Performances

The Pied Piper of Tom's Place

Under the expert/demented management of Tom Duff and co-conspirators Gino Robair and John Shiurba, Tom’s Place (3111 Deakin Street, Berkeley: map) has not only become the most interesting venue for sound art / improvised and electronic new music in the Bay Area, but also internationally famous on the improv circuit, and a favorite destination of new music greats from abroad.

Darmstädter Weihnachtsmarkt

It will be a total kick to play their „Weihnachten in Darmstadt“ (Xmas in Darmstadt) show at 7:30pm, Thu 13 Dec. (I’ll have just come back from Darmstadt the night before, and hope to add to the always well-stocked Tom’s Place food table a few goodies from the Darmstadt Xmas Market, shown above.)

More about the Xmas goodies at the end of post… first food for the ears:

Hundertwasserhaus „Waldspirale“, Darmstadt

Stockhausen, WDR Studio, 1962

Starting from seeds sown by Anton Webern, Edgard Varèse, & Olivier Messiaen’s liminal Mode de valeurs et d’intensités, then nurtured by glorious new music tradition of Darmstädter Ferienkurse (Darmstadt Summer Courses), which stretched from the 50’s through the 70’s, the Darmstadt-Köln corridor shook the world with revolutionary experiments in the multi-dimensional organization of sound by means of row-techniques, tape music, musique concrète, use of short-wave radio, and the pioneering set-up of the world’s premier electronic music studio at the Westdeutscher Rundfunk in Köln.

Luigi Nono ai registratori (foto, Archivio di Fonologia Teche Rai)

“Darmstadt School“, a phrase coined for these activities in 1958 by the Italian pioneer of spatialized music, Luigi Nono, was initially associated with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Bruno Maderna, Pierre Boulez, and Nono himself, and then later with other composers, e.g. Luciano Berio, Earle Brown, Niccolò Castiglioni, Aldo Clementi, Franco Donatoni, Franco Evangelisti, Karel Goeyvaerts, Mauricio Kagel, Gottfried Michael König, Giacomo Manzoni, Henri Pousseur & Iannis Xenakis (Ιάννης Ξενάκης).

A political edge ran through these efforts, as these pioneers were writing their music in the aftermath of World War II, when many composers had had their music appropriated and used for propaganda purposes by the Nazis. To keep this from happening again, the Darmstadt School attempted to create a new, a-national style of music, and succeeded in creating a vibrant, proudly transnational community of new music explorers.

Stockhausen: Hymnen

Nowhere is this political current more clear than in Stockhausen’s 1967 electronic masterpiece Hymnen, realized at the WDR studio, which folds, spindles, mutilates, subverts, and transforms the national anthems of many countries into snatches of space melody heard through bursts of short wave by the ears of Sputnik (per the taped voice of Stockhausen’s collaborator David Johnson in the “Region III” movement: “we have to go from America to Spain – we have to get across the ocean in a few seconds…!“).

Stockhausen: Gesang der Jünglinge

Electronic, tape, and electro-acoustic works like Stockhausen’s Hymnen, Gesang der Jünglinge, Kontakte, Mixtur, Mikrophonie I, Mikrophonie II, Telemusik, Solo, Mantra, & Sirius, were (and continue to be) boundary-shattering and fresh, and are still making the heads of new listeners explode to this day. The vast musical universes opened up by these efforts remain to be explored and re-explored.

And that will be the goal of tonight’s program — to re-open our ears to this world of open transition between all signals in all time-scales without boundaries between environment, music, and sound.

Tom has arranged for elves to deposit ultra-high-quality multichannel tapes of some of the greatest of these Darmstädter Klassiker into his vault for the evening, and they’ll be re-sonified for us via the Tom’s Place Multi-Dimensional Speaker Array™.

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

I’ll add live trajectories through this space from my explorations in recreating and extending many of the techniques of this amazing time and place using today’s tools (Max/MSP):

digital “tape manipulation”, time warping, FM, ring mod, spatialization, samples concrètes, among others.

A particular inspiration for me in these realizations will be some of the themes which acted as strange attractors for Stockhausen in his later sonic development:

space, avant uses of world music, and non-traditional use of the voice. Another touchstone will be the piano, a key instrument for Stockhausen from his early days working his way through school as a jazz pianist to his brilliant series of Klavierstücke.

OBAFGKM Star Spectra

For space I’ll be bringing transmuted signals from electrical storms on Saturn, throbbing and whistling planetary magnetic fields and many other astral sources into the room for a play date with terrestrial ears.

Instrument, god, or rāga?

For avant world music, I’ll be using the concepts of multidimensional serialization via various meta-ragās I’ve developed in response to the question, “What if Boulez had been born in Bombay 40 years later?”, especially via another tie-in to space with the Saturnian extended meta-rāga Śani-Haṭakaṅgi (शनि–हटकङी).

Deconvolving the source spectrum from the vocal tract (filter) spectrum

For non-traditional use of voice I’m going to violently extend some physical techniques of vocal-tract-reshaping pioneered in Stockhausen’s piece Stimmung by means of digital formant manipulation on vocal samples.

Stockhausen: Mantra

And for piano, as well as blending it with laptop generally, I’ll present 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.

