Green Alembic at Crane House
The stunning series at Crane House in Oakland has made it into one of the most interesting places to hear improv & new music in the Bay Area. I’m excited to play at this unique venue again with Jim Ryan’s multimedia Green Alembic at 8:30pm on Sun 21 Oct.
And, don’t fail to come earlier to see a rare meeting of masters with Nakatani / Heule / Nishi at 7:30pm.
Infected by bebop at a tender age, Jim first took up the trombone in Minnesota, and by Mai ’68 was playing flute & sax, living in Paris, and jamming and performing with musicians like Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp & Anthony Braxton, then shortly afterward beginning his musical association with Steve Lacy.
Jim Ryan
After stretching the boundaries of improv with the “Free Music Formation” in Paris and other European cities, Jim returned to the US, first jolting the scene in Washington, D.C., then moving to the Bay Area not so long before the Loma Prieta Earthquake (coincidence…?)
Since then, Jim has led a remarkable variety of improv groups, e.g. Green Alembic, Dark Precursor, Forward Energy, Left Coast Improv Group, the Electro/Acoustic Sextet of Oakland, Subjects of Desire, and Retro Blue, as well as participating in Marco Eneidi‘s “American Jungle Orchestra,” and the Orchestra for World Peace of Sun Ra trumpeterEddie Gale.
Those who’ve heard Jim play have never been the same, and, after hearing his poems about surrealist elf sexuality, or seeing the powerful color energies of his paintings, are often never the same all over again.
One alembic makes you smaller....
Green Alembic is Jim’s “new approach to multimedia presentation of Image, Word, & Sound” … the group transmutes projections of original art used as graphical scores and spoken word into rare musical elements.
In addition to Jim Ryan (kalimba, flute, horn, word, image & leader), the line-up will also include:
Jeff Hobbs – violin, alto clarinet
Bob Marsh – bass
Jeff Hobbs (L) & Bob Marsh (R)
Ron Heglin – trombone/voice
Ron Heglin (photo by Tom Djll / Djll Pixels)
Michael Cooke – bassoon & sheng (笙)
Michael Cooke (photo by Danny Nolan)
Sheng (笙)
Doug Carroll – cello
Doug Carroll & friend
Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς) – trumpet
Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς)
Joe Lasqo – piano
Meridian Gallery, 11 Jan 2012 (Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)
Set 1 (7:30pm): Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也), Jacob Felix Heule, and Kanoko Nishi (西鹿乃子)
An astonishing evening awaits for lovers of extended percussion and Neo-Gaku (Japan-related modernist music).
Two masters of pulse and timbre whose sonic explorations have enabled them to embed entire orchestras in their drum kits, Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也), of East-Coast/Osaka, and Jacob Felix Heule, will bring an extended percussion battery to bear in a meeting that will rupture ordinary time to create a new continuum of flashing tone spaces and softly disturbing paradoxes.
Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也)
Jacob Felix Heule
Those who have heard either Jacob or Nakatani-san have experienced new meaning in the word “percussion” and the sonic horizon opened by both of them together will be vast and open.
Through this space will soar, weave, bob, and lurk the mysterious, beautiful extended koto sounds of Kanoko Nishi (西鹿乃子).
Kanoko Nishi (西鹿乃子)
Nishi-san is an improviser currently based in SF/Bay Area and holds a BA in music performance from Mills College. Although her primary training is in classical piano performance, she’s also interested in improvisational music making, both solo and in collaborations with other artists. Her mastery of various extended techniques on the piano and koto (箏), in addition to more traditional techniques, is brilliant and has widened the rage of vocabularies on each instrument and enabled them to adapt to different musical genres. Kanoko also enjoys collaborating with dancers, poets and visual artists to push the limits of her musical language and find ways to communicate with other forms of performance art.
Her recent interest has primarily been in performing 20th century and contemporary music on piano and koto, and free improvisation in a variety of contexts.
Well known to fans in the Bay Area, Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也) is originally from Osaka, Japan, now based on the East Coast. Nakatani-san has released 60+ recordings in the USA & Europe and performed countless solo percussion concerts through intensive touring.
His music is visceral, non-linear and intuitively primitive, expressing an unusually strong spirit while avoiding any categorization. He creates sound via both traditional and extended percussion techniques, using drums, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects and bells, as well as various sticks, kitchen tools and homemade bows, which manifest in an intense and organic music that represents a very personal sonic world. His approach is steeped in the sensibilities of free improvisation, experimental music, jazz, rock, and noise, and yet retains the sense of space and quiet beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music. His percussion battery can imitate the sounds of a trumpet, a stringed instrument, or electronics so that it becomes difficult to recognize the source of the sound.
Jacob Felix Heule is a percussionist and electronic musician focused on sound-oriented improvisation following the traditions of electro-acoustic improv, noise, and 20th-C composition. His playing embraces both rough-edged intensity and disciplined instrumental technique.
In 2004 Jacob founded the acoustic grind duo Ettrick with Jay Korber. Both double on drums and saxophones in a style often described as a hybrid of free jazz and black metal.
Jacob has worked extensively with double bassist Tony Dryer, in a variety of groups such as Wormses (with Loachfillet) and Addleds (with Kyle Bruckmann and Kanoko Nishi). Their trio with “Jacob L” released the fantastic Idea of West on Creative Sources in 2008. Jacob Felix Heule and Tony also have a trio CD with Jack Wright, and have performed live with diverse musicians such as Michel Doneda, C. Spencer Yeh, Gino Robair, and Damon Smith. Since 2008 they have also operated as Basshaters, a duo project incorporating electronics in interaction with their acoustic instruments.
Join us for a rare evening as musical friends from afar meet!
Joe