Prélude: Bob Marsh & Evangel King: window/door/river (8pm) • Set 1: Henry Kuntz’ Envision Ensemble, w Brian Godchaux, John Kuntz, Esten Lindgren, & Dan Plonsey (8:20pm) • Set 2: Tom Duff & his Wire Machine perform: Lucier, Golomb, Gray (9:10pm), Wed 27 Aug @ Berkeley Arts Festival

I’ve had the honor and pleasure to curate 3 shows in Aug at the East Bay’s indispensable focal point for new music, Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA – map); this is the final one in the series, at 8pm, Wed 27 Aug.

We end with a set of radical explorations in motion/sound/art, unbounded ecstatic improvisatory freedom, and the strange effects of informatically re-encoding musical/mechanical systems (and, possibly, their listeners).

Set Ø/Prélude: Bob Marsh and Evangel King perform window/door/river (8pm)

Bob Marsh and associates have made many multimedia interpretations of Bob’s graphic scores in the rhizomic window/door/river project.

Bob Marsh (cello) and Evangel King (dance) perform one of the most beautiful of these fascinating pieces in a short site-specific realization designed specifically for Berkeley Arts Festival space.

From Bob:

“window/door/river began as a graphic response to a dance class with Anna Halprin a couple of years ago. It seemed to resemble some of my graphic music compositions. The four panels reminded me of windows, or maybe they were doors. Maybe they were all aspects of the life of a river. I decided to send this window/door/river composition to various friends, near and far, asking them to create any kind of interpretation they might desire. Various types of realizations can be found at http://windowdoorriver.bandcamp.com/

6 months ago I began working with dancer/choreographer Evangel King on this project, exploring the variety of meanings, literal and metaphorical, of windows, doors and rivers. In the end we decided to work within the contexts of actual windows and doors, letting the river portion be the river of life that flows around us at all times”

Above is a video of an afternoon rehearsal of window/door/river at Berkeley Arts, reflecting one set of Bob and Evangel’s improvisatory choices in response to the graphic score.

Having previously left large swathes of stunned onlookers and listeners gasping in the Midwest, Bob Marsh has become a treasure of our own Bay Area music scene.

Bob is a master improviser on any instrument (or surface… or sound-generating costume…), whose work involves shaping sounds words images motions sonic-suits ideas.

Originally from Detroit, Bob arrived in the Bay Area in 2000 after ten years in Chicago where he played with most of the avant improvisers in that rich and varied scene. Since his arrival on the west coast, Bob has been busy with several projects. He currently leads or directs: Emergency (X)tet, a string ensemble focusing on textures and microtonics; the Che Guevarra Memorial Marching (and Stationary) Accordion Band, structured and free improv for 6 to 15 accordions; Robot Martians, electronics and processed voice; the Out of the Blue Chamber Ensemble, a mixture of reeds and strings; Opera Viva, voiced physical theater; the Quintessentials, a quintet specializing in interpreting graphic compositions based on alterations to the Michelin Road Guide to France; the Free Reed Vibrating Society (inexplicable/self-explanatory), and the Illuminated Orchestra, structured improvs for large ensemble. Additionally Bob is a member of Rent Romus‘/Ernesto Diaz-Infante’s Abstractions, Moe! Staiano’s MOE!kestra and Tom Bickley’s Cornelius Cardew Choir. Bob tours frequently with his long term collaborator, saxophonist Jack Wright, and has recently been presenting a solo work involving violin, voice and tap shoes. Bob’s educational background includes a BFA in sculpture and an MA in humanistic clinical psychology. He has studied classical piano, classical guitar and vibraphone and has taught himself various other instruments. He’s currently active with cello, accordion, violin, voice, vibraphone and electronics.

Bob plays well with others, such as Jim Baker, John Berndt, Tom Bickley, Jeb Bishop, Kyle Bruckmann, Gust Burns, Gene Coleman, George Cremaschi, Matt Davingon, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Dina Emerson, Bryan Eubanks, R. Albert Falesch, John Finkbeiner, Tara Flandreau, Stephen Flinn, Jonathan Fretheim, Carol Genetti, Greg Goodman, Morgan Guberman, Greg Hamilton, Chris Heenan, Ron Heglin, Jeff Hobbs, Matt Ingalls, Kurt Johnson, Aurora Josephson, Andrew Lafkas, Adam Lane, Joe Lasqo, Eric Leonardson, Jacob Lindsay, Fred Longberg-Holm, Toshi Makihara (牧原トシ), Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也), Tom Nunn, Suki O’Kane, Garth Powell, Bhob Rainey, Hal Rammel, Rent Romus, Scott Rosenberg, Jim Ryan, Joe Sabella, Jonathon Segel, John Shiurba, Blaise Siwula, David Slusser, Damon Smith, Adam Sonderberg, Karen Stackpole, Grant Strombeck, Tom Swafford, Ken Vandermark, Matt Weston, Sue Wolf, Theresa Wong (黃天欣), Michael Zelner, and Michael Zerang.