It will be my great honor to intertwine these improvisatory offerings with multi-speaker re-sonifications of the great electronic and tape classics of the Darmstadt pioneers.

…and now back to the potential goodies from the Darmstadt Xmas Market — hope to nab some in the wild and drag them back to the cave for you all…

Lebkuchen

Stollen

Zimtsterne

Ich hoffe Euch bald zu sehen bei Tomsplatzen!

Joe

Outsound: A New Sonic Collective for the 21st Century

Outsound Series @ Luggage Store Gallery, 1007 Market St. @ 6th Street, San Francisco, 9pm, 27 Dec.

Luggage Store Gallery - Doorway to the beyond...

Naturally I’m keen to take to the great Luggage Store Gallery stage again with space-explorer, saxophonist, bass-clarinetist and instrument inventor, Jaroba — plus, multimedia madman Warren Stringer, who’ll once again emanate the hallucinatory visual synthesis that knocked everyone off their chairs at our June Luggage Store show.

Main Sequence Star Spectra

This laptop-based show will feature many of my old friends — luminous and dark harmonic spectra, doppler’d / laptop-restructured time, highly distressed waveguide synthesis, and old-school FM / ring-mod.

Notice how language and music appear to produce complementary responses in opposite sides of the brain...

But in this show I’ll also bring out some early bits from the new artificial musical life-form I’m putting together in the lab — dropping AI machine-grammars from natural language processing into parts of the meta-rāga framework, using speech processing techniques as virtual propane torches for digital formant-melting, and other fun stuff.

Formants - Hot, Hat, Hit, Head

Speech perception works because the ear’s pitch-discrimination identifies vowels by formant peaks, and consonants by the pitch-analysis of ultra-rapid transients. In fact, these fleeting and unconscious pitch-based sub-processes of speech recognition have been a major driver of humans’ evolution of the ability to discriminate and fine-control pitches — that is, language-enabling abilities are also a major source of musical beauty. It isn’t merely a metaphor that music “speaks to us”.

Phone companies created vocoder technology to reconstruct how the ear hears formants to achieve high speech-signal compression. But what if we distorted and used this power for… evil? Or mysterious beauty?

Improv Grammar Diagram from "The WIsdom of the Impulse", by Tom Nun

Moving to a syntactic level, Heinrich Schenker strove to find the Ursatz (fundamental musical structure) in his groundbreaking syntactic analyses — the same word his grammarian colleagues in the linguistics department used for fundamental sentence structure. 50 years later, music theorist Fred Lerdahl & linguist Ray Jackendoff teamed up to update the understanding of musical syntax via the generative grammar theories of Chomsky, and the concept of musical grammars has been touched on even by recent improv theorists like Tom Nunn.

Surely one of the great kōans is that music can express things that can’t be expressed in language… in a linguistic way. At this level of the music/language intersection, I’ll use some simple “finite state machines” in various pieces to swing on the improv-syntax monkey bars of this paradox — first steps in implementing a post-Chomskian musical improv grammar for an improvising AI.

Now all we need to do is hire the Philip K. Dick android head as our lead singer…

Jaroba (here shown in the wild with his kit) is a one-of-a-kind saxophonist, musical instrument inventor, and theatrical musician, currently living in Davis, CA:

Proud father Jaroba & children, Chapel of the Chimes "Garden of Memory" solstice event, June 2011

He is often spotted in the company of fellow musical instrument inventor and string multi-instrumentalist Keith Cary, or consumating the unholy matrimony of disparate mouthpieces, tubing, PVC pipes, and a unique array of found resonators.

A fearless deep space explorer of improvisation and instrument invention, Jaroba always opens the windows of my brain and lets the sunshine in. It is with great pleasure that I continue my collaboration with him — a homebrew journey to infinity and beyond (via Sacramento and Valencia Street, where our recent acoustic show got a nice review in Examiner.com).

Some of his notable musical projects include work with Liberation Surrealist Duo (what acronym does that make…?), featuring Jared Alberico and Nick Wilson of Chicago, Minneapolis Improv Orchestra, Duke Resonant Orchestra, Nuclear Mystery Temple, ESP, and Howloosanation (including performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, for the John Cage MusiCircus).

Jaroba & Mastertron

Aside from forging new paths with instruments like the Mastertron and the Plassoon, another speciality of Jaroba’s is music for theatre, including two soundtracks for filmmaker Harvey Stein, and works for the Flatwater Shakespeare Company for The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Henry V, and Macbeth. Jaroba received “Best New Music” from Kennedy Center for his contribution to the Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

Warren Stringer

Our partner in this show is multimedia artist/inventor and software fiend Warren Stringer, who’ll be image-jamming using the dazzling aesthetic of multi-dimensional moiré and cellular automata he’s developed as a pioneer of visual synthesis.

Warren’s work is polyvalent, ranging from visual music synthesizer, Sky, to social media ontology, Tr3, that connects human input devices, game engines, and social media, into a new kind of performance mash-up.

A virtuoso of technology, Warren’s many adventures have included 2D & 3D visual synthesis, Vuppet gestural game input devices long predating the Wii, acoustic fingerprint integration for sound distribution services like Snocap, patents in e-distribution methods, and key roles in various start-ups and tech companies ranging from Coincidence, Inc., TestDrive Corp., AdWare, Inc, Lotus, Borland, to Aha, Inc. and current project Muse.

