Performances

Noisebridge, San Francisco’s Hackerspace, is having some hard times, so there’s an epic benefit and party, to include eclectic performers, interactive art, and more. If you don’t know Noisebridge, see the end of this post for a brief summary of its importance to the Bay Area maker community.

Naturally, I’m honored to join the digital section of the Noisejam Orchestra at this event on laptop under the conduction of inimitable homebrew sound device guru & DJ Johny Radio. Other sections of the orchestra will include anything homebrew, invented, patched, or coded – so be prepared for anything from circuit-bent toys to tin-can-resonator banjos and Frankenvegetables.

This unique sonic event unfolds for your listening pleasure at Noisebridge, 2169 Mission St., SF (map), 6:30-6:50pm, Sat 30 Mar.

Our set as Noisejam Orchestra is part of a much larger eclectic music/dance program starting from 5:50pm and going to late, also including

— Carl & Beatrice

— Justin Morrison, Christine Bonansea, Katie Duck, & Alfredo Genovesi

— Dubious Ranger

— Thunderground Collective

— SBVRSV

For details about the music schedule and more at this fantastic event for Noisebridge Hackerspace, see: here. (Open admission, but please donate, that is the point).

If you can’t come, you still have the opportunity to donate to keep SF’s beloved hackerspace in good financial health (various ways to do this outlined: here).

Why is Noisebridge important? What do you get when you support it?

I can’t say it better than Danny O’Brien, Noisebridge’s treasurer:

“Sure, you get the world’s craziest hackerspace, not-even-run by anarchist lunatics who built WikiLeaks and run one of the biggest Tor nodes and work for the EFF and construct X-Ray Lasers from spare parts and inspire SciFi books and start 3D printing companies and make kombucha and robots, and you get to come to it 24/7 and we’ll give you a key, and share our software and our classrooms and teach you how to fix your laptop or use our woodshop or share our library or use the darkroom or cook some food or have a free shell account or throw a party or chase a robot or paint a picture or make a dress. But you could do that without paying $10 anyway, right?

Well, maybe only until July…”

Join us 6:30-6:50pm, Sat 30 Mar to hear FM synthesis meet Frankenvegetables and/or ???…

And donate in person or per instructions here.

Internationally renowned concert pianist Eliane Lust was raised in Belgium and has performed to critical acclaim on the world’s most prestigious concert stages from Paris to New York.

Those who have been fortunate enough to hear her can attest to her amazing ability to melt into the piano and control it from the inside.

Her Le Piano Studio is the elegant epicenter of her rehearsal and teaching activities, and the site of a glorious Fête-Concert on Sun 03 Mar.

Following on the last Fête-Concert devoted to Cage and Debussy, I’m very excited to rejoin a party of some of the most fascinating pianists in the Bay Area who will together present an exciting and eclectic program ranging from classical to avant-garde, and spanning continents from Europe to Persia, India, and Japan (plus definitely… more Cage!)

The event will start around 4pm and end around 11pm, during which most of the works will be repeated several times in between bouts of food, laughter and good company.

The Fête-Concert is a private rather than public affair, but I can wrangle some invitations to this unique event.

If you’d like to come, please contact me at joe@joelasqo.com as soon as possible, and I’ll see what I can do to get you in and let you know more details.

My partner in crime for the two-piano/two-pianist piece Two² by Cage will be the delightful and brilliant pianist Patti Deuter, organizer and ringleader of the last September’s Satie/Cage Vexations at Berkeley Arts.

Often found in Paris as well as California, and a student of Eliane Lust’s, Patti is an indefatigable macherin of the new music and piano scenes of the Bay Area. From her studio-cottage nestled in the trees, where everything is keyed to one of four vibrant synesthetic colors (forming, I would say, a visual rootless 13th chord in second inversion… Scriabin would approve), passionate strains of Rzewski, Cage, Wolff, and other masters of 20th and 21st century piano escape to infuse the air.

As is well known, John Cage was heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture in general, and the piece we’ll perform, Two², is his remarkable musical re-imagining of the fascinating traditional Japanese linked-verse form, renga (連歌).

With beginnings in the time of the Man’yōshū (万葉集), c. 760 A.D., renga evolved into a very sophisticated game played by connoisseurs who used its 5-line stanzas consisting of a 5-7-5 syllable haiku (俳句) + a 7-7 syllable response in an interplay of group-improvised linked-verse, exchanged among the members of a (usually saké-soaked) poetry party (not unlike the similar game of cadavre exquis played in graphical form by the Paris surrealists).

Japanese poetry fiends took renga to remarkable heights of sophistication, defining an elaborate aesthetic of seasonal symbolism, pivot-stanzas referring to moon and cherry blossoms, and special gold-and-silver dusted papers of different shapes, sizes and colors, corresponding to distinct parts of the symbolic program, to brush their poems onto whilst sipping from cups of saké brought to them sushi-boat-style by special garden streams constructed for this purpose.

Cage’s luminous and serene Two² for 2 pianists uses the 36-stanza kasen (歌仙) form of renga, re-imagining each of the 5-line stanzas as 5-measure musical units, each filled with 5 or 7 piano sound-events which replace the syllables of the original poetic form.

Like many of the other Cage “number pieces”, the timing of the musical events in Two² is not strictly determined, but unlike the “time bracket” approach to indeterminacy found in many of the number pieces, here instead Cage sets up a marvelous game of simple rules to let the two pianists create an interlinked joint control of fluid time, a game in which they can support or subvert each other, creating meditative kaleidoscopic ripples of piano sound which will be uniquely different in each performance.

Similar to Western classical music forms having 3 movements, renga-sequences employ 3 sections, called Jō-ha-kyū (序 • 破 • 急).

While Patti and I will do the full hour+ version of Two² in a concert setting later in 2013, for this event, we’ll do the first jō “movement” (stanzas 1-6), including one of the three “moon stanzas” of the kasen form. (In Eliane’s last Fête, we did the final movement, so naturally this time we continue with the beginning…)

And we will honor the tradition of alcohol-assisted creativity, as we’ll be marking the end of each stanza with ceremonial libations (which may lead to some interesting musical results as we repeat performances during the event…).

Some of the most exciting pianists in the Bay Area will be joining us. A full list is not in hand, but here are some of the pianists who will perform:

Frank Clare – Original compositions, e.g. Undercover, Subterrean, The Call,  The Libertine, & Some Distraction

Patti Deuter (solo) – Cage: The Seasons, 1947

Jim Jowdy – Brahms: Handel Variations

Joe Lasqo – Original MSP/piano electroacoustic pieces, e.g.:

— Hexaflected Flakes (Rāga: All-interval Hexachord, mirror form), laptop & piano, by Joe Lasso

— VoxForm 3, laptop & piano, by Joe Lasqo

These electroacoustic auto-duets are often based on extended meta-rāgas incorporating timbal as well as pitch-based melodies, and employ a variety of signal-processing and AI techniques for direct electronic synthesis and processing of diverse sound sources such as space probes, manipulated vowel formants, crowds and animals, etc.

