MSP/Piano+: w Biggi Vinkeloe Spring 2014 US Tour • Duende (12 Apr) • Berkeley Arts Festival (16 Apr) • VAMP (19 Apr – afternoon) • The Emerald Tablet (19 Apr – eve) • Center for New Music (20 Apr) • Studio Grand (25 Apr)

I’m very excited to be joining German/Swedish saxophonist and flautist Biggi Vinkeloe for her US tour!

The tour has 6 Bay Area dates. Immediately below is a list of the dates, followed by info on Biggi and her crew, then details of each date adding info about the venues and other acts.

Biggi Vinkeloe Bay Area Tour Dates

◉ Sat 12 Apr: Duende, Oakland (featuring Scott Walton on bass). 2 sets. (jump to show specifics)

◉ Wed 16 Apr: Berkeley Arts Festival – featuring Teddy Rankin-Parker on cello (jump to show specifics)

— Set 1: Computer music from the CNMAT & Mills Tribes (John MacCallum, Sam Tarakajian, Shanna Sordahl, & Matthew Brendan Creer)

◉ Sat 19 Apr (afternoon): VAMP, Oakland  – featuring Aaron Bennett on bari sax & Lisle Ellis on bass (jump to show specifics)

— Set 2: Medium-Size Band (Brett Carson, Joshua Marshall, Jon Myers, & Jacob Pek) w guest Rent Romus.

— Set 3: Ben Goldberg, Vijay Anderson, & Sheldon Brown

◉ Sat 19 Apr (eve): The Emerald Tablet, San Francisco – featuring Teddy Rankin-Parker on cello & Lisle Ellis on bass (jump to show specifics)

— Set 1: Nava Dunkelman, Kristina Dutton, & Christina Stanley

◉ Sun 20 Apr: Center for New Music, San Francisco – featuring Lisle Ellis on bass and Aaron Bennett on bari sax (jump to show specifics)

— Set 2: Computer music from the CNMAT & CCRMA tribes (John MacCallum, Bruno Ruviaro, Carr Wilkerson)

◉ Fri 25 Apr: Studio Grand, Oakland, featuring Teddy Rankin-Parker on cello (jump to show specifics)

— Set 2: The one, the only… John Schott

Details for each show follow below. For Examiner.com critic Steve Smoliar’s preview of the San Francisco shows, please see: here.

There is going to be a LOT of wonderful music in these shows, but something I’m especially excited about is that we’ll be using sound samples and field recordings by Biggi, especially ones recorded during her tour of India under the auspices of the Goethe Institut.

These are from Bangalore, a city we both love in India’s Karnataka state — where I first lived in India, and the place where I began my studies of Indian music under Shri V. Nagabhushanachar (ವೀ. ನಾಗಭೂಷಣಚಾರ್). Many, many happy memories for both Biggi and myself.

A pioneer of blending voice samples and “found music” with wind instruments, Biggi has contributed other samples to these shows as well.

Crew Biggi

A sorceress of avant / jazz wind energy, and veteran of stellar collaborations with Roberto Bellatalla, Alberto Braida, Chris Brown, Lisle Ellis, Marco Eneidi, Ken Filiano, Gianni Gebbia, Vinny Golia, Giancarlo Locatelli, Miya Masaoka (正岡みや), Barre Phillips, Gino Robair, Cecil Taylor, Peeter Uuskyla, and Marie Wärme, among many others, Biggi Vinkeloe will réprise her long-standing collaboration with Bay Area master drummer Don Robinson, whom Coda Magazine has described as a “percussion Dervish”, and among whose most notable collaborators are Alan Silva, Anthony Braxton, Oliver Lake, Glenn Spearman, Larry Ochs, Bobby Few, Raphé Malik, and Joe McPhee.

It is my honor and pleasure to join Biggi and Don in these performances.