His real-time visual synthesis is as vast and beautiful as his tech acuity, and you’ll experience the rush of new worlds you never knew existed through his algorithmic eyes.

We’re following Set 1 by RTD3, the hypersensitive improv trio of Ron Heglin (trombone, voice), Tom Nunn (invented instruments), and Doug Carroll (cello).

RTD3 @ Meridian Gallery, 20 Feb 2010

L → R: Ron Heglin, Doug Carroll, Tom Nunn (Photo: Dill Pixels)

All 3 players span the full range from percussive to melodic… sometimes within the same note. Although Ron Heglin and Doug Carroll use conventional instruments, their explorations of extended technique (viz. playing the cello upside down) enable them to use their instruments as sound synthesizers of a most unconventional sort. Coupled with leading instrument inventor and improv phenomenologist, Tom Nunn, in the long standing improvising trio, RTD3, they become a 6-eared vibration-telepathy music monster whose sonic lair you’ll want to enter.

Ron Heglin (photo by Tom Djll / Djll Pixels)

Ron Heglin is a trombonist and vocalist working with extended technique on the trombone and with spoken and sung imaginary languages as a vocalist. His vocal music has been influenced by his study of North Indian vocal music. He works both compositionally and in an improvisational mode and is a member of the Bay Area music context as well as performing internationally. He is a founding member of the groups Music for All Occasions, Rotodoti (RTD3 + Tim Perkis), Dynosoar (with Tom Djll and Karen Stackpole), and Brassiosuarus, has performed with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, Wadada Leo Smith, Henry Brant, Logos Duo, Tim Perkis, John Bischoff, Kattt Atchley, Toyoji Tomita (富田豊治), and is my bandmate in Jim Ryan’s Green Alembic.

He has these words to say about his music “process”:

“I think we choose a tuning for ourselves early on and then gather those practices together to support and enhance that tuning and this practice becomes our way to know what we are experiencing in the everyday, and if we neglect these practices that constitute our music then we lose our awareness of what we are experiencing. Often it seems that when I begin to sing or play there are surprises in my consciousness and in my body and and there is this task of integrating this new information: this is the practice, or part of it. This is the edge of not knowing and the acceptance of this edge seems a very exciting place and hopefully continues to be a place where new integrations (or awareness of chaos) can take place.

Is this place the void?”

Tom Nunn playing his invented instrument, The Crab

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, Ghost in the House, Music for Hard Times (duo with Paul Winstanley) 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 published Wisdom of the Impulse: On the Nature of Musical Free Improvisation.

Earlier this year he was the subject of a major retrospective concert at the CMC in San Francisco and the mainstay of several brilliant Bay Area shows including Philip Dadson as well as fellow Kiwi, experimental bassist Paul Winstanley.

Doug Carroll & friend

International cellist and composer, Doug Carroll expands into new sound domains with the use of electronic processing and creative thought. Carroll’s compositions for electronic cello and tape feature the spontaneity and drama of a live performance combined with the richness and diversity of the taped material.

His solo improvisations have received international acclaim for their stark originality and musical sensitivity. Additionally, he has composed for a variety of multimedia events, including modern dance, theatre, film, and video, as well as collaborations with visual artists. He studied composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen, Lou Harrison, and Anthony Braxton. He has an MFA in Electronic Music and Recording Media from Mills College and a BA in Music from the University of Alabama in Birmingham. Other studies include the Darmstadt International Course for New Music and the Royal Conservatory at the Hague, Netherlands, is an active member of various Bay Area improvising ensembles such as RTD3, and is my bandmate in Jim Ryan’s Green Alembic.

Join us for an unforgettable night of sight and sound at the longest standing experimental music series in the Bay Area, curated since 2002 by Outsound!

Joe

Green Alembic at Crane House

The stunning series at Crane House in Oakland 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 again with Jim Ryan’s multimedia Green Alembic at 8:30pm on Sun 21 Oct.

And, don’t fail to come earlier to see a rare meeting of masters with Nakatani / Heule / Nishi at 7:30pm.

Infected by bebop at a tender age, Jim first took up the trombone in Minnesota, and by Mai ’68 was playing flute & sax, living in Paris, and jamming and performing with musicians like Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp & Anthony Braxton, then shortly afterward beginning his musical association with Steve Lacy.

Jim Ryan

After stretching the boundaries of improv with the “Free Music Formation” in Paris and other European cities, Jim returned to the US, first jolting the scene in Washington, D.C., then moving to the Bay Area not so long before the Loma Prieta Earthquake (coincidence…?)

Since then, Jim has led a remarkable variety of improv groups, e.g. Green Alembic, Dark Precursor,  Forward Energy, Left Coast Improv Group, the Electro/Acoustic Sextet of Oakland, Subjects of Desire, and Retro Blue, as well as participating in Marco Eneidi‘s “American Jungle Orchestra,” and the Orchestra for World Peace of Sun Ra trumpeterEddie Gale.

Those who’ve heard Jim play have never been the same, and, after hearing his poems about surrealist elf sexuality, or seeing the powerful color energies of his paintings, are often never the same all over again.

One alembic makes you smaller....

Green Alembic is Jim’s “new approach to multimedia presentation of Image, Word, & Sound” … the group transmutes projections of original art used as graphical scores and spoken word into rare musical elements.