Also, rāgas & Indian classical pieces adapted for the piano, e.g.:

— Brochevārevarurā by Tyāgarāja (Rāga: Śrīranjani) [త్యాగరాజు: ப்ரோசே வாரவெருரா (ராகம்: ஸ்ரீ ரஞ்ஜனி, தாளம்: ஆதி)]

(Tyāgarāja, 1767–1847, was a member of the South Indian “Trinity” of composers, contemporaneous with Haydn-Mozart-Beethoven and occupying a similar position in S. Indian music history.)

— Kṛti composition in Rāga: Māyāmāḻavagauḻa (ராகம்: மாயாமாளவகௌளை), from my album Turquoise Sessions.

and, for something completely different…. possibly some dances from Bach Cello Suite #5. All above except the Bach will have a combination of composed & improvised sections.

Joe Lasqo & Patti Deuter – Cage: Two² (see above)

Ric Louchard – Original composition, “Waltz”

David Manley – Original compositions + Brubeck: Blue Rondo à la Turk

Roger Rohrbach: Toru Takemitsu (武満徹): Litany I

Kelly Walker: David Lang: wed

Ramin Zoufonoun (رامین ذوفنون):

— Persian classical music adapted for piano.

I must call a bit of attention to Ramin’s pioneering and inspiring work in adapting the unique modes (dastgāh (دستگاه‎)), motivic inventories (radīf (ردیف)), and microtonal tunings of Perisan music to the piano.

It has been fascinating to compare notes with him in our respective journeys in the encounter between perhaps the most Western of instruments and aspects of Asian and Middle Eastern music which fall between the cracks of the piano keys.

In this endeavor, Ramin has become adept at retuning pianos to accommodate the super-flat thirds and other microtonal intervals of Persian music.

The wonderful results can be heard on his album, Getting In Tune.

The highlight of the Fête-Concert will no doubt be the brilliantly intimate sound of Eliane Lust, who’ll play selections from her brilliant Hot New Tangos program. Those who heard the premier of this program at Old Saint Mary’s in November will attest to it’s vivid freshness and virtuosity.

Eliane’s innovative programming and adventurous musicianship have garnered her award recognition from the California Art Council and invitations as the featured piano soloist in several multi-media productions. Her uncommon piano repertoire ranges from classical masterpieces to brand new works being written for her by today’s leading contemporary composers. As concert curator Eliane has also created groundbreaking musical events such as the “O Solo Milhaud” 100th Anniversary Piano Marathon, to the Musicalliance Concert Series, to Mozart Madness, simultaneously presenting her dynamic master classes, lecture-recitals and clinics throughout the United States, Europe and French Polynesia.

Eliane has participated in the Aspen, Banff, Ernen, Montalvo, Spoleto and Tanglewood Music Festivals and performed at Carnegie Recital Hall, the Paderewski Festival, Chateau LaGesse, the Dame Myra Hesse Series, Musiconcerts, the Legion of Honor, Les Journées de Périgueux, and others. She’s appeared as soloist with the NJ Philharmonic, the Schubert Society of New York, Boston’s Orchestra & Chorale Society, the Diablo Symphony & the New England Contemporary Ensemble, among others. Her chamber music collaborations include performances with such luminaries as Anner Bylsma, Walter Trampler, Ron Leonard, Aurèle Nicolet and Frederic Rzewski.

A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Eliane’s musical roots lead directly to the historic pedagogies of both Beethoven and Liszt through her close studies with legendary pianists György Sebök and Leonard Shure. Other important influences include American pianists Richard Goode, Claude Frank, Aube Tzerko, Leon Fleisher, Joseph Kalichstein, Menahem Pressler and chamber coaches Yo-Yo Ma (馬友友), Gilbert Kalish, Eugene Lehner (Léner Jenő) and Louis Krasner (Луис Краснер). A notoriously inspiring coach, Eliane maintains an active master class studio for highly dedicated musicians and performers in San Francisco, California. More information at elianelust.com.

Join us for a unique gathering of musical friends at this Fête-Concert by contacting me at joe@joelasqo.com as soon as possible for one of a limited number of invitations.

じゃまたね。。。

Joe

Last September’s Berkeley Arts Satie/Cage Vexations marathon proved that many strange, wonderful, and unintended things happen when you try to repeat an enigmatic theme 840 times over a 22-hour period.

I am honored that Berkeley Arts Festival has given me the opportunity to organize a possibly even more bizarre follow-up, with an improvisational bent (and many bent improvisations…).

Now, hear 35+ of the Bay Area’s top improvisers in a wide variety of genres ranging from free jazz to classical to electronic as they find out what strange, wonderful, and unintended things happen when you create something new from that enigmatic Satie theme 840 times in our Vexations [Re-vex’d] improv marathon, from 2pm Sat 23 Mar to approx. noon Sun 24 Mar, 2013 at Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA) .

Projected line-up:

Steve Adams, Nancy Beckman, Tom Bickley, Myles Boisen,

Mark Clifford, Joseph Colombo, Patti Deuter, Thea Farhadian, Adam Fong, Matthew Goodheart, Phillip Greenlief, Diane Grubbe, Ron Heglin, Jeff Hobbs, Jason Hoopes, Matt Ingalls, Roger Kim, Sung Kim (김숭), Heikki Koskinen, Joe Lasqo, Scott Looney, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano & El Dinosaurio, Ric Louchard, Bob Marsh, Josh Marshall, Crystal Pascucci, Noah Phillips, Rent Romus, [ruidobello] (aka Jorge Bachmann), Dean Santomieri, John Schott, Christina Stanley, Anton Vishio, Eli Wallace, Paul Winstanley

First some background on the original Satie theme, and then more details of line-up and schedule….

Composer, Rosicrucian, Dadaist, cabaret pianist, socialist, and founder/prophet/sole member of L’Église Métropolitaine d’Art de Jésus Conducteur (Metropolitan Church of Art of Jesus the Conductor), Satie remains a Rashomon of personae.

Whether playing pop and improvising at the Chat Noir cabaret; discussing compositional theory with Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc or Milhaud (later of Mills College…); or working and playing with artists like Cocteau, Diaghilev, Picasso, Bracque, Tristan Tzara, André Breton, and Man Ray; Satie always drifted serenely at the cross-roads of irreconcilable contradictions and could never be fit into a coherent frame.

Over the course of his 27 years in his final residence at the “House with Four Chimneys” at Arcueil, no one had ever visited his room. After his death, Satie’s friends discovered compositions that were totally unknown or thought to have been lost. These were found behind the piano, in the pockets of his velvet suits, and in other odd places in the chaotic, disordered space, and included the Vexations [1].

