MSP/Synth: Multi-Media Whale Form, mini Renga-kai (連歌会), and free improv w CJ Borosque, Jaroba, Nan Busse, and Warren Stringer Thu 16 Jan, @ Luggage Store Gallery, SF, 8pm + Set 2: Daniel Blomquist @ 9pm

Outsound Series @ Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market St. @ 6th Street, San Francisco, 8pm, Thu 16 Jan.

I very much look forward to take to the great Luggage Store Gallery stage again with space-explorer, saxophonist, bass-clarinetist and instrument inventor, Jaroba, as part of a larger multi-media ensemble also including CJ Borosque (trumpet / no-input electronics), Nan Busse (dancer and didgeridoo), and Warren Stringer (real-time visual synthesis).

As well as being fantastic performers in general, this ensemble affords the particular opportunity to explore some very special timbre blends made possible with CJ’s muted trumpet, Jaroba’s unique invented wind instruments, and Nan’s didgeridoo, to create a floating series of joint timbral gestures unfolding in warped space – dimensions of which will be added by multimedia visual and movement elements contributed by Warren’s visual synthesis rig and Nan’s dance.

Of course with this ensemble, we couldn’t help but do free improv, and we’ve been intrepidly exploring the far reaches of improv deep-space in our rehearsals.

Our improv warpdrive’s nonlinear behaviors are at your service to take you to destinations of free sound — both far and further.

In addition to improv, we’ve prepared a special multi-media, prismatically re-ordered version of Aaron Bennett’s Whale Form, a wonderful piece I recently re-explored with Aaron and Steve Adams at Outsound’s SIMM Series.

Aaron Bennett has been a leader 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 Gagaku (雅楽) 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. (And it’s my privilege to work with him in his in Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra).

Like Aaron’s “alphabet & number pieces” which we do in Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra, Whale Form encodes the perfect amount of info in its specialized language to ensure the contradictory fusion of structure and openness, making each performance a fresh encounter with a complex ecosystem in a new season.

For this show, we’ve prepared a special cubist, multiply-reordered version — where each of the players traverses the form in an individualized trajectory that interlocks with the other players’ lines.

As in the Japanese classic Rashōmon (羅生門) by Akira Kurosawa (黒澤明), the result is a complex series of overlapping points of view that point to an un-statable and contradictory truth.

We’ll also do a mini renga-kai (連歌会), a form I’ve had the pleasure of exploring with a series of wonderful musical partners in recent months.

The piece will comprise 6 short duets which will pair each musician with every other twice and employ the game-like shifting-time rules used in Cage’s Two²… extended with a new methodology to kaleidoscopically expand the palette of timbres, instruments, and events.

Renga-kai (連歌会) is a new form extending rules based on some of the “renga pieces” of John Cage, and their unique transformations — not only of Japanese verse forms for alcohol-soaked group poetry improv, based on structures of 5 + 7 + 5 + 7 + 7 — but also of concepts like “duet”, “listening” and “time”.

It generates a game that, like go (碁), is rich in strategy despite relatively simple rules.

Having used this renga-kai methodology with a variety of wonderful musicians since premiering it last year with clarinetist Jacob Lindsay and guitarist Kristian Aspelin, I’m thrilled at the new improvisational vistas and completely different colors of time that it opens up, producing a uniquely beautiful sense of flow as the players move the game pieces of their musical gestures on an invisible board.

We’ll honor the renga tradition of alcohol-assisted creativity, by demarcating these sections with ceremonial libations (which may lead to some interesting musical results…).

For more details on renga (連歌) & Cage, see: this post.

CJ Borosque is a frequently heard Bay Area-based improviser, noise-, and video artist. Her art is a blending of genres pulling from abstract and avant-garde traditions.

Her electronic work is unique and she’s a pioneer of blending radical electronics with free jazz acoustic ensembles like Rent Romus’ Lords Of Outland and vocalists like Laurie Amat to stunning effect. Her trumpet lines are paradoxically fluid and dry at the same time — and always beautiful.

CJ is considered locally and internationally as a noisician and a visual artist, rooted in the underground music of San Francisco. She’s performed at the NorCal Noise Fest, The Big Sur Experimental Music Festival, The Oakland Noise Festival, and at the Spring Reverb experimental music festival in San Diego.