In addition to Jim Ryan (kalimba, flute, horn, word, image & leader), the line-up will also include:

Jeff Hobbs – violin, alto clarinet

Bob Marsh – bass

Jeff Hobbs (L) & Bob Marsh (R)

Ron Heglin – trombone/voice

Ron Heglin (photo by Tom Djll / Djll Pixels)

Michael Cooke – bassoon & sheng (笙)

Michael Cooke (photo by Danny Nolan)

Sheng (笙)

Doug Carroll – cello

Doug Carroll & friend

“Jacob L” – clarinets

Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς) – trumpet

Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς)

Joe Lasqo – piano

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

Set 1 (7:30pm): Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也), Jacob Felix Heule, and Kanoko Nishi (西鹿乃子)

An astonishing evening awaits for lovers of extended percussion and Neo-Gaku (Japan-related modernist music).

Two masters of pulse and timbre whose sonic explorations have enabled them to embed entire orchestras in their drum kits, Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也), of East-Coast/Osaka, and Jacob Felix Heule, will bring an extended percussion battery to bear in a meeting that will rupture ordinary time to create a new continuum of flashing tone spaces and softly disturbing paradoxes.

Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也)

Jacob Felix Heule

Those who have heard either Jacob or Nakatani-san have experienced new meaning in the word “percussion” and the sonic horizon opened by both of them together will be vast and open.

Through this space will soar, weave, bob, and lurk the mysterious, beautiful extended koto sounds of Kanoko Nishi (西鹿乃子).

Kanoko Nishi (西鹿乃子)

Nishi-san 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.

Well known to fans in the Bay Area, Tatsuya Nakatani (中谷達也) is originally from Osaka, Japan, now based on the East Coast. Nakatani-san has released 60+ recordings in the USA & Europe and performed countless solo percussion concerts through intensive touring.

His music is visceral, non-linear and intuitively primitive, expressing an unusually strong spirit while avoiding any categorization. He creates sound via both traditional and extended percussion techniques, using drums, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects and bells, as well as various sticks, kitchen tools and homemade bows, which manifest in an intense and organic music that represents a very personal sonic world. His approach is steeped in the sensibilities of free improvisation, experimental music, jazz, rock, and noise, and yet retains the sense of space and quiet beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music. His percussion battery can imitate the sounds of a trumpet, a stringed instrument, or electronics so that it becomes difficult to recognize the source of the sound.

Jacob Felix Heule 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 Felix Heule 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.

Join us for a rare evening as musical friends from afar meet!

Joe

The one, the only... Freelove Music School

Karl Evangelista’s peripatetic Light a Fire series has generated both heat and light in many East Bay locations, and I’m very happy to play it again in its new home at Freelove Music School, at 4390 Piedmont Ave, Oakland 94611 (map), at 7:30pm on Sun 28 Oct.

I’ll be doing a mixed set of laptop + piano, with sound sources ranging from Jupiter & Saturn space probe signals, the Cheung Chau Bun Festival (長洲包山節, further description here), a specially developed library of extended vocal samples drawing from overtone singing, formant manipulation, and “trombooba tones”, + some good old FM synthesis, all intertwingled with live piano.

This will include a piece in the Saturnian extended meta-rāga Śani-Haṭakaṅgi (शनि–हटकङी), using samples of Saturn’s signal-scape as recorded by the Cassini space probe and a solo piano version of Failure, a piece by Rova’s Larry Ochs. If the mood is right, I may also do traditional rāga Māyāmāḷavagauḻa (மாயாமாளவகௌளை), from my album, Turquoise Sessions, and expect a post-jazz surprise or two.

Some of the sound sources I’ll use…

Cassini Saturn Probe results - Melody harmony or spectrum?

Ross Hammond

Set 2: Ross Hammond Trio

First, to let Ross Hammond speak for himself:

“I’m a guitarist, improviser and composer living in Sacramento, CA.  I never really know how to answer when people ask what type of music I play.  I suppose it’s rooted in jazz and folk and rock and soul, and then it’s heavy on the improvisation, except when it’s a composed piece.  Oftentimes the music I make is totally improvised.  Sometimes there’s no music at all and it’s just sound.  And then again I’ve been known to play a lot of acoustic, roots based music with other like-minded folks.  Sometimes I’ll accompany singers, songwriters, poets and dancers.   From time to time I’ll also get chances to write music for films and other art projects.  I’m not sure there’s any easy way to describe all of that, so I just say that I play the guitar.”

Those who have heard Ross Hammond are familiar with the problem of describing his fluid music, always unpredictable (except you can be sure it will always be warm, ear-opening, and very, very hip).

And those who know the music scene of the Greater East Bay stand in awe of Ross’ role in organizing Nebraska Mondays at Luna’s and many other events that keep the flame creative music burning brightly in Sacramento, Davis and points beyond.

Some of his current projects are:

— Ross Hammond Trio (w Shawn Hale: bass, Dax Compise: drums)

— Electropoetic Coffee (w/ poet NSAA)

— Lovely Builders (w/ Scott Amendola)

— V Neck (w/ Tom Monson)

— Amy Reed (accompaniment)

Looking forward to hear what Ross has in store for this show!