Never performed (or even mentioned) in Satie’s lifetime, the Vexations were revived by John Cage, leading to a premiere by an incredible team of pianists including Cage, David Tudor, Christian Wolff, John Cale, David Del Tredici, and others in 1963. (After the 840th repetition, someone in the audience shouted, “Encore!”…)

Causing strong hallucinations and failure to complete the performance to some pianists who have dared to try playing the piece alone, this endless ocean of mesmerizing unsettled waves is a pioneering work of minimalisme avant la lettre.

Despite a score that’s only one page long, its strikingly eccentric and impractical enharmonic notation, ambiguous playing directions, refusal to resolve into any tonality, and, of course, unorthodox duration, make the piece challenging to play and remember, demanding a highly attentive trance state which is then aurally transmitted to the audience.

As enigmatic as was Satie himself, theVexations have been variously analyzed as a post-traumatic reaction to the end of his only known love affair (with Suzanne Valadon) or a secret numerological theology.

The flat-5 interval so prominent in the piece was traditionally known as the “Devil in music”; the piece unfolds in “inauspicious” 13-beat cycles; the number of notes in the manuscript, 108, is the product of 1-to-the-first x 2-squared x 3-cubed; and the number of repetitions, 840, is the product of all the numbers between 4 and 7… Coincidence….? Trail of red herrings…? “In-joke”…? If not, what meaning does this hold in any of the cultic systems that Satie participated in or devised?

The only thing to do in response is come and hear a part (or… if you dare… ALL!) of this unique Bay Area performance.

Subject to change, and may be updated, but as of now, here are the details of the team bringing this unique experience to your ears (in alphabetical order with start times, etc.):

Steve Adams (electronics & winds)

— 3:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

— 10am, Sun 24 Mar

Nancy Beckman & Tom Bickley, in the Gusty Winds May Exist duo (winds & electronics)

— 5:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

— 8pm, Sat 23 Mar

Myles Boisen (guitar)

Myles will do duets with John Schott

— 12:30am, Sun 24 Mar &— 6:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Mark Clifford (mallets & percussion)

— 7pm, Sat 23 Mar

— 11:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Joseph Colombo (piano)

— 4:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

— 4am, Sun 24 Mar

Patti Deuter (piano)

— Opening fanfare (2pm, Sat 23 Mar)

— Final Dozen (noon or after, Sun 24 Mar)

Thea Farhadian (violin & processing)

— 11:30am, Sun 24 Mar (duet with Dean Santomieri)

Adam Fong (bass)

— 9:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

— midnight, Sun 24 Mar

Matthew Goodheart (piano & computer-actuated acoustic instruments)

— 6:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Phillip Greenlief (saxes)

— 1am, Sun 24 Mar

Diane Grubbe (flute)

— 3am, Sun 24 Mar

— 5:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Ron Heglin (voice, trombone and/or tuba),

— Duet with Joe Lasqo @ 8:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

— Solo or duet with Paul Winstanley @ 7am, Sun 24 Mar

Jeff Hobbs (violin, cornet, or…?)

— 4pm, Sat 23 Mar

Jason Hoopes (bass)

— 7:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Matt Ingalls (winds)

—2:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Roger Kim (guitar)

—4:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Sung Kim/김숭 (invented instruments)

— Solo @ 9pm, Sat 23 Mar

— Duet with Rent Romus @ 10:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Heikki Koskinen (digital trumpet, piano, and/or recorders)

— 11pm, Sat 23 Mar

Joe Lasqo (laptop, piano, glockenspiel)

— Duet with Ron Heglin @ 8:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

— 10:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Scott Looney (piano / hyper-piano)

— Duets with Rent Romus @ 2am Sun 24 Mar

— Solo @ 8:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Ric Louchard (piano)

— 1:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Bob Marsh (cello, voice(?), & Sonic Suit #1)

— 8am, Sun 24 Mar

— 11am, Sun 24 Mar

Josh Marshall (sax)

Duets with Crystal Pascucci:

— 6am, Sun 24 Mar

— 9am, Sun 24 Mar

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano & El Dinosaurio

— 6pm, Sat 23 Mar

— 10pm, Sat 23 Mar

Crystal Pascucci (cello)

Duets with Josh Marshall:

— 6am, Sun 24 Mar

— 9am, Sun 24 Mar

Noah Phillips (guitar)

— 7:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Rent Romus (saxes and perhaps toys)

— Duet with Sung Kim (김숭) @ 10:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

— Duet with Scott Looney @ 2am Sun 24 Mar

[ruidobello] « aka Jorge Bachmann » (electronics)

— 9:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Dean Santomieri (guitar & astral invocation)

— 5pm, Sat 23 Mar (solo)

— 11:30am, Sun 24 Mar (duet with Thea Farhadian)

John Schott (guitar)

John will do duets with Myles Boisen

— 12:30am, Sun 24 Mar &

— 6:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Christina Stanley (violin and/or voice)

— 3pm, Sat Mar 23

Anton Vishio (tape & piano)

— 3:30am, Sun 24 Mar

— 5am, Sun 24 Mar

Eli Wallace (piano)

— 2:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Paul Winstanley (extreme electric bass + odd bits)

— Duet with Ron Heglin @ 7am, Sun 24 Mar

I’m honored to join with these stellar musicians and looking forward to being sucked in to the abyss of Satie’s enigmatic Vexations and much, much further.

Come join us on our journey beyond normal consciousness…

Joe

新年快樂！Join us as we welcome the Year of the Snake with a joyful noise unto heaven!

After a string of great East Bay shows @ CNMAT and elsewhere, San Francisco listeners will again be able to hear Aaron Bennett‘s phenomenal ensemble Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra on their own ground, appearing at: Outsound’s SIMM Series at 8:30pm, Sun 10 Feb in the Musicians Union Hall, 116 9th St @ Mission, SF (map)

Outsound’s SIMM Series 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, and I’m very excited to be doing so with Aaron’s fantastic band and music.

If you’ve already heard the first album of Aaron Bennett‘s unique compositions released by Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra (cover below) you know exactly what I’m talking about, and you’re already coming to this great show. If not, run, don’t walk, to get a copy at http://emtpo.bandcamp.com/ and hear what the fuss is about.

Among Aaron’s many stellar contributions to the Bay Area improv and new music scenes (like sax trio arrangements of Bollywood standards!) are fantastic “breathing chart” compositions for large improvising groups that deliver heightened coherence and adventure at the same time. They stand as Himalayas of group improv music. And Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra is the Mt. Everest.

To quote Aaron: “The members of this ensemble utilize the electro-magnetic field of their collective mind to attain a unitive transcendent state of sonic consciousness and in turn, create sublime and/or unusually expanded sonic experiences for their listeners.”

‘Nuff said…

(For a more detailed interview with Aaron about this music, please check out Craig Matsumoto’s post: Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Improv)

Bio note: Saxist/composer Aaron Bennett has been bending space 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 雅楽 (Gagaku) 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, The Rova Saxophone Quartet and many others.

