Performances

As a venue showcasing invented instruments like the Gamelan Piano and Zen Industrial Carillon, we’re especially pleased to present some of America’s leading instrument inventors and their fantastic kits in this special show, beginning from 7:30pm on Fri 20 Jan 2012.

Opening Tea Music (7:30): Joe Lasqo (Meta-rāgas & stuff from Turquoise Sessions)

Set 1 (8:00pm): Tim Thompson’s Space Palette

Candlelight Tea Intermission and “Touch the Gear” Time: (8:50pm)

Set 2 (9:15pm): Music for Hard Times (Tom Nunn + Paul Winstanley)

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[1] TIM THOMPSON & the SPACE PALETTE

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Tim Thompson

Tim is a software engineer, musician, and installation artist who’s worked in high-tech for almost 35 years.

To quote from Tim’s web-site:

I’m interested in programming languages, algorithmic composition, networked collaboration, atypical controllers, event-driven graphics generation, and realtime video processing. I’ve been inspired in recent years by something described in this quote by Larnie Fox:

“There is a yet unnamed art movement that may prove to be of some significance, and Burning Man is close to its center. It often manifests itself as circus, ritual, and spectacle. It is a movement away from a dialogue between an individual artist and a sophisticated audience, and towards collaboration amongst a big, wild, free and diverse community. It is a movement away from galleries, schools and other institutions and towards an art produced in and for casual groups of participants, more akin to clans and tribes, based on aesthetic affinities and bonds of friendship. It is a movement away from static gallery art and formal theater and towards site-specific, time-specific installation and performance. It is a rejection of spoon-fed corporate culture and an affirmation of the homemade, the idiosyncratic, the personal. It is profoundly democratic. It is radically inclusive, it is a difficult challenge, and it is beckoning.”

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A fruit of these endeavors is the Space Palette, a fantastic large-scale group or solo computer-controlled, electronic “casual instrument” — field tested and design-iterated over many Burning Mans and an incredible musical experience for musicians and non-musicians alike.

Generating not only sound but also video in response to simple gestural control, and most recently presented (triumphantly!) at the recent dorkbot-61 in San Francisco, the latest version of the Space Palette has new sounds, new control paradigms and a sleek new design.

Here, have a look:

The current version of the Space Palette relaxing chez soi...

A previous version of the Space Palette in the field

There will be ample opportunity for audience members to control the Space Palette and “Touch the Gear”, including a short segment at the end of the set where the control interface paradigm of the Space Palette will be extended to live musicians — myself and David Samas (extended techniques vocals & Хөөмей (Tuvan throat/overtone singing)) — who can then also be controlled by audience members.

More Tim: http://timthompson.com

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[2] MUSIC FOR HARD TIMES (Tom Nunn & Paul Winstanley)

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Moving from electronic invented instruments to acoustic invented instruments, we’re proud to follow Tim Thompson with the unique duo of Tom Nunn & Paul Winstanley, Music for Hard Times (who, by the way, will donate proceeds to the Occupy Wall Street Movement).

Tom Nunn has designed, built and performed with original musical instruments since 1976, and has built over 200 instruments.  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, and Ghost in the House 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 self-published Wisdom of the Impulse: On the Nature of Musical Free Improvisation.

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).  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.

Music For Hard Times – Paul was working in the capacity of a sound technician when he 1st met Tom at an instrument inventors symposium in Auckland and was pleased to renew their friendship when he relocated to San Francisco last year. An exciting musical rapport quickly developed between the two, and Paul considers Music for Hard Times a great opportunity to play with instruments almost completely devoid of idiomatic reference, allowing him to extend and refine his extended sounds and improvising approaches to establish a group aesthetic which accommodates the particular strengths of Tom’s unique instruments.

Check out these righteous dudes!:

Would you buy a used skatch box from these guys?

Here’s a peek into Tom’s secret prototyping facility for skatch boxes and other new tools for sonic adventure:

'Āli Bābā's Cave - مغارة علي بابا

This is your mind on Lukie Tubes Resonance Plates:

Are You Experienced...?