Set 3: Karl Evangelista, Marshal Trammell, and Rent Romus

Last, but certainly not least, a titanic trio of Bay Area masters who are also impresarios:

As well as organizing the Light a Fire Series, Karl Evangelista draws on both jazz & a broad, high/low tradition of 20th-C musical experimentation to craft 21st-C music. Born in Van Nuys, CA to two Filipino immigrants, Karl brings a cross-cultural perspective to explore the place of multiculturalism in an increasingly post-cultural, trans-idiomatic musical space.

Karl Evangelista

Karl has explored this intercultural dialog in many ensembles with or under the direction of India Cooke, Fred Frith, Eddie Gale, Ben Goldberg, Phillip Greenlief, Darren Johnston, Lewis Jordan, Myra Melford, Hafez Modirzadeh (حافظ مدیرزاده), Zeena Parkins, John-Carlos Perea, Rent Romus, Daniel Schmidt, Damon Smith, Moe! Staiano, and Francis Wong (王世明), performing in new arrangements of works by Muhal Richard Abrams, Luciano Chessa, Christian Jendreiko, Roscoe Mitchell, and Polly Moller, and fronting both his own trio and the ensemble Grex. Karl received a 2010 Zellerbach Grant to realize the cross-cultural work Taglish drawing from the Philippines, the US, and beyond. Karl holds a BA in Interdisciplinary Studies from UC Berkeley & an MFA in Improvised Music from Mills College.

As well as organizing the Heavy Discipline Series at Good Bellies in Oakland, Marshall Trammell is a multi-disciplinary, multi-instrumentalist applying his unique “Multi-Aesthetic Theory of Improvisation” in idiosyncratic approaches to improvisation, percussion and drum set, solo/ensemble music projects, curation, and collaborations with grassroots social justice organizations. Marshall is a co-founder of Mutual Aid Project, curator, pioneered “Decolonizing the Imagination,” a political education arts practicum, and an apprentice in Afro-Cuban folkloric percussion.

Marshall performs regularly with Nick Obando and Tracy Hui of Mutual Aid Project, and has shared the stage with Roscoe Mitchell, India Cooke, Angela Wellman, Marco Eneidi, Phillip Greenlief, Francis Wong (王世明), Joe MacPhee, Pauline Oliveros, Lisle Ellis, Eddie Gale, Byb Chanel Bibene, Zachary James Watkins, Chris Evans, David Boyce and many more musicians and dancers. Marshall is a recipient of the 2012 Emerging Arts Professionals Fellowship.

Rent Romus

Finally, the Godfather of Avant Soul, organizer of innumerable Bay Area events, Rent Romus, saxophonist/multi-instrumentalist, bandleader, and producer, heavily involved in going beyond the confines of standard music forms of composition and improvisation and focused in 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 the present day Rent Romus has recorded and released 22 recordings as a leader which have included Jason Olaine, Steve Rossi, Chico Freeman, John Tchicai, Jonas Müller, Stefan Pasborg, Toyoji Tomita, Dave Mihaly, Bill Noertker, CJ Borosque, Philip Everett, Ray Schaeffer, Paris Slim, Jesse Quattro, Scott R Looney, Bob Marsh, Jim Ryan, Ernesto Diaz-Infante, Tobias Fischer, and Thollem Mcdonas. As a producer and artist business activist he runs Edgetone Records a label for all forms of improvisation and experimentation. He is the founder and Executive Director of Outsound Presents under which he curates the SIMM Series, the Luggage Store Series every Thursday, both in San Francisco, and The Outsound New Music Summit, a national experimental music festival held in the San Francisco Bay Area every summer in July.

Look forward to see you at this fantastic event!

Joe

Jaroba (here shown in the wild with his kit) is a one-of-a-kind saxophonist, musical instrument inventor, and theatrical musician, currently living in Davis, CA:

Proud father Jaroba & children, Chapel of the Chimes "Garden of Memory" solstice event, June 2011 (photo by Michael Zelner)

He is often spotted in the company of fellow musical instrument inventor and string multi-instrumentalist Keith Cary, or consumating the unholy matrimony of disparate mouthpieces, tubing, PVC pipes, and a unique array of found resonators.

A fearless deep space explorer of improvisation and instrument invention, Jaroba always opens the windows of my brain and lets the sunshine in. It is with great pleasure that I réprise my collaboration with him, started last year — a journey to infinity and beyond in a homebrew go-cart spaceship.

Some of his notable musical projects include work with Liberation Surrealist Duo (what acronym does that make…?), featuring Jared Alberico and Nick Wilson of Chicago, Minneapolis Improv Orchestra, Duke Resonant Orchestra, Nuclear Mystery Temple, ESP, and Howloosanation (including performances at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, for the John Cage MusiCircus).

Jaroba & Mastertron (photo by Michael Zelner)

Aside from forging new paths with instruments like the Mastertron and the Plassoon, another speciality of Jaroba’s is music for theatre, including two soundtracks for filmmaker Harvey Stein, and works for the Flatwater Shakespeare Company for The Tempest, Measure for Measure, Henry V, and Macbeth. Jaroba received “Best New Music” from Kennedy Center for his contribution to the Tom Stoppard play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead.