CJ plays trumpet and analog FX boxes configured in a “no-input” design which allows for the creation of sonic feedback and feedback sounds without the use of a typical sound source… her noise projects are currently created using the electrical signal that is within her gear. She also sometimes plays other various electronics and Instruments: her fascinations include, art, cooking, sound, noise, sculpture (sonic and tactile), Installations, silent films, avant-garde films and videos, modern, impressionist and surrealist art, jazz, world and classical music.

In her painting CJ uses acrylic, oil pastels, ink, spray paint and sometimes glue. She creates abstract and cartoon inspired images that pull from her interest in modern art and anime as well as from her subconscious imagination. Her colors are vivid and her abstractions are works of art, each with a unique story and a unique inspiration. She recently had her first art show at Flux 53 gallery in Oakland.

CJ’s experimental videos Home and Ritual have been shown in conjunction with experimental music at both the SIMM Series and Luggage Store gallery. She also presented her video Ritual at the Chapel of the Chimes, during their solstice exhibit in 2007 that was entitled “from the darkness, solace”.

CJ is a regular member of Rent Romus’ Lords Of Outland and plays frequently with other Bay Area avant ensembles.

Jaroba (here shown in the wild with his kit) is a one-of-a-kind saxophonist, musical instrument inventor, and theatrical musician.

He is often spotted in the company of fellow musical instrument inventor and string multi-instrumentalist Keith Cary, or consumating the unholy matrimony of disparate mouthpieces, tubing, PVC pipes, and a unique array of found resonators.

A fearless deep space explorer of improvisation and instrument invention, Jaroba always opens the windows of my brain and lets the sunshine in. It is with great pleasure that I réprise my collaboration with him — a journey to infinity and beyond in a homebrew go-cart spaceship.

Some of his notable musical projects include work with Liberation Surrealist Duo (what acronym does that make…?), featuring Jared Alberico and Nick Wilson of Chicago, Minneapolis Improv Orchestra, Duke Resonant Orchestra, Nuclear Mystery Temple, ESP, and Howloosanation (including performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, for the John Cage MusiCircus).

Aside from forging new paths with instruments like the Mastertron and the Plassoon, another speciality of Jaroba’s is music for theatre, including two soundtracks for filmmaker Harvey Stein, and works for the Flatwater Shakespeare Company for The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Henry V, and Macbeth. Jaroba received “Best New Music” from Kennedy Center for his contribution to the Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Nan Busse has been creating dance-based art works since receiving her MFA from UC-Irvine (“a long time ago…”). Collaborating with choreographer Christopher Beck, she made pieces performed at Centerspace (Project Artaud) and New College; and with her partner, poet Tobey Kaplan, participated in the Link inter-disciplinary performance series.

Since about 1999 she has been unable to stop dancing – thanks to Yvonne Caldwell, Evelyn Thomas, Roger Dillahunty, Georgia Ortega, John Tanner, and the great Cassie Terman, and has toured in Việt Nam and the US with Nguyễn Dance Company. She works as an Education & Arts Therapist in the East Bay.

For this show, we’ll also be calling on Nan’s didgeridoo skills, especially in the multi-dimensional Whale Form, where she realizes her part musically on the didgeridoo, sometimes in silent motion by dance, and often by both.

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.)

Set 2 (9pm): Daniel Blomquist

We’ll be followed by Daniel Blomquist.

Daniel Blomquist’s work focuses on the breaking down of the physical form. His work is process based, it never has a defined end point but follows a set of rules to its natural end. In breaking down the musical form he works to dissolve the digital perfection into an analog waste that hints at the its former euphoria.

Aside from the above hints, info on Daniel is conspicuous by its (seemingly deliberate) absence, but the titles of some his SoundCloud pieces are expressive of the lush hypno-sonic atmosphere, suspended forever outside of time on the cusp between ambient and noise, that he creates:

— inside of everything falling

— the inevitable resting on glass

— until now it was gone

Look forward to travel the sonic space ways with you at this rare show!

よろしく。。。

Joe