He leads his own groups Go-Go-Fightmaster, Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra and performs in the Oakland Active Orchestra , Lisa Mezzacappa’s Bait & Switch, Vijay Anderson Quartet, and Guerilla Hi-Fi. Aaron has composed for large ensembles, chamber groups, plays, films, dance performances, wind quintet, saxophone quartets and trios as well as pieces for solo instruments.

In addition to Aaron Bennett (sax & compositions), the line-up will also include:

• Robert Ewing
• Jeff Hobbs
• Darren Johnston
• Joe Lasqo
• Bob Marsh
• Lisa Mezzacappa
• Crystal Pascucci

Rob Ewing – trombone

Darren Johnston – trumpet

Crystal Pascucci – cello

Jeff Hobbs – violin (or cornet, or…)

Bob Marsh – accordion (and spiritual guidance counselor)

Lisa Mezzacappa – bass

Joe Lasqo – piano & MSP

Beginning the show at 7:30pm in Set 1 will be Karl Evangelista’s ensemble Ai-Ai.

As well as organizing the 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 popular 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, Evangelista 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. He’s worked in a wide variety of ensembles with or under the direction of, among others, e.g. 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 مدیرزاده), 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 new arrangements of works by Luciano Chessa, Christian Jendreiko, Polly Moller, AACM co-founder Muhal Richard Abrams, and Art Ensemble of Chicago co-founder Roscoe Mitchell. Karl’s interest in fostering cross-cultural musical dialogues has also led to grant-based research (’08) on The Blue Notes, a group of South African exile musicians, multiple guest lectures at UC Berkeley, and continued work at the community-based East Bay Center for the Performing Arts.  Karl holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from UC Berkeley and an MFA in Improvised Music from Mills College.

Via Asian Improv aRts, Evangelista was awarded a 2011 Zellebach Grant for the composition of Taglish, a suite centered on Filipino-American culture; an album of the composition was successfully funded via Kickstarter and released in late 2012.

This is a unique blend of influences that have never been brought together before, and songs like Dreams, Dreams – Part C, and MRS will leave you stunned, so check it out today.

Ai-Ai is a new project spearheaded by Karl featuring keyboardists Rei Scampavia Evangelista and Eli Wallace, Robert Lopez on drums, and a revolving cast of percussionists and reedmen.

Exploring the nexus between free jazz, free improvisation, vocal music, and noise rock, Ai-Ai synthesizes its influences into songs that are unique, fun, and endlessly surprising. Fans of Canterbury prog rock, 60’s Impulse! records, and Bay Area pop will find plenty to enjoy in Ai-Ai’s twisted, mighty music.

Having had the pleasure of hearing this ensemble several times, I’m struck with the freshness with which they’ve picked up a tradition of multi-keyboard highly percussive post-jazz from where various Miles Davis ensembles of the In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew era left off.

Join us for a fantastic high-energy night!

Joe

I’m keenly looking forward to playing in the Trinity Chamber Concerts series, one of the long-standing pillars of the Bay Area music scene, at Trinity Chapel, 2320 Dana Street (map) (between Bancroft Way & Durant Avenue) in Berkeley, at 8pm on Sat 16 Feb.

A community service of Trinity United Methodist Church for more than 35 years, Trinity Chamber Concerts has cultivated a diverse program of performances that expands the concept of “chamber music”, not only including works from the established Baroque, Classical, Romantic and 20th-C  repertoire but also seldom-performed works of early music and the work of pathbreaking contemporary composers and improvisers. Those who know this series and the wide-ranging tastes and deep musical knowledge of its curator, Diane Grubbe, herself a master flautist, have come to expect surprises, beauty, and only the highest quality from it eclectic calendar, and I am very proud and happy to be a part of it.

This concert closely coincides with Sarasvatī Pūjā (सरस्वती पूजा), a lunar festival of India which honors Sarasvatī, the goddess of culture, learning, and, especially music.

Often depicted riding on her magic animal mount, the swan, or seated in the middle of a lake on a lotus, she plays a plucked lute such as the vīṇa (வீணை), the vibrations of whose strings permeate all places and times.

Of course, for musicians, this is a special festival, celebrating as it does the divine source of musical inspiration… but it’s also one of my favorite manifestations of Indian culture because of the wonderful custom that is part of it — honoring and worshipping one’s tools, the gifts of Sarasvatī to humanity.

On the day of this festival and the next, books, hammers, sewing machines, vehicles, computers, and, especially, musical instruments are laden with garlands, dabbed with kumkum paste, perfumed with the scent of sandalwood, and recharged with mantras.

This beautiful exercise in rendering visibly sacred the means of production (cultural, industrial, intellectual, agricultural, etc.) makes, for a space of time, thousands of everyday objects into symbols of the dignity of labor and the miracle of creativity.

Naturally for a concert that will also be an offering for Sarasvatī Pūjā, I’ve taken as a starting point a program highlighting the sensual serenity of Indian music.

Set 1 will start the program with a set of piano and laptop interpretations of traditional classical rāgas such as Māyāmāḻavagauḻa (மாயாமாளவகௌளை) and Āsāvarī (आसावरी).

I’ll also do some laptop+piano Indo-modernist pieces based on extended rāgas and non-traditional meta-rāgas, such as the recent piece, Hexaflected Flakes, an extended tānam using the mirror form of the “All Interval Hexachord”, pioneered by Elliott Carter and Milton Babbit, as its rāga.

In honor of the venue, a special highlight of this section will be a piano realization of a kṛti composition by the 18th-C South Indian composer, poet, and saint, Tyāgarāja (త్యాగరాజు), the foremost of the South Indian “Trinity” composers contemporaneous and parallel to Mozart, Haydn, and Beethoven.

Such is the unique appeal of Sarasvatī’s eternal melody that her worship spread through Asia far beyond Hinduism, for example being accepted into the Japanese pantheon as one of the “7 Lucky Gods” under the name of Benzaiten (弁才天).

So, I’ll bring a bit of “Neo-Gaku” — re-interpretations of Japanese music, such as a version of the Japanese shakuhachi piece Chōshi (調子) re-imagined for the piano — into set 1 as well.

In Set 2, sax, flute, and electronics master Steve Adams of ROVA Saxophone Quartet will join me for a series of avant duets that take these traditions and others as a starting point for deep-space explorations involving extended meta-rāgas, algorithmic musical grammars, graphical scores, and game pieces.

Steve’s versatility, powerful musical imagination, commanding technique, and personal warmth and great sense of humor make him a wonderful collaborator, and it’s been great to have my mind expanded by his beautiful ideas.

Together we’ll lay out an eclectic mixed set:

— Electro-acoustic duets involving various winds, piano and laptop, with influences as diverse as meta-rāgas and musique concrète.