Evangel King is a contemporary dance artist. She creates dances for herself, other soloists, as well as companies. Evangel gives workshops and performances locally and on tour, and has for 30+ years been based in San Francisco Bay Area.

She received her BA at UC Santa Barbara and her MA from Case Western Reserve University, both in dance, and has been artist-in-residence at: Western Michigan U, Indiana U, Cleveland State U, Case Western Reserve, Portland State U, & Fresno State U.

In addition to performing her own choreography and two solos created by Deborah Hay of the revolutionary 1960’s Judson Dance Theatre, Evangel is a founder of Choreographers Performance Alliance. CPA curates the longest running performance series in the Bay Area. She’s also a staff member of the service organization Dancers’ Group.

Evangel teaches modern dance technique and the somatic work, Ideokinesis. Her writings about dance have appeared in the national publication Contact Quarterly and the monthly publication for the Bay Area, In Dance.

Presently, Evangel is co-creating on-site solo dance films like the video above, a collaboration with Gillian Garro, and is part of a group of movement artists delving into challenging themes using Anna Halprin’s Life/Art Score-making Process.

Set 1: Henry Kuntz’ Envision Ensemble, w Brian Godchaux, John Kuntz, Esten Lindgren, & Dan Plonsey (8:20pm)

A rare appearance by a daring pioneer of joyously unbounded, infinitely free jazz.

Henry Kuntz has blazed many trails in realizing the intersection of world musics (esp. from Latin America and Indonesia), in a ritualistic & shamanistic quest for joy and sonic freedom located in a “festival time” outside of clock time. Henry’s also a pioneer of multi-tracking as a method of generating “asynchronously synchronistic” improvisations beyond the boundaries of time and intention.

The Envision Ensemble (an outgrowth of the earlier OPEYE Orchestra and OPEYE Quintet) moves toward an advanced improv archetype, one in which multiple independent events may occur while the musicians simultaneously create an experiential musical whole.

Line-up:

— Henry Kuntz: sax, violins, gamelan, percussion, ringleader

— Brian Godchaux: violin, viola, mandolin

— John Kuntz: ukulele, guitar, mandolin, percussion

— Esten Lindgren: contrabass, pocket trumpet

— The mathematically impossible Dan Plonsey: reeds

Henry Kuntz has been intimately involved in free jazz and free improvisation for more than 40 years.

From 1973 to 1979, he was editor/publisher of the internationally-acclaimed newsletter-review BELLS. He first recorded on tenor sax in 1977 on Henry Kaiser’s Ice Death. He’s played musette and various flutes since 1981, miniature violins since 1983, gamelan and xylophones since 1988, and the Moroccan rhaita (غيطة‎) since 1999. On Humming Bird Records, he’s released various recordings of solo, group, and multi-tracked free improvisations.

In addition to his instrumental work, special mention must be made of Henry’s masterful adaptation of the vocal techniques and the otherworldly utterance vocabulary of the dalangs (shamanistic master puppeteers) of the Indonesian wayang kulit shadow-theatre, and other forms of wayang.

Humming Bird’s Earth Series presents indigenous music recorded by Henry in Mexico, Guatemala, Bolivia, and Bali (Indonesia). These musics, along with Native American and other world musics — Henry has made additional music and dance explorations to Ecuador, Nepal, Thailand, Morocco, and Java and Sumatra (Indonesia) — have very much affected his overall musical and cultural concept.

The result is an ecstatic and transcultural music of infinite freedom.

In 1986 – drawing on aspects of music, dance, performance, and ritual – Henry formed the “avant-shamanic trance jazz” group OPEYE, which has manifested in various incarnations. He’s also performed with Moe! Staiano’s MOE!kestra and has collaborated on various projects with edgy drone master Robert Horton.