More Tom: http://bayimproviser.com/artistdetail.asp?artist_id=91

Turquoise Yantra Grotto is a unique space near Glen Park in San Francisco offering, in addition to a normal piano, site-specific invented instruments like the gamelan piano and zen industrial carillon — a cozy laboratory to explore the world chamber music of the future in an unexpected dialog between global roots traditions and modernist music.

As usual, on hand will be a shamanic healer and a neo-tea practitioner (our hosts) to facilitate your listening experience.

Planning continues for Wayang Turquoise puppet opera accompanied by the gamelan piano in the new year.

A scene like nowhere else.

$12-$15 sliding scale. Due to limited seating, by advance reservation only.

To reserve, send me an email at joe@joelasqo.com, and I’ll confirm and send location and details. (Please note in case of allergies: Birds are present in the venue).

Look forward to see you at this amazing show!

Joe

I’m very excited about my upcoming solo show at the Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell Street, SF (map), 7:30pm, Wed 11 Jan…

… especially since it will the first peek out of the tent for some laptop/MSP work I’ve been developing using the tools of of warped time.

This work will be part of a laptop-assisted piece refracting Miles Davis through linguistic theory: So What: Surface Structures #2.

[Photos below by Peter Kaars added after performance]

Joe Lasqo @ Meridian Gallery, 11 Jan 2012 (Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)

Circling the solar furnace of the piano (in rather irregular orbits…) will be other instruments like Indian and Middle Eastern percussion, harmonium, voice, and MSP (laptop).

Meridian Gallery, 11 Jan 2012 (Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)

Besides jazz time-resynthesis, I’ll do some Indo-modernist and “Neo-Gaku” pieces inspired by the musics of India, East Asia, and the post-war European avant-garde…

… like pieces composed in non-traditional rāgas (e.g., the same tone rows used in Stockhausen’s “Mantra” or the “All-Interval Hexachord” of post-WW2 composers), developed in Indian forms.

A new frontier here is an invented “meta-rāga” राग म्यॉबिउस कुंडलित वक्रता बोधिचित्त (Rāga Möbius Helix Bodhicitta), whose serial scale steps (which can be functions or procedures as well as pitches) trace a spiral in multiple dimensions of musical sound. I’ll do an ālāp in this meta-rāga which has been very popular in my gig at Viracocha.

Rounding out the show will be some quite unusual short pieces from a modernist project based on Southern Italian folk songs (Canzoniere 8½-centesco del futuro), “Neo-Gaku” transmigrations of traditional East Asian pieces like 陽關三疊 (3 Variations on Parting at the Yang Pass), and, time permitting, a traditional rāga from my recent album Turquoise Sessions.

For more info, see: http://www.meridiangallery.org/en/concerts.htm.

It will be a great pleasure to play the fantastic, focused space of the Meridian, and I hope to see you at this show!

Joe

P.S. If coming by car, I recommend the Stockton-Sutter garage (map).

A special solo show coming up @ SIMM Series this Sun 11 Dec !

This series in the Musicians Union Hall, 116 9th St @ Mission, SF, reminds me of cozy parties among friends at my favorite yakitori joint, nestled under the Shimbashi Bridge in Tokyo in the night rain… from the outside a few hints of warm light and laughter, on the inside a serious wild time. The difference is that, unlike the yakitori joint, the SIMM Series is a spaceship that travels to other musical dimensions.

An acoustic-centered sister of the Luggage Store Series, SIMM has brought the best cutting-edge acoustic jazz and avant-garde musicians in and out of the Bay Area to SF audiences and delivered one musical adventure after another. It’s my honor to return to this series.

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My set (#2) for piano, percussion, and an undisclosed instrument, will include:

– A composition + improv in one of the warmest and most serene rāgas of North Indian music, राग आसावरी (Rāga Āsāvarī), from my new album “Turquoise Sessions“, which will be available at the show.

– A very unique interpretation of “So What” by trumpet master Miles Davis, deconstructed and reconstructed according to various linguistic theories.