— Some of Steve’s wonderful graphic-score pieces, whose state-transition diagrams and “blackboard architectures” are surprisingly reminiscent of certain AI knowledge representations.

I’ve rarely had as much fun as rehearsing these witty, game-like pieces! You’ll love them too.

— A sublime piece called Failure by Steve’s ROVA colleague, Larry Ochs, whose elegiac beauty has made it a mainstay of my Viracocha repertoire.

— An expanded duo version of a piano piece of mine, M-MOD4, developed by extending the two 13-note rows from Stockhausen’s 2-piano classic, Mantra, into meta-rāgas by means of modulo-arithmetic operations and creating row-based themes used in both composed and improvised sections of a South-Indian pallavi-anupallavi form.

Steve Adams is active both as a composer and a performer on saxophones, flutes and electronics. Steve is best known as a member of the Rova Saxophone Quartet, with whom he has played for 20 years and released over 25 recordings. Rova has been called “one of the most daring ensembles of any instrumentation to emerge in recent years” by Downbeat magazine. He has performed with Anthony Braxton, Sam Rivers, Dave Holland, Cecil Taylor, Roscoe Mitchell, John Zorn, Steve Lacy, Mark Dresser, Joan Jeanrenaud, Fred Frith, Tin Hat Trio, Yo! Miles with Henry Kaiser and Wadada Leo Smith and Ted Nugent as well as many other jazz, rock, dance and theater groups. Steve has appeared on more than fifty recordings, and has five recordings as leader or co-leader on the 9 Winds and Clean Feed labels.  Steve has performed the premieres of numerous classical compositions, including Prisoner of Love by Robert Aldridge, Thomas Oboe Lee’s Saxxologie…  A Sextet, and Passing Time by Jon Nelson. He performed Edmund Campion’s Corail with the Berkeley Symphony and at the Ojai Music Festival, and was a member of the 25th Anniversary performance of Terry Riley’s In C.  Steve has written more than 50 compositions for saxophone quartet, as well as many others for varied instrumentations.  His piece Cage (for John Cage) was performed at the 1993 Bang on a Can festival, and his piece The Gene Pool was commissioned in 1993 by Meet the Composer and performed at their festival “The Works” in Minneapolis in 2002. He received a California Arts Council Fellowship in 2000, and teaches at Mills College. Steve is a graduate of the School of Contemporary Music in Brookline, MA and studied composition with Allan Crossman, Christopher Yavelov and Thomas Oboe Lee, saxophone with David Birkin and Indian music with Peter Row and Steve Gorn.

Join us on this auspicious day for a unique set of musical offerings!

Joe

Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA) at 8pm on Sun 27 Jan.

To play 2 different instruments at the same time is to split one’s awareness into duplicated consciousnesses, each listening to each other through a membrane of silence, like self and its reflection in a mirror seen through a transparent film of glass.

Like the split muscle control of circular breathing, such mirrored-consciousness “solo duets” can induce unique psychotropic effects….

… ones I enjoy as often as possible, by means of electro-acoustic auto-duets involving piano + laptop.

The sensation of oscillating between who is Self and who is Other in the duet (when you are both…) is a delicious moiré.

The computer is a unique mirror for such reflection because you can leave bits of yourself in it in an algorithmic AI nutrient bath, and then these bits grow and start to surprise you. Because you can teach it. Because it can teach you.

But once it starts teaching you, who is the distorted xerox? who is reflecting whom?

To learn from, to teach, and to duet with your “software-other”, is a hall of mirrors, within which any firm basis for existence dissolves.

Let’s go, shall we…?

The aim is to focus this self/other sonic moiré to induce multidimensional hysteresis loops and chaotic episodes in both performer and listeners.

The mirror consciousnesses of the laptop-piano auto-duet will be enhanced by certain high-reflectivity devices:

— Rāgas & meta-rāgas whose intervals reflect symmetrically from a central node point

— Retrograde and inverse transformations & erasures of structures, melodies, rhythms

— Reflective waves of warped time sent through captured signals

Like the Yì Jīng (易經) and Chinese Bāguà magic mirrors (八卦), we can use 8-fold-symmetric combinations of these 3 dualities to see through time, repel demons, and purify infinitely large spaces.

But if infinite space is purified reflection, then what is the mind?

Shén Xiù (神秀) laid claim to the mantle of the 5th Ancestor of Zen, Hóng Rěn (弘忍) on the 5th Ancestor’s passing, with this answer:

心如明鏡臺。

時時勤拂拭，

勿使惹塵埃。

The mind is a standing mirror bright.

Polish it diligently all the time.

Don’t let dust collect.

However, then there is the reply of Huì Néng (惠能), whose even better answer made him the 6th Ancestor instead…

明鏡亦非臺。

本來無一物，

何處惹塵埃。

What bright mirror?

Fundamentally there is not a single thing —

Where would the dust stick?

Join me and the developing rudiments of my software-other, Maxxareddu, in the space….

Set 2 (9pm): Gestaltish

Gestaltish is a flexible quartet of improvisers that, when organized as a whole, may be perceived as more than the sum of its parts. This group traipses freely through diverse musical territories from wonky rhythms to timbral landscapes to melodies woven in counterpoint. They are fearless, fun, occasionally metaphysical and always unpredictable.

Those who have heard their recent Luggage Store show have experienced the unique sonic space this ensemble opens and will want to revisit it at the first opportunity.

Line-up:

Rachel Condry – clarinets

Gretchen Jude – electronics, voice

Jacob Pek – guitar

Jennifer Wilsey – piano, percussion

Rachel Condry is an Oakland based clarinetist, improviser, composer and educator.  Her musical interests span from pop to classical to free improvisation to acousmatic composition. She is often found collaborating with other disciplines such as art, poetry and dance.

In 2005, Rachel made her Carnegie Hall debut with The Matt Small Chamber Ensemble, a group that blends jazz and classical approaches with free improvisation.  She is also a founding member of the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra with whom she has frequently been featured as a soloist.  She is also the principal clarinetist of the Golden Gate Park Band, the oldest civic band in the nation. Rachel  has also been known to occasionally play “heavy chamber music” with the bass clarinet quartet, Edmund Welles. Rachel holds an MFA from Mills College and a BA and BM from Oberlin College and Conservatory.

Gretchen Jude has studied with a variety of teachers in Japan, Idaho, and the Bay Area: vocal performance & technique with Molly Holm, Giselle Wyers & Bruce Browne; improvisation with Fred Frith, Roscoe Mitchell & Zeena Parkins; traditional Japanese music with Sawai koto master Curtis Patterson & shamisen expert Nishimura Makoto (西村真琴); Urasenke tea ceremony with Hagiwara Kimiko (萩原きみ子); electronic & computer music with Ted Apel, John Bischoff, James Fei & Chris Brown.