Jazz writer John Litweiler, in his book The Freedom Principle, singles out Henry as an independent multi-instrumentalist extending free-form musical concepts and practices begun by musicians of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Music (AACM) in Chicago in the 1960s and by the many free-wheeling English and European improvisors who burst on the scene in the 1970s.

Henry writes that his “aesthetic is steeped in the traditions of jazz, but players draw on their total life experience to incorporate cultural elements of various traditions, potentially including extra-musical elements such as the use of masks, costumes, painting, and textiles… the music is founded upon a new world creative aesthetic: one’s own experiences and background are central, but the fetters of provincial cultures are thrown off — we have all become heir to every tradition: Shared Humanity in all its richness and diversity — and the future is likewise embraced”.

In this respect, OPEYE and its successor, Envision Ensemble, have moved to expand the ways players relate to each other musically in the improv. Henry explains: “We’d like each player to remain as much as possible autonomous while at the same time being indispensable to the creation of the whole music.”

The shamanic implications of free improv have likewise been directly acknowledged and drawn upon. Henry points out, “The inherently creative and explorative aspect of free improv suggests an underlying shamanic dimension, one in which through the manipulation of sounds and symbols, aspects of cultural ‘healing’ may be facilitated and take place through music.”

Selections of his music are available for free download at his website, Sax & Stories.

Born in Cleveland, Dan Plonsey has lived in the Bay Area since 1984.  Dan is a composer and improvisor, primarily playing the various saxophones.

Among the musical influences he considers most important are: seeing the Sun Ra Arkestra as often as possible from 1978 onwards; studying with Roscoe Mitchell, Anthony Braxton, Karl Berger and others at the Creative Music Studios; studying composition with Martin Bresnick; hearing LPs of Bay Area musicians (including Henry Kuntz) in the late 70’s which led to moving here; reconnecting with Braxton at Mills College; playing with many of the Bay Area’s great musicians as creative music spreads from venue to venue.

Dan co-founded The Manufacturing of Humidifiers; founded Daniel Popsicle to play his own compositions (including the epic series, Music of El Cerrito); and co-founded and MC’d the legendary Beanbender’s Creative Music Series (1995-99; the first band to play was OPEYE). For an extensive list of recordings of Dan’s compositions, see: http://www.plonsey.com/plonsey/plonsey_records.html.

For me, as someone integrating Indian music with a modernist toolkit, it’s especially fascinating that Dan credits his study of how Bollywood films interweave vocal line and instrumental commentary, so differently to Western music, with making his music effervesce with bent lines, unexpected breaks, and weird fun.

One of Dan’s most charming and/or alarming recent projects was Student Work, presented in a series of concerts at the East Bay’s Starry Plough. By day a teacher of calculus and geometry at Berkeley High, Dan set to music the found poetry of responses to his beginning-of-the-year assignment, asking students to write about their experiences with math. The poignant, funny, and/or surreal replies let to the creation of complementary music pieces around the text, triggered by the emotions, the speech rhythms, or even the sonified geometries of the responses.

Dan says: “Whatever venue Bonnie Hughes has — past, present, future — is my favorite venue for playing and listening to music” — so what could be better than to hear him play at Bonnie’s own Berkeley Arts Festival?

Set 2: Tom Duff & his Wire Machine: Lucier, Golomb, Gray (9:10pm)

In another rare appearance, Bay Area master Tom Duff will install and perform/operate his Wire Machine, which takes Alvin Lucier’s seminal composition/installation Music on a Long Thin Wire and runs with it.

Almost 40 years ago, new music explorer Alvin Lucier designed and assembled an embodied musical process from a long wire, clamps, tables, speakers, an amp, an oscillator, microphones, and a powerful magnet.

Impresario, master of digital graphics & electronic sound art, and creator of Duff’s Device, Tom Duff has re-imagined, re-realized, and radicalized this original scenario on various occasions, e.g. the notorious 5-day performance on sfSoundRadio in 2011 and the site-specific realization for the Soundwave (5) festival at Battery Townsley in the Marin Headlands in 2012.

Tom will use his expanded version of Lucier’s kit to perform his piece Lucier, Golomb, Gray, exploring the effects of useful information encoding schemes on a vibrating electromechanical system and its listeners. (Those who are familiar with these encoding schemes will enjoy the dry wit of the score).

With or without such arcane kno