The following musicians will join this trio to make up a quartet or quintet on different dates:

◉ Saxist/composer/bandleader Aaron Bennett, has been bending space in Bay Area jazz & improvised music for 15 years+. Also influenced by the music of W. Africa, Indonesia, India, & Japanese gagaku (雅楽), Aaron has collaborated with Wadada Leo Smith, Peter Kowald, John Butcher, Marco Eneidi, Gianni Gebbia, Adam Lane, Aphrodisiac, Lagos-Roots, and ROVA Saxophone Quartet, among others. (Dates: Sat 19 Apr, afternoon, @ VAMP  |  20 Apr, @ Center for New Music)

◉ NYC bassist and computer musician Lisle Ellis. Veteran of 40+ recordings (including Down Beat ✰✰✰✰✰ The Ornette Coleman Songbook), Lisle has worked with Paul Bley, Peter Brötzmann, Andrew Cyrille, Anthony Davis, Ben Goldberg, Frank Gratowski, Joëlle Léandre, Rudresh Mahanthappa (ರುದ್ರೇಶ್ ಮಹಂತಪ್ಪ), Miya Masaoka (正岡みや), Myra Melford, Bob Ostertag, William Parker, ROVA Saxophone Quartet, Stefano Scodanibbio, Cecil Taylor, William Winant, Pamela Z, and John Zorn, among many others. (Dates:  Sat 19 Apr, afternoon, @ VAMP  |  Sat 19 Apr eve, @ The Emerald Tablet  |  20 Apr, @ Center for New Music)

◉ Teddy Rankin-Parker, the sophisticated cello superfrique who’s blown in from Chicago (where he worked with AACM, Renee’ Bakers Mantra Blue Free Orchestra, Henry Grimes, and Nicole Mitchell’s Black Earth Ensemble) to shake up the Bay Area’s ideas of what cello-playing can be. Master of extended cello technique and slave to no musical preconceptions or boundaries, Teddy makes the space move around the warp drive instead of moving the warp drive through the space. (Dates:  Wed 16 Apr, @ Berkeley Arts Festival  |  Sat 19 Apr evening, @ The Emerald Tablet  |  Fri 25 Apr, @ Studio Grand)

◉ Joining us on bass: Scott Walton. Showing dazzling technique and incisive taste in recent Bay Area concerts with Steve Adams, Gilbert Isbin, Sten Sandell, & Gino Robair, Scott has also worked with Vinny Golia, George Lewis, Bobby Bradford, Anthony Davis, Wadada Leo Smith, John Abercrombie, Davey Williams, Toshiko Akiyoshi (秋吉敏子), Clifford Jordan, Tim Perkis, and Philip Gelb. (Date: Sat 12 Apr, @ Duende).

Arbetslag och musikinstrument:

Biggi Vinkeloe: saxes & flute

Don Robinson: drums

Joe Lasqo: piano/laptop/percussion

Aaron Bennett: bari sax

Lisle Ellis: bass

Teddy Rankin-Parker: cello

Scott Walton: bass

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◉ Sat 12 Apr: Duende, Oakland (featuring Scott Walton on bass). 2 sets.

I’m excited to play again in the unique venue which Chef Paul Canales and impresario Rocco Somazzi have made into an essential gathering place to enjoy exquisite Basque pintxos & the best of the Bay Area’s jazz and creative music – Duende (468 19th Street, Oakland – map).

Regrettably our only opportunity to play with bass master Scott Walton in this series, we’re greatly looking forward to the intersection of his always perfectly placed and perfectly played lines with our orbital trajectories. A musician of rare taste, Scott is able to project a cloud of interlocking vectors that makes you think there are two bassists, while never over-playing.

back to overall tour description at top

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◉ Wed 16 Apr, 9pm: Berkeley Arts Festival (featuring Teddy Rankin-Parker on cello)

At the East Bay’s indispensable focal point for new music, Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA map)

Set 2, 9pm: Biggi Vinkeloe tour (jump to description)

Set 1, 8pm: Computer Music from the CNMAT & Mills Tribes

John MacCallum will perform his glittering masterwork of digital chill, …frozen into shards of ice…. Matthew Brendan Creer and Shanna Sordahl will present a lively just-intonation networked-computer duet, Baby Rattlesnakes. Sam Tarakajian will present Tecton, an electroacoustic piece “drawing on my love for the sound of the piano and . . . ”

John MacCallum is not only a computer musician and composer but also an important musical systems designer, who has created some of the of the MAX/MSP world’s key shared software resources at CNMAT. In addition to pure digital compositions, his work often brilliantly combines computer music with acoustic instruments or even uses the computer to drive live musicians (for example, Aberration, with Rootstock Percussion Trio). A fascinating area of his research involves the exploration of digitally warped time and tempo.