We’re doing two wildly different shows in November in two cities:

Luna's, 7:30pm, Mon 5 Nov

— Electronics show: laptop + invented instruments & sax, Luna’s, 1414 16th St., Sacramento (map), 7:30pm, Mon 5 Nov.

Viracocha, 4pm & 5pm, Wed 7 Nov

— Acoustic show: piano + invented instruments & sax, two special acoustic sets at 4pm and 5pm, Wed 7 Nov during my regular booking at Viracocha (NW corner of 21st & Valencia, San Francisco).

In both shows, the emphasis will be on free improv mixed with selected compositions such as Jaroba’s 12-tone chart Dodecaphone and some of my kṛti compositions involving special timbral klangfarben meta-rāgas.

For a good preview of the Viracocha show @ Examiner.com, see:

https://www.examiner.com/article/instrument-inventor-jaroba-coming-to-viracocha?cid=rss

For the Luna’s show, 7:30pm, Mon 5 Nov, we will be joined by the Jim Ryan Trio (set order TBD).

Infected by bebop at a tender age, Jim Ryan first took up the trombone in Minnesota, and by Mai ’68 was playing flute & sax, living in Paris, and jamming and performing with musicians like Sunny Murray, Albert Ayler, Sun Ra, Archie Shepp & Anthony Braxton, then shortly afterward beginning his musical association with Steve Lacy.

Jim Ryan

After stretching the boundaries of improv with the “Free Music Formation” in Paris and other European cities, Jim returned to the US, first jolting the scene in Washington, D.C., then moving to the Bay Area not so long before the Loma Prieta Earthquake (coincidence…?)

Since then, Jim has led a remarkable variety of improv groups, e.g. Green Alembic, Dark Precursor,  Forward Energy, Left Coast Improv Group, the Electro/Acoustic Sextet of Oakland, Subjects of Desire, and Retro Blue, as well as participating in Marco Eneidi‘s “American Jungle Orchestra,” and the Orchestra for World Peace of Sun Ra trumpeter Eddie Gale.

Those who’ve heard Jim play have never been the same, and, after hearing his poems about surrealist elf sexuality, or seeing the powerful color energies of his paintings, are often never the same all over again.

His ensemble for this outing, Dark Precursor,  includes master bassist Scott Walton and drummer/gamelanist Mark E. Miller.

Scott Walton

Bassist and pianist Scott Walton’s interests cut across musical genres. He has collaborated with poets, dancers, performance artists, filmmakers, and multimedia artists, especially in and around L.A. Recent projects include work with the Vinny Golia Quintet (Vinny Golia, Michael Vlatkovich, Nels Cline and Alex Cline), Cosmologic (w Jason Robinson, Michael Dessen, Nathan Hubbard), the Rain Trio (w Eric Barber, Alex Cline), and O’Keefe, Stanyek, Walton, Whitehead (Pat O’Keefe, Jason Stanyek, Glen Whitehead).

As a bassist he has also recorded with George Lewis, Bobby Bradford, Anthony Davis, and Carmell Jones, and has performed with Wadada Leo Smith, John Carter, J.D. Parran, Gerry Hemingway, Quincy Troupe, Ray Anderson, John Abercrombie, Phillip Gelb, Davey Williams, Toshiko Akiyoshi (秋吉敏子), Clifford Jordan, Al Cohn, Buddy Tate, and Frank Wess.

Mark E. Miller (photo by Michael Zelner)

Mark E. Miller, drummer, studied gamelan in Java for two years, worked in NYC from the late 70’s into the 90’s performing and recording — notably with the band Toy Killers that included Bill Laswell, Elliott Sharp, Wayne Horvitz, John Zorn, and others (firecrackers and other explosives often featured in these largely improvised performances…).  A new Toy Killers album Awayward, with Charlie Noyes, Weasel Walter, Henry Kaiser, Damon Smith, and others is about to be released.  Mark is currently recording and performing in the Bay Area.

Hope that you can join Jaroba and myself for one of these special duet shows!

Joe

Erik Satie

840 trips through the hypnotic harmonic labyrinth of Satie’s Vexations over approx. 21 hours.

Beginning at 6pm on Sat 8 Sep at Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA), and ending approx. 3pm the next day on Sun 9 Sep, free admission.

Don’t even ask what happens if you lose count of the repetitions!

I’ll have the honor of following the great Hadley McCarroll, coming on at 8pm on Sat 8 Sep.

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.

Le jeune Satie

Whether playing pop 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.

La maison de Satie à Arcueil

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.

Très lent... pli selon pli...

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.

Satie à l'harmonium - dessin de Santiago Rusiñol

As enigmatic as was Satie himself, the Vexations 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, organized by indefatigable pianist Patti Deuter.

