brien, Noisebridge’s treasurer:

“Sure, you get the world’s craziest hackerspace, not-even-run by anarchist lunatics who built WikiLeaks and run one of the biggest Tor nodes and work for the EFF and construct X-Ray Lasers from spare parts and inspire SciFi books and start 3D printing companies and make kombucha and robots, and you get to come to it 24/7 and we’ll give you a key, and share our software and our classrooms and teach you how to fix your laptop or use our woodshop or share our library or use the darkroom or cook some food or have a free shell account or throw a party or chase a robot or paint a picture or make a dress. But you could do that without paying $10 anyway, right?

Well, maybe only until July…”

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

Join us 6:30-6:50pm, Sat 30 Mar to hear FM synthesis meet Frankenvegetables and/or ???…

It's alive…!

And donate in person or per instructions here.

Eliane Lust performs "Chronicle of a Piano Woman", Paris

Internationally renowned concert pianist Eliane Lust was raised in Belgium and has performed to critical acclaim on the world’s most prestigious concert stages from Paris to New York.

Those who have been fortunate enough to hear her can attest to her amazing ability to melt into the piano and control it from the inside.

Le Piano Studio

Her Le Piano Studio is the elegant epicenter of her rehearsal and teaching activities, and the site of a glorious Fête-Concert on Sun 03 Mar.

Following on the last Fête-Concert devoted to Cage and Debussy, I’m very excited to rejoin a party of some of the most fascinating pianists in the Bay Area who will together present an exciting and eclectic program ranging from classical to avant-garde, and spanning continents from Europe to Persia, India, and Japan (plus definitely… more Cage!)

John Cage at the piano

The event will start around 4pm and end around 11pm, during which most of the works will be repeated several times in between bouts of food, laughter and good company.

The Fête-Concert is a private rather than public affair, but I can wrangle some invitations to this unique event.

If you’d like to come, please contact me at joe@joelasqo.com as soon as possible, and I’ll see what I can do to get you in and let you know more details.

Patti Deuter performs Cage's "Four Walls" @ Berkeley Arts Festival

My partner in crime for the two-piano/two-pianist piece Two² by Cage will be the delightful and brilliant pianist Patti Deuter, organizer and ringleader of the last September’s Satie/Cage Vexations at Berkeley Arts.

Patti Deuter (left, at toy piano): "Violette Nozieres, Revenant". (Performance-Installation with toy piano & projection of Surrealist Book; Patti Deuter & Anna Wexler @ Pierre Menard Gallery, Cambridge, MA, 2009) Photo: ©Jane Wang

Often found in Paris as well as California, and a student of Eliane Lust’s, Patti is an indefatigable macherin of the new music and piano scenes of the Bay Area. From her studio-cottage nestled in the trees, where everything is keyed to one of four vibrant synesthetic colors (forming, I would say, a visual rootless 13th chord in second inversion… Scriabin would approve), passionate strains of Rzewski, Cage, Wolff, and other masters of 20th and 21st century piano escape to infuse the air.

John Cage and D.T. Suzuki (鈴木 大拙 貞太郎)

As is well known, John Cage was heavily influenced by Zen Buddishm and Japanese culture in general, and the piece we’ll perform, Two², is his remarkable musical re-imagining of the fascinating traditional Japanese linked-verse form, renga (連歌).

With beginnings in the time of the Man’yōshū (万葉集), c. 760 A.D., renga evolved into a very sophisticated game played by connoisseurs who used its 5-line stanzas consisting of a 5-7-5 syllable haiku (俳句) + a 7-7 syllable response in an interplay of group-improvised linked-verse, exchanged among the members of a (usually saké-soaked) poetry party (not unlike the similar game of cadavre exquis played in graphical form by the Paris surrealists).

Renga paper of poet Nishiyama Sōin (西山宗因連歌懐紙)

Japanese poetry fiends took renga to remarkable heights of sophistication, defining an elaborate aesthetic of seasonal symbolism, pivot-stanzas referring to moon and cherry blossoms, and special gold-and-silver dusted papers of different shapes, sizes and colors, corresponding to distinct parts of the symbolic program, to brush their poems onto whilst sipping from cups of saké brought to them sushi-boat-style by special garden streams constructed for this purpose.

John Cage performs "Water Walk" on "I've Got A Secret"

Cage’s luminous and serene Two² for 2 pianists uses the 36-stanza kasen (歌仙) form of renga, re-imagining each of the 5-line stanzas as 5-measure musical units, each filled with 5 or 7 piano sound-events which replace the syllables of the original poetic form.

Say hello to my little friend...

Like many of the other Cage “number pieces”, the timing of the musical events in Two² is not strictly determined, but unlike the “time bracket” approach to indeterminacy found in many of the number pieces, here instead Cage sets up a marvelous game of simple rules to let the two pianists create an interlinked joint control of fluid time, a game in which they can support or subvert each other, creating meditative kaleidoscopic ripples of piano sound which will be uniquely different in each performance.

Similar to Western classical music forms having 3 movements, renga-sequences employ 3 sections, called Jō-ha-kyū (序 • 破 • 急).

While Patti and I will do the full hour+ version of Two² in a concert setting later in 2013, for this event, we’ll do the first jō “movement” (stanzas 1-6), including one of the three “moon stanzas” of the kasen form. (In Eliane’s last Fête, we did the final movement, so naturally this time we continue with the beginning…)

Modern Renga Banquet at the Shusuitei in the Kyoto Imperial Park (連歌の会席〜京都御苑内の拾翠亭にて）

And we will honor the tradition of alcohol-assisted creativity, as we’ll be marking the end of each stanza with ceremonial libations (which may lead to some interesting musical results as we repeat performances during the event…).