– By request, an extended version of 피아노 산조 — 이생강류 (Piano Sanjo, after Yi Saenggang), with a new interlude refracting this traditional Korean improv form through the prisms of French piano music & jazz

– The first public performance of a new meta-rāga, राग म्यॉबिउस कुंडलित वक्रता बोधिचित्त (Rāga Möbius Helix Bodhicitta). An alāp to a larger piece, “Not Sudden. Not Gradual” in a meta-rāga whose serial scale steps trace a spiral in multiple dimensions of musical sound. Like an array of linear algebra variables, the meta-rāga’s scale steps may contain functions or procedures as well as values.

– Naturally there will be some surprises…

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Set 1 will be Bob Marsh and Rent Romus

Bob Marsh, is a mad cellist/bassist/pianist/guitarist/found-instrumentist/vocalist/+++ (& tap-dancer), inventor of many sonic suits & personae (Butoh Bob, Dr. Bob, Mr. Mercury, etc.), and curator of Music in Motion series

Rent Romus is a titan of wildly expressionist free jazz sax, leader of Lords of Outland, and a principal conspirator in the Luggage Store Series, SIMM, Outsound.org, and Edgetone Records.

Little is certain about the encounter between these two except that Bob will play the piano and the fabric of space-time will be altered due to the high sonic energies released.

Some quotes from Bob Marsh may/may not shed light into the quantum box:

“…The only thing I really liked was the Hannon Finger Exercises. It was a finger dance on the keys… Steve Reich realized that the piano was an interesting series of tuned drums. So the notes boil down to: My approach to playing the piano is that it is a percussive finger/hand/arm dance….

Basically, I am a “body player”…. A little theory is in my head… I am a modal player, akin to the raga approach. [However] my mode currently employs all 88 notes of the piano, all notes in between and all other sounds that are possible.”

More Bob: Bob Marsh – Artist Detail

Rent Romus is mathematically impossible to describe, but here’s an attempt:

“Romus’ sax rekindles that flame egregiously, thematic sketches becoming instant excuses for the instruments to coalesce into a gruelling mass of Pollockian sonic painting that plumps on the brain and self-adjusts until your synapses are completely disjointed.” Massimo Ricci, Touching Extremes

More Rent:

Rent Romus

Rent Romus – Artist Detail

More on the show:

SIMM Series – Venue Detail

I don’t believe Bob Marsh will be in persona for this show, but don’t miss him another time when he is. For example, as in one of his Sonic Suits:

Bob Marsh & Brenda Hutchinson @ Outsound Music Festival 2011 (Photo: Peter B. Kaars, http://www.peterbkaars.com)

(That’s Bob on the right, performing with Brenda Hutchinson. Photo: PeterBKaars.com, http://www.peterbkaars.com)

$10. Set 1 starts at 7:30pm on Sun 11 Dec.

Hope to see you at this premiere of Rāga Möbius Helix Bodhicitta!

Joe

A unique new show with focus on प्राण (prāṇa, life breath) is coming up with Gusty Winds May Exist (duo of multi-windist/synthesist Tom Bickley & shakuhachi maestra Nancy Beckman) & fellow TYG-er David Samas.

Come 8:00-10:00, 02 Dec for a very special house concert at Turquoise Yantra Grotto (see below for venue). Candlelit tea service in inner courtyard at 7:30pm and again during intermission. (Note: we’ve changed the time to make the show easier to attend from the East Bay).

We’ll take some of the centuries-old standards of the ancient Japanese 尺八本曲 (Shakuhachi Honkyoku) repertoire as a point of departure for a deep-listening, gently modernist exploration of breath/sound-space and mysterious beauty, including other “Aeolian” elements such as throat/overtone singing, plainchant, bird song, the EWI wind synthesizer, and silence.

TYG-Host David Samas will introduce both sets with short pieces based on the techniques of Хөөмей (Tuvan throat/overtone singing), Inuit vocal competitions, birdsong, etc.

In set 1, David S. & I will join forces with our guests, combining throat singing, gamelan piano, zen carillon, percussion and other instruments in various breath-phrased pieces.

