新年快樂！Year of the Ram - 羊新年
新年快樂！Join us as the Horse Year closes and we welcome the Year of the Ram with a joyful noise unto heaven!
駿 馬 四 蹄 擊 鼓 羚 羊 雙 角 開 春
The steed’s four hooves beat the drum, the antelope’s horns open Spring !
Outsound: A New Sonic Collective for the 21st Century
Outsound Series @ Luggage Store Gallery, 998 Market St. @ Taylor Street, San Francisco, 8pm, Thu 19 Feb.
NOTE: Due to renovations at the normal Luggage Store space, this concert will be held in a new, slightly displaced-reality location, kitty-corner across Market Street at Taylor @ 998 Market (ground floor).
Luggage Store Gallery – Doorway to the beyond…
Matt Davignon (photo - Michael Zelner)
Organized by the indefatigable electronic musician and curator, Matt Davignon, the electro-acoustic improv vortex will take forward the grand tradition of chance-generated small improv ensembles, pioneered in New Zealand by the Vitamin S collective, and in the U.K. by figures such as Derek Bailey in his Company nights — a format designed to be maximally impervious to advance preparation and so generate synchronistic improv of the utmost purity.
Puppy Surprise — pregnant with possible musical worlds
Leading Bay Area electronic and acoustic improvisers will have their names drawn from a Puppy Surprise (qua quantum box…), determining trios and quartets for approx. 7-minute sets, while spawning a combinatorial explosion of possible musical worlds.
Sounds and players will remain cloaked until just before dropping out of warp.
(….and in this spirit, unanticipated drop-ins from players and audience members not listed below are also warmly welcomed).
About the players:
◉ Matt Davignon (electronics)
Matt Davignon (Photo by Peter. B. Kaars, www.peterbkaars.com)
Matt Davignon
In addition to his solo work, Matt frequently collaborates with other improvisers. With Hugh Behm-Steinberg, he manipulates speech recordings in the band Oa. He was also a member of the improvising avant-rock quartet Tiny Owl, and is the founder of the Pmocatat Ensemble, a group that performs on CD and tape recordings of their instruments.
Music At ½ Speed, a personal favorite of mine, by Matt Davignon
Jorge Bachmann (aka Ruidobello)
◉ Jorge Bachmann (electronics)
Sculptor, electronics master, photographer, and engineer [ruidobello] (Jorge Bachmann) is a multi-disciplinary, mixed-media and sound artist. Since the early 80s, Jorge has been exploring the strange, unique and microcosmic sounds of everyday life, collecting field recordings. The sound atmospheres created are meant for deep listening and are composed in symbiosis with the sculptural installations.
He creates equally sensual and detailed oriented photo-based work; and his art explores social and sensual constructs and experiences.
Starting his career in Bogotá, Colombia and then active for a long period in Lausanne, Switzerland, Jorge eventually relocated to the Bay Area and became a technical and artistic mainstay of MEDIATE’s Soundwave Series, as well as the Engineer Scotty of the Starship SFEMF. Now he’s returned to regularly giving solo electronic concerts such as his recent brilliant one at The Lab Serge 40-year Reunion.
Tom Bickley and friend
◉ Tom Bickley (electro-acoustic winds | voice | objects)
Tom Bickley composes electro-acoustic music, plays and teaches recorder, performs with Three Trapped Tigers (with recorder player David Barnett), co-founded and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir.
Tom has just come back from a tour of Japan with shakuhachi player Nancy Beckman, and he returned with new sonic insights that were beautifully in evidence in his recent performance with Mukaiji-kai (霧海箎会) at the 2015 SF Fog Music Festival.
Tom is a curator emeritus of the Meridian Gallery music series, and is on the Library Faculty (music, philosophy and political science) at CSU East Bay. His education includes degrees in music, theology, and library and information science and the Certificate in Deep Listening.
Bryan Day performs in the Active Music Series @ The Uptown, Oakland, 11 Jun 2013 (photo - John Scharpen)
◉ Bryan Day (invented instruments | software | processing)
Bryan Day is an improviser, instrument inventor, illustrator & installation artist based in Richmond, CA. His work involves combining elements of the natural and man-made world using field recordings, custom audio generation software and homemade instruments. Bryan’s work explores the parallels between the patterns and systems in nature to those in contemporary society.
Bryan has toured throughout the US, Europe, Japan, Korea, Argentina & México, performing both solo as Sistrum and Eloine, and in the Shelf Life and Seeded Plain ensembles, as well as with innumerable collaborators.
Since 1997 he has been running the new music label Public Eyesore and its sister label Eh?. Through Public Eyesore and Eh?, Bryan has produced and released over 200 albums of improvised and experimental music by artists from all over the globe, in addition to co-curating the music series at Meridian Gallery in San Francisco.
Karl Evangelista
◉ Karl Evangelista (guitar | FX)
NOTE: I am just informed that Karl Evangelista has had to cancel.