Matthew Brendan Creer was last seen at Berkeley Arts as a member of the mutant ensemble which premiered Gino Robair’s operas The Amanuensis and Neither Confirmed Nor Denied in Nov. A student of Mills electronics & computer masters John Bischoff, Chris Brown, Fred Frith, Zeena Parkins, & Les Stuck, Matthew’s special area of research is the digital realization of just-intonation & alternative tunings.

Shanna Sordahl’s cello sound is strongly influenced by electronic music. Conversely, cello playing has completely re-wired the way she approaches electronic composition. She studied with Laetitia Sonami, Chris Brown, James Fei (費正廷), & Matt Rogalsky for her MFA at Mills. Her work has been presented at the 2013 International SuperCollider Convention, and she’s collaborated with a variety of composers & artists including Trimpin, Wrekmeister Harmonies, & Alvin Lucier.

Writing about their piece, Baby Rattlesnakes, Matthew Brendan Creer notes: “Baby rattlesnakes are considered to be some of the most dangerous animals in the United States.  Unlike their adult counterparts, a young snake, unaware of how costly it is to produce venom, will use all of its reserve in a single bite.  This youthful exuberance, passion and lack of attention to personal limitations is an attribute valued by many types of artists…

This piece uses 2 networked computers + 2 performers, both influencing the parameters of each other’s programming.  Some of the techniques used include tuned pitches with corresponding rhythms, slow modulation techniques — and of course the occasional sound of a rattlesnake.”

Starting from the Core Audio team at Apple, Sam Tarakajian found his way to computer-music toolmaker Cycling ’74, where he released Mira, an iPad controller for Max/MSP, and CNMAT, where he has been an instructor. Mira is the latest expression of a deep affection for the relationship between gesture, artist and sound, an emphasis that Sam is currently trying to bring into computer music performance.

His last piece, Breath, invited the audience to participate by pinching and swiping an iPad attached to Sam’s chest as he wandered through the crowd. Tonight’s piece, Tecton, is an electroacoustic piece “drawing on my love for the sound of the piano… and my love for destroying the things I love.”

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◉ Sat 19 Apr, 2pm: VAMP, Oakland (featuring Aaron Bennett on bari sax & Lisle Ellis on bass)

As part of the Oakland Drops Beats festival at the Oakland cultural resource (and ʿAlī Bābā’s cave of vinyl), VAMP (331 19th St., Oakland, map)

— Set 1, 2pm: Biggi Vinkeloe tour (jump to description)

— Set 2, 3pm: Medium-Size Band (Brett Carson, Joshua Marshall, Jon Myers, & Jacob Pek) w guest Rent Romus.

Formed in 2012, the Oakland-based Medium-Size Band has dedicated itself to the exploration of novel formal structures and directed improvisations. A composer’s collective where each member contributes pieces to the pool, MSB draws on a diverse set of techniques. Each individual member’s unique background contributes to the eclecticism and freedom of movement between different genres and musical perspectives.

Brett Carson (piano) – Brett’s work draws from a wide variety of musical traditions, reflecting the influence of Anthony Braxton, Tim Berne, John Zorn, Olivier Messiaen, Philip Glass, Claude Vivier, Sun Ra, and others. A member of the Atlanta experimental music scene, Brett moved to California to study at Mills College with Roscoe Mitchell, Zeena Parkins, Fred Frith, Chris Brown, and Les Stuck.

Joshua Marshall (saxes) is an Oakland-based saxophonist and composer/improviser. His work involves architectural innovation, narrativity, systematic improvisatory practice, and live digital media. He has studied with Roscoe Mitchell, Fred Frith, Pauline Oliveros, Evan Parker, Zeena Parkins, Butch Rovan, I.M. Harjito, and Steve Adams of the ROVA Saxophone Quartet. Joshua has played and/or recorded with Opera Wolf, Rent Romus’ Lords of Outland, Architect/Enchantress, Bill Noertker’s Moxie, ELL3, Cheer Accident, Josh Allen’s Deconstruction Orchestra, Key West, Mister Sister, Ikue Mori (もりいくえ), Robocop, the Andrew Weathers Ensemble, Modest Machine, and MDK.

Jon Myers is a composer and percussionist from Boston, MA interested in fractal and cyclic forms.  He plays in various traditional and contemporary contexts from jazz and Javanese gamelan to new music chamber and percussion ensembles in addition to performing with radio-feedback instruments and computer programs of his own devising.  He is currently studying composition at Mills College in Oakland, CA. His composition Mobile was premiered in Oct 2013 at the Berkeley CNMAT.