Some of the most exciting pianists in the Bay Area will be joining us. A full list is not in hand, but here are some of the pianists who will perform:

Frank Clare

Frank Clare – Original compositions, e.g. Undercover, Subterrean, The Call,  The Libertine, & Some Distraction

Patti Deuter (solo) – Cage: The Seasons, 1947

Jim Jowdy

Jim Jowdy – Brahms: Handel Variations

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

Joe Lasqo – Original MSP/piano electroacoustic pieces, e.g.:

— Hexaflected Flakes (Rāga: All-interval Hexachord, mirror form), laptop & piano, by Joe Lasso

— VoxForm 3, laptop & piano, by Joe Lasqo

The Saturnian meta-rāga Śani-Haṭakaṅgi (शनि-हटकङी).

These electroacoustic auto-duets are often based on extended meta-rāgas incorporating timbal as well as pitch-based melodies, and employ a variety of signal-processing and AI techniques for direct electronic synthesis and processing of diverse sound sources such as space probes, manipulated vowel formants, crowds and animals, etc.

Formants - Hot, Hat, Hit, Head

Also, rāgas & Indian classical pieces adapted for the piano, e.g.:

Tyāgarāja (త్యాగరాజు)

— Brochevārevarurā by Tyāgarāja (Rāga: Śrīranjani) [త్యాగరాజు: ப்ரோசே வாரவெருரா (ராகம்: ஸ்ரீ ரஞ்ஜனி, தாளம்: ஆதி)]

(Tyāgarāja, 1767–1847, was a member of the South Indian “Trinity” of composers, contemporaneous with Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven and occupying a similar position in S. Indian music history.)

— Kṛti composition in Rāga: Māyāmāḻavagauḻa (ராகம்: மாயாமாளவகௌளை), from my album Turquoise Sessions.

and, for something completely different…. possibly some dances from Bach Cello Suite #5. All above except the Bach will have a combination of composed & improvised sections.

Joe Lasqo & Patti Deuter – Cage: Two² (see above)

Ric Louchard

Ric Louchard – Original composition, “Waltz”

David Manley at the piano

David Manley – Original compositions + Brubeck: Blue Rondo à la Turk

Roger Rohrbach at the piano

Roger Rohrbach: Toru Takemitsu (武満徹): Litany I

Kelly Walker at the piano

Kelly Walker: David Lang: wed

Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون)

Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون):

— Persian classical music adapted for piano.

I must call a bit of attention to Ramin’s pioneering and inspiring work in adapting the unique modes (dastgāh (دستگاه‎)), motivic inventories (radīf (ردیف)), and microtonal tunings of Perisan music to the piano.

It has been fascinating to compare notes with him in our respective journeys in the encounter between perhaps the most Western of instruments and aspects of Asian and Middle Eastern music which fall between the cracks of the piano keys.

Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون) with tools for Persian-tuning a piano

In this endeavor, Ramin has become adept at retuning pianos to accommodate the super-flat thirds and other microtonal intervals of Persian music.

Getting In Tune by Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون)

The wonderful results can be heard on his album, Getting In Tune.

Eliane Lust at Old First Church, San Francisco (Photo credit: Panithi Damrongkul)

The highlight of the Fête-Concert will no doubt be the brilliantly intimate sound of Eliane Lust, who’ll play selections from her brilliant Hot New Tangos program. Those who heard the premier of this program at Old Saint Mary’s in November will attest to it’s vivid freshness and virtuosity.

Eliane’s innovative programming and adventurous musicianship have garnered her award recognition from the California Art Council and invitations as the featured piano soloist in several multi-media productions. Her uncommon piano repertoire ranges from classical masterpieces to brand new works being written for her by today’s leading contemporary composers. As concert curator Eliane has also created groundbreaking musical events such as the “O Solo Milhaud” 100th Anniversary Piano Marathon, to the Musicalliance Concert Series, to Mozart Madness, simultaneously presenting her dynamic master classes, lecture-recitals and clinics throughout the United States, Europe and French Polynesia.

Eliane has participated in the Aspen, Banff, Ernen, Montalvo, Spoleto and Tanglewood Music Festivals and performed at Carnegie Recital Hall, the Paderewski Festival, Chateau LaGesse, the Dame Myra Hesse Series, Musiconcerts, the Legion of Honor, Les Journées de Périgueux, and others. She’s appeared as soloist with the NJ Philharmonic, the Schubert Society of New York, Boston’s Orchestra & Chorale Society, the Diablo Symphony & the New England Contemporary Ensemble, among others. Her chamber music collaborations include performances with such luminaries as Anner Bylsma, Walter Trampler, Ron Leonard, Aurèle Nicolet and Frederic Rzewski.

A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Eliane’s musical roots lead directly to the historic pedagogies of both Beethoven and Liszt through her close studies with legendary pianists György Sebök and Leonard Shure. Other important influences include American pianists Richard Goode, Claude Frank, Aube Tzerko, Leon Fleisher, Joseph Kalichstein, Menahem Pressler and chamber coaches Yo-Yo Ma (馬友友), Gilbert Kalish, Eugene Lehner (Léner Jenő) and Louis Krasner (Луис Краснер). A notoriously inspiring coach, Eliane maintains an active master class studio for highly dedicated musicians and performers in San Francisco, California. More information at elianelust.com.

Join us for a unique gathering of musical friends at this Fête-Concert by contacting me at joe@joelasqo.com as soon as possible for one of a limited number of invitations.

じゃまたね。。。

Joe