Gretchen has appeared with artists such as Kazue Sawai, William Winant, Keith Rowe & Lona Kozik, in new works by composers like Christian Wolff, Fred Frith, Amy X Neuburg, Ellen Fullman & Edward Schocker.  In addition, she has played/composed music for dance works by Anne Bluethenthal, Shinichi Iova-Koga (シンイチ・イオヴァ・コガ), Peiling Kao (高沛齡) & many others.

Gretchen has an MFA in Electronic Music & Recording Media (with the Donna Peterson Vocal Prize) from Mills College, as well as an intermediate koto certificate (with distinction) from the Sawai Koto Institute (沢井箏曲院) in Tokyo.  She teaches music technology at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California.

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 Raand 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.

If you have heard him, then you know…

If not, you will want to know, so come hear his unique an highly refined exploration of the sound generating possibilities of the guitar and a variety of other objets sonores.

In addition to Gestaltish, Jacob also plays in the trio Ell3, with Andrew Jamieson and Joshua Marshall.

Jennifer Wilsey, improviser/composer/educator, currently performs with improvising ensembles The Bloom Trio (with W. Allaudin Mathieu and George Marsh), Timeless Pulse (with Pauline Oliveros, Thomas Buckner, George Marsh, and David Wessel), and Gestaltish (Gretchen Jude, Rachel Condry, Jacob Pek).  In addition to ongoing activities as a concert percussionist, Jennifer’s past projects included work with The Good Sound Band, Wrestling Worms, Petr Kotik and the S.E.M. Ensemble, Stuart Dempster, and Anna Halprin, among others.  Jennifer’s recordings can be heard on the Deep Listening, Mutable, Cold Mountain Music, and Pitch-A-Tent labels.  She received her BA in Music from UC Santa Cruz and MFA in Improvisation from Mills College, and is a Deep Listening Certificate holder.  As an educator, Jennifer teaches percussion, percussion pedagogy, and directs the Percussion and Improvisation Ensemble at Sonoma State University.  At Mills College she teaches Advanced Musicianship while serving as the Musicianship Program Coordinator.  She also maintains a private studio, offering creative music lessons in Santa Rosa and Oakland, California.

Join us (and Alice) through the looking glass….

Joe

The superb series at the Crane House (for address/directions contact me at joe@joelasqo.com) has made it into one of the most interesting places to hear improv & new music in the Bay Area. I’m excited to play at this unique venue and its beautiful acoustics again with a solo set on Sat 05 Jan at 8pm.

Afterwards, stay to experience a meeting of minimalist masters with A Cloud Has A Form But No Edges at 9pm — a new configuration of 6 boundary-pushing and boundary-ignoring musicians who’ve long played together in various ensembles like Addleds and the untitled ensemble behind the brilliant album, Idea of West:

Kristian Aspelin (guitar)

Kyle Bruckmann (oboe/english horn)

Tony Dryer (bass)

Jacob Felix Heule (percussion)

“Jacob L” (clarinets)

Kanoko Nishi-Smith (koto)

Those who have heard the different configurations of this group know their uncanny talent for creating a music that’s as much — or more — about the notes that are not played than those which are sounded, creating an ectoplasmic intensity of omission via special unorthodox instrumental techniques.

“It’s not what he doesn’t say, it’s how he doesn’t say it”

Taking inspiration from these masters, I’ll be turning focus to a music of subtraction for this mixed laptop-piano show, introducing structures, procedures and meta-rāgas based around missing and disappearing elements, for example:

– “scale degrees” that must be omitted on the ascent or descent…

– key “scale degrees” that must never be sounded or executed — around which “donut holes”, the meta-rāga is paradoxically focused…

– since in a meta-rāga a “scale degree” can be a procedure as well as a pitch, some will contain self-modifying erasure grammars and subtractive algorithms to create melodies of removal…

– silence, cessation, and non-completion as active algorithmic and procedural elements

Come journey with me to a place that isn’t…

Set 2 (9pm): A Cloud Has A Form But No Edges

…and after we get there, we can experience the masters of musique degré zéro, A Cloud Has A Form But No Edges.

The members of this group form a paranormal research society focused on musical phenomena which may or may not exist, at the edges of conventional instrumental sound.

Artists of sonic space whose musical gestures and split multiphonics evoke the gaps and transparencies of dry-brush “flying white” (飛白) calligraphy, the members of this ensemble trace out the lines and textures of a moiré pattern between being and nothingness.

As quantum ripples of space/time/info are found at the extremes of super-low temperature superconductivity, vanishing particles, and recursive self-modifying code, so A Cloud Has A Form But No Edges pursues quantum ripples of listening at the edges of musical reality by means of the subtle application of a styrofoam plate to a koto, a bicycle chain to a contrabass, multiphonics that should be impossible, and other extended techniques.

A Cloud Has A Form But No Edges is comprised of 6 masters of minimalisme brut:

Kristian Aspelin – guitar

Starting as a rock guitarist, Kristian’s brain got fried courtesy of John Coltrane, sending him off into an extended exploration of jazz harmony, theory, and composition, while playing in numerous combos and large ensembles.

This eventually led him to realize his goal was beyond… in the worlds of non-idiomatic free improv.

Using an unadorned, pure sound as his template, Kristian rigorously explores and extracts from his instrument the melodies, rhythms, harmonies, and textures needed to express or complement a given moment of the improv.

Kristian has studied with a number of leading improvisers in various genres, including Joe Morris, Steve Lantner, Gerald Cleaver, Larry Ochs, Bill Bell, Morris Acevedo, Liberty Ellman, David Fiuczynski, Bennett Friedman, and John Schott. He has performed and/or recorded with artists such as Damon Smith, Kyle Bruckmann, Joe Morris, Scott Looney, Weasel Walter, Jerome Bryerton, Paul Hartsaw, Marco Eneidi, Ralph Carney, Henry Kaiser, Moe! Staiano, and Phillip Greenlief.

Kyle Bruckmann – oboe/english horn

Kyle’s work extends from a Western classical foundation into genre-bending gray areas encompassing free jazz, electronic music and post-punk rock.

Shortly after moving to the San Francisco Bay Area in 2003, he became a member of new music collective sfSound and Quinteto Latino (a wind quintet specializing in Latin American composers). He’s worked with the San Francisco Symphony and most of the area’s regional orchestras, performed contemporary concert music with the Eco Ensemble and the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and accompanied 20th century opera productions with Opera Parallèle. He has simultaneously become firmly enmeshed in the vibrant local improvised music community; current working groups include Shudder, Addleds, and Pink Mountain.

From 1996 until his westward relocation, he was a fixture in Chicago’s experimental music underground; long-term affiliations include the electro-acoustic duo EKG, the art-punk monstrosity Lozenge, and the Creative Music quintet Wrack.