Jacob Pek is a guitarist from Las Vegas, NV. He’s currently based in Oakland, CA where he studies with Fred Frith & William Winant at Mills College. His music follows in the lineage of Sun Ra and Karlheinz Stockhausen — a “Cosmic Spirit Music” inspired and informed by jazz, jamming, bird song, Bach, Jimi Hendrix, and the reality of interwoven realms. He plays in the wonderful quartet Gestaltish with Rachel Condry, Gretchen Jude, and Jennifer Wilsey.

The hardest-working man in Avant-Joik, organizer of innumerable Bay Area events, Rent Romus, multi saxo-flauto-toyist, bandleader, and producer, is constantly expanding the confines of standard musical forms of composition and improvisation and focused on presenting and supporting the local experimental and avant-garde community. From his beginnings as a student of jazz while being exposed to the tutelage of Stan Getz to today, Rent Romus has recorded and released 22 recordings as a leader which have included Jason Olaine, Steve Rossi, Chico Freeman, John Tchicai, Jonas Müller, Stefan Pasborg, Toyoji Tomita (富田豊治), Dave Mihaly, Bill Noertker, CJ Borosque, Philip Everett, Ray Schaeffer, Paris Slim, Jesse Quattro, Scott R. Looney, Bob Marsh, Jim Ryan, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Tobias Fischer, and Thollem McDonas. As a producer and artist business activist he runs Edgetone Records a label for all forms of improvisation and experimentation. He is the founder and Executive Director of Outsound Presents under which he curates the SIMM Series, the Luggage Store Series every Thursday, both in San Francisco, and The Outsound New Music Summit, a national experimental music festival held in the San Francisco Bay Area every summer in July.

— Set 3, 4pm: Ben Goldberg, Vijay Anderson, & Sheldon Brown

The trio, which began in 2007 in Oakland, features the unique instrumentation of alto sax, clarinet, and drums, and were recently featured at the Novara Jazz Festival in Italy.

The group specializes in a unique form of improvisation, which focuses on a subtle, continually expanding blend of shifting counterpoint and rhythm, inviting the listener to contemplate the spontaneous unfolding of melodic and harmonic structures. This approach explores the musical and intellectual legacy of masters such as Steve Lacy, Denis Charles, Ornette Coleman, and Thelonious Monk with the goal of creating something unique and new. As one fan stated at the group’s Italian debut, the trio pursues the “Advanced Tradition”.

As Ben Goldberg said in describing this trio’s appearance at The Stone as part of his recent week-long NY residency there:

“Vijay Anderson, Sheldon Brown, and I have a weird ability to create things that sound like they were created using some kind of weird ability.”

Those who have enjoyed this trio’s invention of Oort Cloud Dixieland in their open form trad/space improv sessions presented by Oakland Freedom Jazz Society at Duende understand how true this is…

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.

Vijay Anderson is an Oakland-based drummer, bandleader, and composer who studied with Roscoe Mitchell, William Winant, David Bernstein, and Fred Frith at Mills College and Eddie Marshall, Francis Wong (王世明), Hafez Modirzadeh (حافظ مدیرزاده), and Wayne Wallace at SFSU.

Vijay has worked with Vinny Golia, John Schott, Darren Johnston, Smith Dobson V, Lisa Mezzacappa, Aaron Bennett, Ava Mendoza, Marco Eneidi, Adam Lane, John Tchicai, Wadada Leo Smith, Steve Swell, Kenny Wessel, Ken Filiano, Steve Adams, the Bill Horvitz Expanded Band, among many others.

Currently Vijay performs with Lisa Mezzacappa’s Bait And Switch, Sheldon Brown’s Distant Intervals, Jayn Pettingill’s Verb, Marco Eneidi’s Shattered, and leads two of his own bands, the Vijay Anderson Quartet, and the Touch and Go Sextet. His first record, Hard Boiled Wonderland was released on Nottwo Records.

Composer and woodwind multi-instrumentalist Sheldon Brown has been involved in the San Francisco Bay Area creative music scene for over 20 years. Since 1994 he has led his own band, Sheldon Brown Group, which performs his own compositions, and he recently formed Sheldon Brown Quintet, which performs the music of Herbie Nichols, and Distant Intervals, based on poetic speech melodies.