Set 2 will be Gusty Winds May Exist (a husband and wife team of shakuhachist Nancy Beckman & multi-windist/synthesist Tom Bickley) formed at the 1999 Deep Listening Retreat led by Pauline Oliveros. Their initial focus on sonic connections between shakuhachi (Japanese bamboo flute) and recorder has expanded to include compositional play with elements of meditative & ritual practice (for more info, see below).

From their recent Luggage Store appearance:

Gusty Winds May Exist @ the Luggage Store

Gusty Winds May Exist @ the Luggage Store

During the tea intermission I’ll play a raga from my recent album Turquoise Sessions (available at the show), and something by a local jazz composer such as Darren Johnston or Steve Adams.

Turquoise Yantra Grotto is a unique space near Glen Park in San Francisco offering, in addition to a normal piano, site-specific invented instruments like the gamelan piano and zen industrial carillon — a cozy laboratory to explore the world chamber music of the future in an unexpected dialog between global roots traditions and modernist music.

As usual, on hand will be a shamanic healer and a neo-tea practitioner (our hosts) to facilitate your listening experience.

Planning continues for Wayang Turquoise puppet opera accompanied by the gamelan piano in the new year.

A scene like nowhere else.

$12-$15 sliding scale. Due to limited seating, by advance reservation only.

To reserve, send me an email at joe@joelasqo.com, and I’ll confirm and send location and details. (Please note in case of allergies: Birds are present in the venue).

Warmly hope to see you at this special show!

Joe

P.S. More info on Nancy Beckman, & Tom Bickley:

Nancy Beckman creates performance pieces, plays and teaches the shakuhachi and performs with the Cornelius Cardew Choir. Her education includes an undergraduate degree in East Asian Studies from Wesleyan University, a master’s in interarts from SFSU and ordination to teach shakuhachi from Myōan-ji (明暗寺, the famous “Temple of Light & Darkness” of shakuhachi history) in Kyoto.

Tom Bickley composes electro-acoustic music, plays and teaches recorder, performs with Three Trapped Tigers (with recorder players David Barnett and Judy Linsenberg), co-founded and directs the Cornelius Cardew Choir, 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. Nancy and Tom live with their cat 大福 (Daifuku) in Berkeley.

nbeckman@metatronpress.com

http://www.metatronpress.com/artists/nbeckman/

http://www.komuso.com/people/people.pl?person=1012

tbickley@metatronpress.com

http://bayimproviser.com/artistdetail.asp?artist_id=145

http://www.metatronpress.com/artists/tbickley/

A fantastic show is coming up with instrument inventor and improviser Sung Kim (plus co-conspirators Hare & Arrow) & fellow TYG-er David Samas.

Come 7:30-9:30 for a very special house concert at Turquoise Yantra Grotto (see below for venue). Candlelit tea service in inner courtyard at 7pm and again during intermission.

Master woodworker Sung Kim (http://www.skwoodworkdesign.com/) has carved out a unique space as an instrument inventor, including Gigantar, Sympathetic Canon, The Fawn, 2-pole Nariners Trumpet, etc.

See:

Sung Kim (김숭)

and more photos at end of post.

Those who’ve seen his recent performances @ Luggage Store, MamaBuzz, SIMM Series, Outsound Music Festival can attest to the passion and focus with which Sung brings these new instruments to life and his strong commitment to improv.

TYG-Host David Samas will introduce both sets with short pieces based on the techniques of Хөөмей (Tuvan throat/overtone singing), Inuit vocal competitions, hurdy-gurdy tunes, etc.

In set 1, David S. & I will join forces with our guests, combining throat singing, gamelan piano, zen carillon, and neo-Central-Asian fiddles in to showcase the high plains sound of the 23rd-century Mongolian Mars Colony.

Set 2 will be Hare & Arrow: Sung Kim plus Dave Dupuis on Mariners Trumpet (18v Tromba Marina). Sung & Dave will take you to a musical space you’ve not experienced with their unique combination of invented / transmigrated stringed instruments (photos below).

During the tea intermission I’ll play a South Indian “RTP” (ragam-tanam-pallavi) using a non-traditional raga: the “All Interval Hexachord” from 20th-C modernist music (recorded in another version on my recent album Turquoise Sessions, available at the show).