Tony Dryer – bass

Tony has played bass guitar and toured extensively with groups including the Flying Luttenbachers, the Cold War, and Usurp Synapse. In recent years he has focused his attention on the double bass, and has completed a solo tour of the US supporting Ettrick and has recorded in a trio with Jacob Felix Heule and “Jacob L”.

Current projects include Basshaters, Wormses, Sult (“hunger” in Norwegian), Bay/Oslo Mirror Trio, Emergency String (x)tet, Fizz Trio, and Titter.

Jacob Felix Heule – percussion

Jacob is a percussionist and electronic musician focused on sound-oriented improvisation following the traditions of electro-acoustic improv, noise, and 20th-C composition. His playing embraces both rough-edged intensity and disciplined instrumental technique.

In 2004 Jacob founded the acoustic grind duo Ettrick with Jay Korber. Both double on drums and saxophones in a style often described as a hybrid of free jazz and black metal.

Jacob has worked extensively with double bassist Tony Dryer, in a variety of groups such as Wormses (with Loachfillet) and Addleds (with Kyle Bruckmann and Kanoko Nishi). Their trio with “Jacob L” released the fantastic Idea of West on Creative Sources in 2008. Jacob and Tony also have a trio CD with Jack Wright, and have performed live with diverse musicians such as Michel Doneda, C. Spencer Yeh, Gino Robair, and Damon Smith. Since 2008 they have also operated as Basshaters, a duo project incorporating electronics in interaction with their acoustic instruments.

“Jacob L” will play clarinets.

Kanoko Nishi-Smith (西鹿乃子) – koto (箏)

Kanoko is an improviser currently based in SF/Bay Area and holds a BA in music performance from Mills College. Although her primary training is in classical piano performance, she’s also interested in improvisational music making, both solo and in collaborations with other artists. Her mastery of various extended techniques on the piano and koto (箏), in addition to more traditional techniques, is brilliant and has widened the rage of vocabularies on each instrument and enabled them to adapt to different musical genres. Kanoko also enjoys collaborating with dancers, poets and visual artists to push the limits of her musical language and find ways to communicate with other forms of performance art.

Her recent interest has primarily been in performing 20th century and contemporary music on piano and koto, and free improvisation in a variety of contexts.

A superb album that ties together 3 of these great musicians is Idea of West by “Jacob L”, Tony Dryer, and Jacob Felix Heule, and I want to particularly recommend it.

Piercing and subtle, the unfolding improvisation and compositional structures emphasize purely acoustic sound production in a type of music/sound-art more typically dominated by electronics and create a new kind of “dim-lit chamber music… the interaction of the musicians is on the contrary revealing an utmost responsiveness to the slightest movement” (Massimo Ricci). Go buy it at this link.

Come open the year with us in a space whose center is everywhere, and whose circumference is nowhere — join us at the Crane House on Sat 05 Jan!

Joe

Peter Kaars is well-known as one of the great photographers of the Bay Area avant-garde music scene, and he honored us by coming and taking some wonderful photos of our show last week at the Luggage Store Gallery. Thank you, Peter!

It’s always great to see Peter’s photos, and especially on this occasion to get a glimpse of the consciousness-melting image jamming of visual synthesist Warren Stringer.

As those who joined us know, my originally scheduled partner, multi-windist and insrument inventor Jaroba, was called out of town by a family medical emergency on the day of the show.

Luckily, we were saved from disaster by Rent Romus, who jumped in cold and brilliantly executed some quite complex structures after learning them as quickly as Trinity learnt how to fly a helicopter in the first Matrix movie. Bravo and thank you, Rent!

And thank you again, Peter, for these wonderful images! (All photos: PeterBKaars.com)

NOTE: Due to unforeseen circumstances, this concert has been rescheduled to Sun 16 Dec, 4pm-11pm.

Internationally renowned concert pianist Eliane Lust was raised in Belgium and has performed to critical acclaim on the world’s most prestigious concert stages from Paris to New York.

Those who have been fortunate enough to hear her can attest to her amazing ability to melt into the piano and control it from the inside.

Her Le Piano Studio is the elegant epicenter of her rehearsal and teaching activities, and the site of a glorious Fête-Concert on Sat 1 Dec Sun 16 Dec, mixing works by Cage and Debussy on the occasion of their respective 100th & 150th birthdays this year.

I’m very excited to join a party of some of the most exciting pianists in the Bay Area, including many co-conspirators in the glorious revival of the Satie/Cage Vexations at Berkeley Arts Festival in September, to explore the works of these 2 pioneering explorers, who each thoroughly re-invented the piano for their era.

The event will start around 4pm and ending around 11pm, during which most of the works will be repeated several times in between bouts of food, laughter and good company.

The Cage/Debussy Fête-Concert is a private rather than public affair, but I can wrangle a few invitations to this unique event.

If you’d like to come, please contact me at joe@joelasqo.com as soon as possible, and I’ll see what I can do to get you in and let you know more details.

My partner in crime for the two-piano/two-pianist piece Two² by Cage will be the delightful and brilliant pianist Patti Deuter, organizer and ringleader of the aforementioned Satie/Cage Vexations.

Often found in Paris as well as California, and a student of Eliane Lust’s, Patti is an indefatigable macherin of the new music and piano scenes of the Bay Area. From her studio-cottage nestled in the trees, where everything is keyed to one of four vibrant synesthetic colors (forming, I would say, a visual rootless 13th chord in second inversion… Scriabin would approve), passionate strains of Rzewski, Cage, Wolff, and other masters of 20th and 21st century piano escape to infuse the living air.

As is well known, John Cage was heavily influenced by Zen Buddhism and Japanese culture in general, and the piece we’ll perform, Two², is his remarkable musical re-imagining of the fascinating traditional Japanese linked-verse form, renga (連歌).

With beginnings in the time of the Man’yōshū (万葉集), c. 760 A.D., renga evolved into a very sophisticated game played by connoisseurs who used its 5-line stanzas consisting of a 5-7-5 syllable haiku (俳句) + a 7-7 syllable response in an interplay of group-improvised linked-verse, exchanged among the members of a (usually saké-soaked) poetry party (not unlike the similar game of cadavre exquis played in graphical form by the Paris surrealists).

Japanese poetry fiends took renga to remarkable heights of sophistication, defining an elaborate aesthetic of seasonal symbolism, pivot-stanzas referring to moon and cherry blossoms, and special gold-and-silver dusted papers of different shapes, sizes and colors, corresponding to distinct parts of the symbolic program, to brush their poems onto whilst sipping from cups of saké brought to them sushi-boat-style by special garden streams constructed for this purpose.

Cage’s luminous and serene Two² for 2 pianists uses the 36-stanza kasen (歌仙) form of renga, re-imagining each of the 5-line stanzas as 5-measure musical units, each filled with 5 or 7 piano sound-events which replace the syllables of the original poetic form.