Sheldon has performed internationally as a featured soloist with Cuban pianist Omar Sosa, and with Sosa recorded on 5 albums and performed at international venues such as The North Sea Jazz Festival in Den Haag, New Morning in Paris, Tribute to the Love Generation in Tokyo, and many others.

Sheldon performs with many groups in the S.F. Bay Area, including: Clarinet Thing, Darren Johnston Quintet, Ian Carey Quintet + 1, Club Foot Orchestra, Laurie Antonioli, Azesu (featuring Orestes Vilato), Mike Pattonʼs Mondo Cane, Admiral Ted Brinkley’s Large Group, and Aaron Germain Quartet

As a composer, Brown has written music for his own groups and many of the other groups he performs with. For Club Foot Orchestra he composed music for the silent films, Metropolis, Sherlock Jr., Pandoraʼs Box, and The Hands Of Orlac. He also wrote music for Club Footʼs scores for the cartoon series The Twisted Tales Of Felix The Cat, which aired on CBS.

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◉ Sat 19 Apr, 9pm: The Emerald Tablet, San Francisco (featuring Teddy Rankin-Parker on cello & Lisle Ellis on bass)

At Ground Zero of the North Beach poetry, art, and music Renaissance, The Emerald Tablet (80 Fresno St., San Francisco, map)

Set 2, 9pm: Biggi Vinkeloe tour (jump to description)

Set 1, 8pm: Nava Dunkelman, Kristina Dutton, & Christina Stanley

The Dutton/Dunkelman/Stanley trio perform a series of compositions and improvisations based on the schematic application of field recordings from nature reserves throughout the East Bay. These pieces will use Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants (Metamorphose der Pflanzen zu erklären) as inspiration. Goethe’s writings allow the observer to “see” nature as an interconnected web of relationships, not as unrelated, independent parts-and to develop a deeper understanding and intuitive connection. This can be achieved through artistic imagination, and by working with a subjectively inspired approach, as opposed to a traditional, mechanistic epistemology.

Through musical improvisation, the trio will engage with the orchestration of these natural settings, the influence of adjacent urbanization in these soundscapes, and the affect of anthropic and geologic sound on creature voicing.

Nava Dunkelman (ナヴァ・ダンケルマン) is a Bay Area percussionist and improviser. Born in Tokyo, and raised in a multi-cultural environment by an American father and Indonesian mother, Nava’s musical interests span the globe from Japanes taiko (太鼓) to Indonesian gamelan to American marching band, and from classical to contemporary to the avant-garde. Nava studied percussion under Eugene Novotney at Humboldt State University before attending Mills College, where she studied with William Winant, as well as Fred Frith, Maggi Payne, Zeena Parkins, and David Bernstein, among others.

Since graduating with a degree in music performance in 2013, Nava has performed and collaborated with John Zorn, William Winant, Fred Frith, Chris Brown, Dominique Leone and many others, as well as formed the improvisational trio Dapplegray with Jeanie-Aprille Tang (鄧恬怡) and Tara Sreekrishnan, which debuted in 2012 at The Stone in New York City. She also is a member of two marvelous duos: DunkelpeK with Jacob Pek, and IMA (今) with Jeanie-Aprille Tang (鄧恬怡). Through improvisation, Nava enjoys discovering her own musical language by exploring experimental approaches to communication, progression, and space.

Recently moved to the Bay Area from Chicago, violinist and composer Kristina Dutton works in the areas of : improvisation, new music, bioacoustics, soundscapes, extended techniques, preparations, interdisciplinary collaboration, and quiet.

Christina Stanley is a Bay Area based violinist, composer, and vocalist who attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music from ages 15-18 where she studied with Li Lin (林㯤) and then earned a full performance scholarship to SFSU where she studied violin with Daniel Kobialka, Jassen Toderov and the Alexander String Quartet. After touring Europe and the US with various ensembles, she attended HB Studio in New York City where she studied theatre, movement and voice and then went on to earn an MFA from Mills College, where she studied violin with David Abel and composition and improvisation with Fred Frith and Roscoe Mitchell and won the Margaret Lyon prize for excellence in music. She is currently working as a solo artist as well as a member of various ensembles. She has been a featured performer for the San Francisco Electronic Music Festival at SF MOMA and has premiered works by George Lewis and Roscoe Mitchell under conductor Petr Kotik. Her original painted graphic scores have been featured at the Outsound New Music Summit in San Francisco, Temple Ad Hoc in Los Angeles and Rock Paper Scissors Gallery in Oakland. She is passionate about working with living composers and composing new music.