As well as organizing concerts at the Makeout Room and the incendiary Light a Fire Series, Filipino-American guitarist/composer Karl Evangelista ranks among a new wave of creative musicians grounded in jazz, 20th-century experimentalism, and pop song, exploring the place of multiculturalism and ethnic co-existence in an increasingly post-cultural, trans-idiomatic cultural space. As the creative force behind boundary breaking group Grex (who just gave a brilliant performance at YBCA’s New Frequencies Festival), Karl has been called “essential current-and-future listening, his music “a near-seamless blend of modern jazz, contemporary structuralist composition, indie rock, and blues rock” (Tiny Mix Tapes). This complex, powerful aesthetic fosters an “otherworldly experience” that is “completely original” (Eugene Weekly).
Karl has explored the possibilities of intercultural dialogues across a vast spectrum of academic and professional situations, working in a wide variety of ensembles with or under the direction of Achyutan (Marvin Patillo), Scott Amendola, Steve Berlin (Los Lobos), India Cooke, Fred Frith, Eddie Gale, Ben Goldberg, Matthew Goodheart, Phillip Greenlief, Darren Johnston, Lewis Jordan, Myra Melford, Hafez Modirzadeh (حافظ مدیرزاد) ,Bill Noertker, Zeena Parkins, John-Carlos Perea, Gino Robair, Daniel Schmidt, Marcus Shelby, Aram Shelton, David Slusser, Damon Smith, Karen Stackpole, Moe! Staiano, and AIR co-founder Francis Wong (王世明), and has performed in works by Luciano Chessa, Christian Jendreiko, Polly Moller, AACM co-founder Muhal Richard Abrams, and Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder Roscoe Mitchell. Karl holds a BA from UC Berkeley & an MFA in Improvised Music from Mills College.
Philip Everett (Photo by Peter. B. Kaars, www.peterbkaars.com)
◉ Philip Everett (electronics)
Philip Everett began studying drumming with Warren George from the Stan Kenton band. Warren stuck Philip in a room alone for an hour a day, told him to learn drum rudiments, and put him in advanced orchestra & marching band. Then came Bartok, Debussy, Gershwin, and New Orleans style 2nd line marches. Furthering his studies, Philip sought wisdom from George Marsh & Eddie Moore, from whom he was taught the finer subtleties of the drums. Phillip states, “These guys taught me to relax and trust my own instincts and that pursuit of one’s own uniqueness was not a negative quality”
Armed with an array of teachings, Philip led various groups over the years, beginning in 1967 with his first group Ice, a psychedelic R & B group who opened for bands like Canned Heat & Sweetwater. Then he started Arrival, a band featuring the electronics of David Toby & bassist Ray Schaeffer, and combining elements of hard rock, folk, world music, electronic improvisation & composition. Next, Philip’s restless imagination led him to form Sound Oasis, a jazz sextet. A later stage saw Philip making a living with various country & western groups including his own The Homewreckers and The Ghettobillys — but he was unfulfilled. He decided to leave it all and devote himself to sonic exploration, deepening his involvement with electronics and the unorthodox (or, unholy…?) electrification of various acoustic instruments.
His current projects include Tri-Cornered Tent Show, an improv group that explores music inspired by H.P. Lovecraft, various ensembles with saxophonist Rent Romus (including The Abstractions and Lords of Outland), and writing experimental country music for his project White Buffalo, Midwestern Gothic.
Among the Cthulhic highlights of his current kit is the unique sound of an electrified (and highly distressed) auto-harp, fed through a maze of FX boxes.
Joe Lasqo & Morgana perform w Jim Ryan's Green Alembic in the sfSoundSalonSeries at Center for New Music, San Francisco, 15 Apr 2014 (Photo by Carly Hoopes)
◉ Joe Lasqo (laptop | piano | objects)
Laptopist/pianist Joe Lasqo studied classical music in India; computer music at MIT, Columbia, Berkeley/CNMAT; has been a long-time avant jazz musician; & has lived, played & listened in many East Asian and European countries (now in SF).
Special interests include applying AI techniques from expert systems, natural language processing, and computational linguistics to music; and the intersection of traditional Asian musics with modernism.
Joe is a regular member of Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra, various ensembles involving Donald Robinson, and Jim Ryan’s Green Alembic, as well as his own Renga-kai (連歌会) & Mukaiji-kai (霧海箎会) Ensembles, and looks forward to upcoming releases with Thomas Dimuzio, Beth Custer, and Biggi Vinkeloe.
Joshua Marshall and Crystal Pascucci perform in Opera Wolf @ the 2013 Outsound New Music Summit (Photo by Peter. B. Kaars, www.peterbkaars.com)
◉ Joshua Marshall (winds | saxes)
Joshua Marshall is an Oakland-based saxophonist and composer/improviser. His work involves architectural innovation, narrativity, advanced extended saxophone techniques, and live digital media. He’s studied with Pauline Oliveros, Evan Parker, Butch Rovan, I.M. Harjito, & Steve Adams of ROVA Saxophone Quartet. In addition to work with Opera Wolf, Joshua has worked with Ikue Mori (もりいくえ), Rent Romus’ Lords of Outland, Architect/Enchantress, Medium Sized Band, Josh Allen’s Deconstruction Orchestra, Key West, and Modest Machine.