Like many of the other Cage “number pieces”, the timing of the musical events in Two² is not strictly determined, but unlike the “time bracket” approach to indeterminacy found in many of the number pieces,  here instead Cage sets up a marvelous game of simple rules to let the two pianists create an interlinked joint control of fluid time, a game in which they can support or subvert each other, creating meditative kaleidoscopic ripples of piano sound which will be uniquely different in each performance.

Similar to Western classical music forms having 3 movements, renga-sequences employ 3 sections, called Jō-ha-kyū (序 • 破 • 急). While Patti and I will do the full hour+ version of Two² in a concert setting later in 2013, for this event, we’ll do the final kyū “movement” (stanzas 31-36), constituting the climax of the piece, and including one of the two “flower stanzas” of the kasen form.

And we will honor the tradition of alcohol-assisted creativity, as we’ll be marking the end of each stanza with ceremonial libations (which may lead to some interesting musical results as we repeat performances during the event…).

Many of the most exciting pianists in the Bay Area will be joining us with other wonderful Debussy and Cage pieces. A full list is not in hand, but here are some of the pianists who will attend:

Eliane Lust – Debussy (perhaps L’isle joyeuse…)

Luciano Chessa – Cage:

Patti Deuter (solo) – Cage: One

Jim Jowdy – Debussy: Suite bergamasque

Joe Lasqo & Patti Deuter – Cage: Two²

David Manley – Debussy: Préludes, Livre 1

Roger Rohrbach – Cage: Dream & Debussy: Reverie

Christina Stanley – Cage: Chorals for Violin Solo

Christina Stanley and Daniel Steffey — Cage: Aria/Fontana Mix

Anton Vishio — Cage: Two Pieces for Piano (1946) + perhaps Debussy: Nocturne

Kelly Walker – Cage: In A Landscape

The highlight of the Fête-Concert will no doubt be the brilliantly intimate sound of Eliane Lust.

Eliane’s innovative programming and adventurous musicianship have garnered her award recognition from the California Art Council and invitations as the featured piano soloist in several multi-media productions. Her uncommon piano repertoire ranges from classical masterpieces to brand new works being written for her by today’s leading contemporary composers. As concert curator Eliane has also created groundbreaking musical events such as the “O Solo Milhaud” 100th Anniversary Piano Marathon, to the Musicalliance Concert Series, to Mozart Madness, simultaneously presenting her dynamic master classes, lecture-recitals and clinics throughout the United States, Europe and French Polynesia.

Eliane has participated in the Aspen, Banff, Ernen, Montalvo, Spoleto and Tanglewood Music Festivals and performed at Carnegie Recital Hall, the Paderewski Festival, Chateau LaGesse, the Dame Myra Hesse Series, Musiconcerts, the Legion of Honor, Les Journées de Périgueux, and others. She’s appeared as soloist with the NJ Philharmonic, the Schubert Society of New York, Boston’s Orchestra & Chorale Society, the Diablo Symphony & the New England Contemporary Ensemble, among others. Her chamber music collaborations include performances with such luminaries as Anner Bylsma, Walter Trampler, Ron Leonard, Aurèle Nicolet and Frederic Rzewski.

A graduate of the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston, Eliane’s musical roots lead directly to the historic pedagogies of both Beethoven and Liszt through her close studies with legendary pianists György Sebök and Leonard Shure. Other important influences include American pianists Richard Goode, Claude Frank, Aube Tzerko, Leon Fleisher, Joseph Kalichstein, Menahem Pressler and chamber coaches Yo-Yo Ma (馬友友), Gilbert Kalish, Eugene Lehner (Léner Jenő) and Louis Krasner (Луис Краснер). A notoriously inspiring coach, Eliane maintains an active master class studio for highly dedicated musicians and performers in San Francisco, California. More information at elianelust.com.

Join us for a unique gathering of musical friends at this Fête-Concert by contacting me at joe@joelasqo.com as soon as possible for one of a limited number of invitations.

じゃまたね。。。

Joe

I’m very much looking forward to playing a solo show on Tue 4 Dec, 20:30h at Jazzlokal „mampf“, Sandweg 64, 60316 Frankfurt am Main, Deutschland, voted one of the 10 best clubs for live music in Frankfurt by 10best.com.

A haven of creative music in Frankfurt ever since former mampf’er Edgar Hennig bought the club and threw the jukebox out the window in favor of free jazz, mampf (German for “chomp”) has flourished under current owner Michael Damm, who has run the club since 1988 under the motto “In the mood for jazz”.

Its character is summed up by a regular, Sebastian:

„Das Mampf ist ein Jazzclub der urgemütlichsten Sorte.

Emporgestiegen aus Anarchozeiten lockt es Jazzliebhaber jeden Alters ins Ostend…. Der Laden wurde noch nie renoviert, wozu auch? So findet sich ein Sammelsurium aus 3 Jahrzehnten an den Wänden, welches dem Mampf seinen eigenen Charakter gibt.

Einer der besten Orte in Frankfurt, um Jazz zu hören. Es ist gemütlich, intim, einfach ein netter Laden, den man jederzeit besuchen kann.“

(“The Chomp is a jazz club of the ur-cozy variety.

All the way back since anarcho times it’s attracted jazz lovers to Ostend… The place has been remodeled, like never?… So, a mélange of 3 decades is on the walls, in which the Chomp is its own character.

One of the best places in Frankfurt, to hear jazz. It is cozy, intimate, just a great spot that you can come to for jazz every night.”)

I’m planning a mixed program over two full sets that will combine MSP-based laptop improv with live acoustic piano, using/abusing algorithmic time-warping, space-probe samples held at their melting points, bizarrely distressed waveguide synthesis, and old-school FM / ring-mod, and drawing its next-jazz methodologies from meta-rāgas and musical grammars.

Also, I’m planning to show off some of the amazing compositions by Bay Area avant-jazz lions like Steve Adams, Aaron Bennett, Tom Djll, Darren Johnston, and Larry Ochs

…straight from my regular Viracocha repertoire nach Deutschland.

From mampf’s website show calendar:

Di, 04.12.2012 JOE LASQO (p, laptop)

„Ich bringe Euch neue Sounds, Grüße von drei Gestaden:
– Indische und orientalische Musik
– Jazz
– Stockhausen begegnet dem Schall des Ein-Hand-Klatschens.

Mit meinem Programm kam ich bei regelmäßigen wöchentlichen Auftritten im Mission District, der hip-music-area von San Francisco und bei zahlreichen anderen Konzerten in Kalifornien mit einem Repertoire auf die Bühnen, das neben Modern Jazz (Miles Davis, Thelonius Monk) auch eigene Jazzkompositionen präsentierte. Hier werden Einflüsse elektronischer wie asiatischer und orientalischer Musik hörbar. Heute spiele ich außerdem laptop-gestützte experimentelle Musik.“ (Joe Lasso)
www.joelasqo.com

Bis bald in Frankfurt…

Joe