The superb series at the Crane House (near Ashby Bart – for address/directions contact joe@joelasqo.com) has made it into one of the most interesting places to hear improv & new music in the Bay Area.
Would you buy a used skatch box from these guys?
I’m keenly looking to play again at this unique dance-studio venue, with its beautiful acoustics, for a great set of laptop/electro-acoustic improvs with virtuoso free-improv duo Music For Hard Times (Tom Nunn: invented instruments & Paul Winstanley: super-extended bass) on Sat 18 Jan at 8pm.
A recent great album from Music For Hard Times (Tom Nunn & Paul Winstanley) - Dogs
We decided to play under the rubric Harder Music For Times Even, but what’s emerged during our rehearsals for this date is a music that’s not hard at all, but rather, gently weird, open, unfolding, un-rushed — luminous, patchy, neither-existant-nor-nonexistant, like Princess Leia’s hologram or a rainbow seen in fog.
Friend - to M. F. (portrait of Morton Feldman by Philip Guston)… What's that he's smoking?
It’s a music I’ve never heard before, for which the closest reference might be Morton Feldman (had he been a full-on hippy…. on a different planet…).
This music makes me very happy and undefined, and it wants to make you feel happy and undefined as well.
Tom Nunn playing his invented instrument, The Crab
Tom Nunn (Bold Italic interview, bio), has designed, built and performed with original musical instruments since 1976, and has built over 200 instruments, including his latest obsession, the visually arresting Skatchbox.
This is your mind on Lukie Tubes Resonance Plates... Are You Experienced?
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, Ghost in the House, Music for Hard Times (duo with Paul Winstanley) 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 published Wisdom of the Impulse: On the Nature of Musical Free Improvisation.
Paul Winstanley performing at Berkeley Arts Festival, 16 Oct 2012 (photo: Michael Zelner)
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).
One of Paul Winstanley's outlandish solo albums
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. Paul was a founding member of Auckland improvising collective vitamin_s (Wikipedia, website), which has drawn improvisatory trios from a pool of 100+ members for a weekly concert series for over a decade. Paul was also active in the Houston avant-improv scene, before settling in San Francisco.
The Nunnery
As a duo, Music For Hard Times is more than the sum of its formidable parts and has not only performed regularly throughout the Bay Area over the last two years, but has recorded a series of brilliantly unclassifiable albums at Tom Nunn’s instrument-inventor’s laboratory and experimental music venue/studio, The Nunnery. Check out these one-of-a-kind sonic adventures at their label, Docking Station.
Joe Lasqo @ Meridian Gallery, 11 Jan 2012 (Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)
I’m keenly looking forward to exploring the further reaches of open and unfolding sonic space with them, using a sound mélange evoked from electronic and acoustic keyboards, MSP/laptop, spare percussion, and carved silences. My laptop-based AI improvising agent associate, Maxxareddu, will also assist from time to time.
Warren Stringer
It will also be our honor and pleasure to welcome the inimitable visual synthesis of maestro Warren Stringer (of Muse).
Those who have seen Warren at one of my previous shows or a Bay Area technorave know his unique mastery in combining art and algorithm for the real-time visual accompaniment of improvisatory music. (And the rest of you have something great to look forward to.)
L → R: Warren Stringer, Joe Lasqo, and Rent Romus, Luggage Store Gallery, 27 Dec 2012
Set 2 (9pm): Contra, Contra, Contra – trio of Aurora Josephson, “Jacob L”, Lisa Mezzacappa
We’ll be followed by Contra, Contra, Contra, a monster trio of Aurora Josephson (extended-technique vocals), “Jacob L” (clarinets), & Lisa Mezzacappa (bass) for more improv.
Aurora Josephson and friend (photo by Myles Boisen)
Aurora Josephson is an accomplished musician, extended techniques vocalist and visual artist based in Oakland, California. Building on a foundation of operatic training and a BA in Music Performance from Mills College, Aurora has forged a bold vocal style that is uniquely her own. To unleash the limitless range of sonic possibilities in the voice, she employs a variety of extended and unconventional techniques drawn from the worlds of contemporary composition, improvisation, and rock. She’s performed and recorded with international talents like improvising musicians Martin Blume, Alvin Curran, Gianni Gebbia, Henry Kaiser, Joëlle Léandre, Phillip Wachsmann and William Winant, musical groups like Big City Orchestra, The Molecules, The Flying Luttenbachers and the Merce Cunningham Dance Company.
Other collaborators include: Bruce Ackley, Steve Adams, Liz Allbee, Myles Boisen, Bob Boster/Mr. Meridies, Kyle Bruckmann, Xopher Davidson, Ann Dentel, Elizabeth Gray, Phillip Greenlief, Vinny Golia, Matt Ingalls, Cheryl Leonard, “Jacob L”, Miya Masoaka (正岡みや), Myra Melford, Lisa Mezzacappa, Joe Morris, Tom Nunn, Larry Ochs, Brian Pearson, Noah Phillips, Jon Raskin, Gino Robair, John Shiurba, Damon Smith, Andrew Voight, Weasel Walter.
“Jacob L” will play clarinets.
Lisa Mezzacappa
Lisa Mezzacappa is a San Francisco Bay Area-based bassist, composer, and musical instigator. An active collaborator and curator in the Bay Area music community, she leads her own groups Bait & Switch, Nightshade, the Lisa Mezzacappa Trio and the Tangle Trio, and co-leads the ensembles duo B., Cylinder, the Mezzacappa-Phillips Duo, and the Caribbean folk band Les Gwan Jupons. Lisa has released her music on the Clean Feed, NoBusiness, Leo, NotTwo, Evander, Odd Shaped Case and Edgetone record labels, and has recorded as a sideperson for the Tzadik, Kadima and Porto Franco labels. She collaborates frequently on cross-disciplinary projects in sound installation, film/video, sculpture and public music/art.
As curator, she programs the annual JazzPOP concert seres at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, now in its 9th year; and a live cinema series, Mission Eye and Ear, at Artists’ Television Access. She founded the Monday Makeout creative music series in the Mission District of San Francisco, and programs the Best Coast Jazz Composers series as a member of the artistic committee San Francisco’s Center for New Music. In 2012 she started the “Festival-of-Us,” an annual festival celebrating Bay Area creative jazz and improvised music. Recent projects include an avant-folk string band, The Interlopers; Eartheaters, a trio with Brooklyn vocalist Fay Victor; and BODABODA, a cross-planetary collaboration with Venice-based reed player/composer Piero Bittolo Bon.
Join us for two great free trios of unfettered improv and get very happy and undefined…
Joe