I’ll update as time slots finalize, but as of now, here’s the piano team bringing this unique experience to your ears (in alphabetical order with start time):

• Sarah Cahill —  1pm, Sun 9 Sep

• Luciano Chessa —  2am, Sun 9 Sep

• Luciano Chessa and/or Joseph Colombo/Patti Deuter/Joe Lasqo —  6am, Sun 9 Sep

• Jacqueline Chew —  noon, Sun 9 Sep

• Joseph Colombo —  10pm, Sat 8 Sep

• Patti Deuter —  3am, Sun 9 Sep

• Jim Jowdy —  midnight, Sat/Sun 8/9 Sep

• Jerry Kuderna —  6pm, Sat 8 Sep

• Joe Lasqo —  8pm, Sat 8 Sep

• Dominique Leone —  11am, Sun 9 Sep

• Ric Louchard —  1am, Sun 9 Sep

• Hadley McCarroll —  7pm, Sat 8 Sep

• Kanoko Nishi (西鹿乃子) —  5am, Sun 9 Sep

• Roger Rohrbach —  4am, Sun 9 Sep

• Regina Schaffer —  8am, Sun 9 Sep

• Melissa Smith —  9am, Sun 9 Sep

• Julie Steinberg —  11pm, Sat 8 Sep

• Anton Vishio — 7am, Sun 9 Sep

• Kelly Walker —  10am, Sun 9 Sep

• Kelsey Walsh —  9pm, Sat 8 Sep

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

...or… if you dare… ALL!

Come join us on our journey beyond normal consciousness…

Joe

Viracocha, NW corner of 21st & Valencia, SF

A re-examination of प्राण (prāṇa, life breath) with Gusty Winds May Exist (husband and wife team of multi-windist / synthesist Tom Bickley & shakuhachi maestra Nancy Beckman), who’ll be coming fresh from recent performances at Crane House in Oakland, Berkeley Arts Festival, The Stone, and the World Shakuhachi Festival in Kyōto (2012 国際尺八フェスティバル).

Gusty Winds May Exist @ the Luggage Store

Gusty Winds May Exist 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, now adding multi-wind timbres extended via acoustic and electronic means to improvise playfully and contemplatively with the world soundscape.

Pianos, laptops, and percussion (my instruments) are possibly the most “un-breath-y” of instruments — so how to breathe with them is a constant kōan, and it’s a perverse source of inspiration to turn to the supple wind instrument techniques of finger-hole tapping, overblowing, puffy honks, note bending, sustained tones, etc., that don’t exist on, say, the piano and say, OK, well, what means the same thing on the piano?

The shakuhachi utaguchi (歌口, blowing edge)

Pianino z ok. 1900 r. (A. Jaschinsky), wnętrze (Photo: Pko)

Working with Tom & Nancy has taught me a lot about how to make a piano or laptop breathe, and how to slow down and listen deeply to the sounds of subtle wind instruments to project their analogues into piano or laptop space.

It’s with great pleasure that I join forces with them again in two special acoustic sets at 4pm and 5pm during my regular booking at Viracocha (NW corner of 21st & Valencia, San Francisco).

We’ll draw from influences including the centuries-old standards of the ancient Japanese Myōan shakuhachi repertory (明暗尺八本曲), Pauline Oliveros, John Cage, Gregorian chant and silence as a point of departure for a deep-listening, gently modernist exploration of breath/sound-space and mysterious beauty.

Larry Ochs & friend

We’re also planning a special extended trio version of Failure, by Larry Ochs of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, a piece of elegiac beauty which has become a mainstay of my piano repertoire.

Viracocha is a unique polyvalent zone spread over several levels at the NW corner of 21st & Valencia in San Francisco, that functions as post-modern antique shop, piano lounge / performance space, lending library, gallery, and all-purpose cultural node. It has been my pleasure and honor to play there weekly for the last 1¾ years. (Here’s a lovely article on Viracocha with a picture of me playing from the back)

Warmly hope to see you at this special show!

Joe

P.S. More info on Nancy & Tom:

Nancy Beckman

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.

The Gate of Light & Darkness at Myōan-ji (明暗寺門)

Tom Bickley

Tom Bickley (site and samples) 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 (very cool) cat 大福 (Daifuku) in Berkeley.

Meridian Gallery, 535 Powell St., San Francisco

After a string of great East Bay shows @ CNMAT and elsewhere, astonishment-starved San Francisco listeners will finally be able to hear Aaron Bennett’s phenomenal ensemble Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra on their own ground,  appearing at:

Meridian Gallery (535 Powell St., SF) at 8:45pm on Thu 13 Sep.

I am again honored to be adding MSP and piano into the mix, and it will be a special pleasure to do so in Meridian’s acoustically vibrant pure space.

If you’ve already heard the first album 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.

Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra (cover art: Nancy Bennett)

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)

Aaron Bennett in Space

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 Quartetand many others.

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

Rob Ewing – trombone

Rob Ewing

Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς) – trumpet

Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς)

Crystal Pascucci – cello

Crystal Pascucci

Jeff Hobbs – violin

Bob Marsh – accordion (and spiritual guidance counselor)

Jeff Hobbs (L) & Bob Marsh (R) performing in OPEYE Orchestra, @ Tuva Space

Joe Lasqo – piano & MSP

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

The Polychromatic Mika Pontecorvo

Our set will be the final set in Next Now 8, part of the ongoing Next Now series organized by guitarist, flutist, live electronicist, composer, improviser, & process architect, Mika Pontecorvo (for a few persepctives on Mika, see left).

Mika’s music specializes in in emergent structures of improvisation based on live interaction between an ensemble of musicians and generative sound architectures and systems he constructs in MAX/MSP and other hardware/software elements .

Playing in set 2, Mika’s band Cartoon Justice melds free and modal improv with structured song and experimental noise processes. The resulting sound often draws on elements from world musics, jazz, dark psychedelic rock and funk, and European modern / post-modern experimental traditions, and is a sound like no other you’ve heard.