Turquoise Yantra Grotto, is a unique space near Glen Park in San Francisco offering, in addition to a normal piano, site-specific invented instruments like the gamelan piano and zen industrial carillon — a cozy laboratory to explore the world chamber music of the future in an unexpected dialog between global roots traditions and modernist music.

As usual, on hand will be a shamanic healer and a neo-tea practitioner (our hosts) to facilitate your listening experience.

Planning continues for Wayang Turquoise puppet opera accompanied by the gamelan piano in the new year.

A scene like nowhere else.

Due to limited seating, by advance reservation only.

To reserve, send me an email at joe@joelasqo.com, and I’ll confirm and send location and details.

Warmly hope to see you at these special shows!

Joe

P.S. More of Sung Kim in action:

Sung Kim with Hare & Arrow, playing the Gigantar

Sung Kim with Hare & Arrow, playing The Fawn

Some very special shows are coming up on Wed 28 Sep with instrument-inventor and multi-instrumentalist Jaroba (here shown in the wild with his kit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelz1/5864682192/). As anyone who saw Jaroba’s show at the Luggage Store earlier this year can attest, he’s a memorable and fresh performer.

We’ll focus on free improv, but also take some duet and solo forays into material like transmigrated shakuhachi, distressed ragas, post-bopp’d Sicilian folk tunes, etc.

[1] In the afternoon, we’ll play 2 short sets at 4pm & 5pm as part of my regular gig at Viracocha, 21st & Valencia St., San Francisco.

[2] In the evening we’ll be doing longer sets between 7:30-9:30 in a very special house concert at the Turquoise Yantra Grotto, where instrument-inventor David Samas will join us to open on the zen industrial carillon.

Turquoise Yantra Grotto is a unique space near Glen Park in San Francisco offering, in addition to a normal piano, a gamelan piano and zen industrial carillon — a cozy laboratory to explore the world chamber music of the future in an unexpected dialog between global roots traditions and modernist music.

On hand will be a shamanist healer, a hula leader, and a neo-tea practitioner (our hosts) to facilitate your listening experience.

Following this inaugural concert, I’m planning to curate and otherwise help my friends with an ongoing concert series at TYG, including among other offerings, Wayang Turquoise puppet opera accompanied by the gamelan piano.

A scene like nowhere else.

Due to limited seating, by advance reservation only.

To reserve, send me an email at joe@joelasqo.com, and I’ll confirm and send details.

Warmly hope to see you at these special shows!

Joe

Rooz Café, 1918 Park Blvd., Oakland, 7pm, 27 Aug 2011

For the Rooz Café performance, we’ll play a set of instruments including guzheng, bulbul tarang, dumbek, mridangam, log drum, circuit-bent keyboard, hulusi and clarinet; the flavor will be world music from another world and “distressed ragas” (esp. Raga “Meta-Asavāri”)

Todd Lerew is a composer, improviser, and multi-instrumentalist based in San Francisco. He is the inventor of the Quartz Cantabile, a new musical instrument which applies a phenomenon of thermoacoustics to convert heat into sound.  Both in his compositions and improvisations, he employs a wide spectrum of instruments, Western and non, to explore fluid, non-fixed rhythms and temperaments, often drawing on human error.  He is the founder and curator of Telephone Music (telephonemusic.wordpress.com), a collaborative music and memory project inspired by the children’s game Telephone. Lithic Fragments, a solo tape for ebow-ed gu zheng, is out this month on Brunch Groupe.

SIMM Series @ Musicians’ Union Hall, 116 9th St. @ Mission, San Francisco, CA

For the SIMM series the focus will be on Indo-Modernist and neogaku piano pieces, taking Stockhausen-type tone or timbre rows & developing them within Indian composition/improvisation structures; using atonal and/or non-octave ragas, stochastic tala structures, etc.; and transmigration of shakuhachi and gagaku pieces into 21st-century piano bodies.

Program will include pieces from Joe’s upcoming album, Turquoise Sessions.