His amazing technique gives him relaxed command of cracked multi-phonics, exotic trills, and timbre tremolos, which he uses to superb effect.
Collette McCaslin (a.k.a. C.J. Borosque, photo by Louise Mitchell)
◉ Collette McCaslin (a.k.a. C.J. Borosque, trumpet)
Collette McCaslin is a frequently heard Bay Area-based improviser, noisician, 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 such as 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.
Collette 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.
Collette is a regular member of Rent Romus‘ Lords Of Outland and plays frequently with other Bay Area avant ensembles. In addition, 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.
David Michalak
◉ David Michalak (skatchbox, and possibly lap-steel guitar)
David Michalak has made over 50 films with original soundtracks, including 3 features.
After many films such as Dreamlife, Inside-Out (featuring The Kate Foley Dance Company and score written with Nik Phelps, performed by the Club Foot Orchestra), and When The Spirit Moves, featuring (Joe Goode) dancer Vong Phrommala & silent-movie style actress Billie-Marie Gross, a soundtrack ensemble was formed to play live scores for David’s movies. The group, called Reel Change, has featured: Andrew Voigt, Joe Sabella, David Michalak, Phillip Greenlief, Adam Hurst, George Cremaschi, Tom Nunn, Kyle Bruckmann, Theresa Wong (黃天欣), and Tom Djll, releasing the CD Open In Total Darkness
Ghost In The House's ectoplasmically ecstatic first CD
David followed up with a new group called Ghost In The House, an ensemble often including Kyle Bruckmann, Tom Nunn, Dean Santomieri, and Karen Stackpole, whose brilliant first CD can be found on Edgetone, as well as a duo with Bob Marsh called Dr. Bob.
Some of David’s other musical collaborators include: J.A. Deane, Bruce Ackley, Carla Kihlstedt, Matt Brubeck, Beth Custer, Damon Smith, Ed Herrmann, Doug Carroll, Jim Heron, Myles Boisen, Ron Heglin, and Nik Phelps’ Sprocket Ensemble.
Mark Pino
◉ Mark Pino (percussion)
Mark Pino began playing percussion at the age of twelve, and has played music regionally, and nationally since 1990.
Mark studied jazz under Herbie Lewis at New College of California, along with taking private instruction from master jazz drummer Richie Goldberg and master rock drummer Dawn Richardson.
Currently, Mark focuses on improvised music, within several different musical/instrumental configurations, including Cloud Shepherd (w Andrew Joron, Joe Noble, and Brian Lucas), The Ruminations (w Rent Romus, Bob Marsh, Christina Stanley, and Markus Hunt), and Ear Spray (w Carlos Jennings and Ann O’Rourke), among others.
From Mark’s “Mission Statement“:
“I consider myself a band player. It’s from the musical interactions, publicly and privately, that I get creative satisfaction.
My aesthetics are formed by appreciation of music + other art forms, especially sculpture and poetry. Creativity is a bottomless well and an endless challenge. I thrive on the challenge and stand in awe of the well.”
Rent Romus, Godfather of Avant Soul
◉ Rent Romus (winds | saxes | toys | joik)
Organizer of innumerable Bay Area events, Rent Romus, saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and producer, is deeply involved in going beyond the confines of standard music 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 25+ 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, Collette McCaslin, 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.
Eli Wallace
◉ Eli Wallace (keyboards)
Pianist and composer Eli Wallace began his studies at Lawrence U. under Fred Sturm, Mark Urness, and Lee Tomboulian, and continued for a Master’s in Music (Jazz Composition) at the New England Conservatory, where he studied with Jason Moran, Jerry Bergonzi, Ken Schaphorst, Frank Carlberg, & Kati Agócs.
Since relocating to the Bay Area, Eli’s played with many musicians and ensembles in wildly different genres, e.g. Karl Evangelista’s Ai-Ai, Jim Ryan’s ensembles Virtual Assembly & Retro Blue, John Givens’ No Lovely Thing, and Bill Wolter’s Inner Ear Brigade, as well as appearing on Dan Meinhardt’s album Gone West. His own recent project is a series of pieces composed for solo piano that embrace his interest in jazz, improvisation & contemporary avant-garde classical music. Eli is also making waves in a new trio with Karl Evangelista and Jon Arkin.
As a composer Eli’s been commissioned to write music for jazz big band, solo piano, chamber orchestra, and dance, and his piece Influx Rebellion was well-received at the EarShot Jazz Composers Orchestra Institute Readings (in affiliation with Columbia University / American Composers Orchestra).
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Drop out of (or into) warp with us and the Ram of a resurgent Spring in the electro-acoustic improv vortex, and experience what the Puppy Surprise has in store…
新年快樂！
Joe