Cartoon Justice - Mika Pontecorvo: guitar/flute/live processing, Kersti Abrams: alto sax/rhaita (غيطه‎)/flute,, Greg Baker: clarinet/percussion/live processing, Aaron Levin: drums/percussion, Elijah Pontecorvo: electric bass

13 Sep’s personnel will include

Mika Pontecorvo – guitar/flutes/voice/electronics.

Mariko Miyakawa (宮川 真理子) – cello/voice.

Greg Baker – clarinet/percussion/electronics.

Elijah Pontecorvo – electric bass.

Stephanie Lak – vocals, electronics.

Elliot Racine – bass, voice

Beginning the show will be Brian Pederen’s ensemble Key West.

Key West is a free form amalgamation of improvisers. They started in 2000 as a sax and drum duo and stochastically expand outwards to four to eight players. They play completely improvised free jazz (with a high component of invented instruments like master woodworker Sung Kim‘s Holy Water Spinkler II) and will be coming fresh from fantastic shows at the SIMM Series and the Skronkathon.

Key West, 2010 Skronkathon

13 Sep’s personnel will include:

Sung Kim (김숭) – several modernist reinvented versions of the Tromba Marina, and invented instruments the Sympathetic Canon, and the Fawn (+who knows?), instrument inventor/builder

Dave Dupuis – Baritone Koto-gurdy

Note: Brian Pedersen himself has been called away at the last moment…

This show will burst with new sounds and animate the intense Meridian space with unheard-of-ness made audible.

Come fly with us — welcome aboard!

Joe

Available by direct order for $12 + any applicable shipping/tax (write: joe@joelasqo.com), as well as at shows, at Viracocha, Bird & Beckett, at other retail, & the usual e-commerce outlets.

Long-awaited CD of Indo-modernist and Neo-Gaku piano solo repertoire pioneered at San Francisco’s legendary Viracocha: Ancient musics from Japan and India in 21st-century modernist piano interpretations.

Available on Edgetone Records. From their description: “Pianist Joe Lasqo plays elegantly startling ragas, played in a style as if Debussy had lived in Mumbai, and ancient Japanese shakuhachi and gagaku “standards” refracted through the serialist prisms of Messiaen, early Stockhausen, and Paul Bley.”

We have crafted a beautiful physical object and encourage you to enjoy it in physical form.

Reviews:

Craig Matsumoto／クレイグ松本, Memory Trace: A New Type of Piano Piece — Joe Lasqo Turquoise Sessions

Max Level of KFJC: Lasqo, Joe – “Turquoise Sessions” – [Edgetone Records]

Jon Worley of Aiding & Abetting: Joe Lasqo: Turquoise Sessions (Edgetone)

The Pied Piper of Tom's Place (Dan Plonsey performs in costume)

This year’s Skronkathon, curated by the inimitable Tom Duff, re-ignites the Bay Area’s most unique adventurous, improvised, free new music potluck BBQ at Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA), perpetrated in collaboration with Toms’ Place.

We’ll have plenty of charcoal on hand, so bring a slab of tofu, seitan, or tempeh for yourself or others to consume, and come fly with us!

At 2:30pm I’ll be doing a mixed set of laptop + piano, with sound sources ranging from Jupiter & Saturn space probe signals, the Cheung Chau Bun Festival (長洲包山節, further description here), a specially developed library of extended vocal samples drawing from overtone singing, formant manipulation, and “trombooba tones”, + some good old FM synthesis, all intertwingled with live piano.

Scenes from some previous Skronkathons:

Kattt Atchley and Ron Heglin @ 2010 Skronkathon (photo by Michael Zelner)

Respectable Citizen @ 2010 Skronkathon (photo by Michael Zelner)

Sophisticuffs @ 2007 Skronkathon

This is only one of many ear-opening segments from 20+ of the Bay Area’s best crazy musicians and sound artists, who will delight you from 12 noon – 10pm:

noon   tdtd

12:30  Black Thread

1:00    Lucio K

1:30    Henry Kaiser

2:00   Respectable Citizen

2:30 Joe Lasqo

3:00   Ann O’Rourke / Marianne McDonald Duo + Special Guests

3:30   Scott Goff + Angela Roberts

4:00   sfSound

4:30   Amanda Chaudhary (अमांडा चौधरी) + Maw Shein Win

5:00   Cloud Shepherd

5:30   Dapplegray [warning: links to Facebook] (Jeanie Aprille Tang – electronics & Nava Dunkelman – percussion)

6:00   Matt Davignon + Crystal Pascucci

6:30   Key West

7:00   Michael Zelner + Suki O’Kane duo

7:30    Gino Robair Schtupptet

8:00   Tom Djll + Zachary James Watkins

8:30    Kattt Atchley + Ron Heglin

9:00   1+1 (Phillip Greenlief + Jon Raskin)

9:30    Ghost in the House + Kinji Hayashi (林欣治)

Look forward to see you at this not to be missed event!

Joe

PS. Some of the sound sources I’ll use…

Cassini Saturn Probe results - Melody harmony or spectrum?

PPS. Admission is free, but we’ll pass the hat for the benefit of the Transbay Creative Music Calendar.