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◉ Sun 20 Apr: Center for New Music, San Francisco (featuring Lisle Ellis on bass and Aaron Bennett on bari sax)

At San Francisco’s focal-point new music incubator and venue, Center for New Music (55 Taylor Street, San Francisco, CA – map).

Set 1, 8pm: Biggi Vinkeloe tour (jump to description)

Set 2, 9pm: Computer Music from the CNMAT & Mills Tribes

John MacCallum will perform his glittering masterwork of digital chill, …frozen into shards of ice…. Bruno Ruviaro and Carr Wilkerson will present Vowelscape

John MacCallum is not only a computer musician and composer but also an important musical systems designer, who has created some of the of the MAX/MSP world’s key shared software resources at CNMAT. In addition to pure digital compositions, his work often brilliantly combines computer music with acoustic instruments or even uses the computer to drive live musicians (for example, Aberration, with Rootstock Percussion Trio). A fascinating area of his research involves the exploration of digitally warped time and tempo.

Bruno Ruviaro, originally of Brazil, formerly of CCRMA and now teaching at Santa Clara University, is a profilic composer and digital improviser, and has also collaborated with musicians and composers such Masaki Kubo (久保正樹), Chris Jones, Chris Froh, Juan-Pablo Cáceres, and SLOrk. His interests include the intersection of music & linguistics/speech, laptop orchestras, live-electronics, acousmatic music, and intellectual (im)property.

Carr Wilkerson of CCRMA not only composes and improvises, but keeps the Starship CCRMA in peak running condition, specializing in Linux and Mac OS systems. A master of hardware as well as software, in a previous life, he also played Scotty as a US Navy Nuclear Propulsion Engineer (“why yes, I am a rocket scientist, why do you ask….?”)

Bruno and Carr will present their recently premiered joint sono-phonemic piece Vowelscape, which applies research on the intersection of music, speech, and language going back to the Musilanguage Model (see: here), and follow with digital free improv duos.

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◉ Fri 25 Apr: Studio Grand, Oakland (featuring Teddy Rankin-Parker on cello)

At Oakland’s visually and acoustically beautiful multi-arts nexus, Studio Grand (3234 Grand Ave, Oakland, map)

Set 1, 10pm: Biggi Vinkeloe tour (jump to description)

Set 2, 10:45pm: John Schott

John Schott is a composer, guitarist, arranger and musical spelunker. A collaborator of Ben Goldberg, Kenny Wollesen, Trevor Dunn, Charlie Hunter, Scott Amendola, and currently leader of a trio with Dan Seamans, and John Hanes, John has released records in various combinations on Knitting Factory, Tzadik, Songlines, Nuscope, and Victo.

John was also (with Charlie Hunter, Will Bernard, and Scott Amendola), a member of the jazz/funk band T.J. Kirk, whose second album If Four Was One (Warner Bros.) received a Grammy nomination. His unique and brilliant release Shuffle Play: Elegies for the Recording Angel (New World) features John’s 16-piece Ensemble Diglossia, including ROVA Saxophone Quartet’s Steve Adams & percussionist William Winant, in a composition intermixing contemporary composition with the earliest surviving recordings, of circa 1880-1900. Other releases include John Schott’s Typical Orchestra and Drunken Songs for Sober Times. John can also be heard on records by John Zorn, Tom Waits, The Baguette Quartette, Steven Bernstein — and, especially, the incredible What Comes Before with Ben Goldberg and Michael Sarin. John’s trio with Dan Seamans, and John Hanes was recently featured in the Other Minds 19 festival.

John may réprise his stunning and vibrantly emotional solo tour de force of “rembetiko banjo taksim” from March’s 40-musician Vexations [Re-vex’d] II improv marathon, a piece that bridges the worlds of avant-garde, Middle Eastern, and American roots music in an exploration of the tragic life of composer Erik Satie.

Listeners to the premier of this music struggled to pick themselves up off the floor after being hit with its emotional power…

Or… John may do something equally brilliant and evocative… you never know with a Junk Genius…

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Join us for these beautiful shows with one of Europe’s most unique improvising voices and a glittering cast of co-conspirators…

Joe