Performances

Aaron Bennett’s phenomenal post-jazz ensemble Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra returns to the East Bay at 9pm, Wed 15 May at Berkeley Arts Festival (2133 University Avenue, Berkeley, CA – map).

It’s a great pleasure to once again play at the East Bay’s essential hub for new and creative music, a venue that’s delivered an amazing stream of cutting-edge music to the Bay Area community — especially in this very hot double bill of post-modern jazz & post-jazz modernism with Myles Boisen’s Ornettology (Set 1, 8pm).

If you’ve already heard the first album of Aaron Bennett’s unique compositions released by Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra (cover below),  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.”

The electro-magnetic field is tuned and amplified by means of unique “breathing chart” compositions using a special graphic notation Aaron has designed for large improvising ensembles to focus and unleash aural energies. The resulting sound is like nothing else and has amazed audiences in a string of orgone-accelerating Bay Area performances over the last year.

(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 for this show will also include:

Rob Ewing – trombone

Theo Padouvas (Θοδωρής Παδουβάς) – trumpet

Crystal Pascucci – cello

Bob Marsh – accordion (and spiritual guidance counselor)

Lisa Mezzacappa – bass

Joe Lasqo – MSP & piano

Beginning the show at 8pm in Set 1 will be Ornettology, Myles Boisen’s ongoing multidimensional re-prisming of one of the greatest modern masters.

Myles has assembled a squad of players with deep knowledge of Ornette Coleman‘s music, bringing fresh arrangements of the free jazz iconoclast’s tunes, so expect a tornado of energy and trickster wisdom.

Tonight’s Ornettology program will feature premieres of new pieces from Ornette’s Skies of America and the Naked Lunch film soundtrack.

Myles’ vibrant stream of explorations in music, audio engineering and photography have made him a pillar of the Bay Area cultural scene.

Often sensed before he is seen — by the telltale scent of 13♯9 chords, earth after rainfall, and Martian wisteria — Myles Boisen is a recording and mastering engineer, album producer, film and television composer, journalist, and guitarist/bassist.

His résumé includes hundreds of studio and live recordings for independant groups and labels, as well as for MTV/Comedy Central, CBS, Warner Bros., Polydor, PBS, et. al.

Myles was the engineer on The Gorey End CD by The Tiger Lillies and Kronos Quartet (EMI Classics), nominated for a Grammy award in 2004. His production and restoration work on Clarence “Guitar” Sims‘ Born To Sing The Blues CD (Mt. Top Records) garnered two awards from Real Blues Magazine in 1999: “Best West Coast blues reissue” and “Best studio sound technique”.

In addition to musical performances with Tom Waits, John Zorn, the Rova Saxophone Quartet, Fred Frith, Eugene Chadbourne, Splatter Trio, and The Club Foot Orchestra, Myles has contributed to a number of independent film soundtracks, plus director David Lynch‘s films Twin Peaks and Wild At Heart.

Throughout the 1990′s Myles was a composer and bassist in The Club Foot Orchestra, which is generally acknowledged as the first national touring ensemble to revive the art of original music performance with classic silent films and cartoons. During this period the CFO collective appeared at Lincoln Center (New York City) and Disney World (Orlando, FL) performing their scores for such vintage classics as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, Pandora’s Box, and Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr.

The softer side of Myles Boisen (Photo: Joel Deuter)

As a composer, Myles has scored original work for the award-winning Onsite Dance Co (ODC; San Francisco/New York), Rova Saxophone Quartet, and numerous Bay Area new music ensembles. He’s currently the music director of Orchestra Nostalgico, a CFO spinoff dedicated to the live performance of film music (Nino Rota, Ennio Morricone, John Barry). Myles pursues his musical interests in Oakland, where he’s the chief engineer at Guerrilla Recording, a full service recording studio.

A special bonus for tonight’s performance — Ornettology will be playing all of the arrangements for the group by Steve Adams, whom it has recently been my pleasure to collaborate with in duo and trio formats.

Steve Adams needs little introduction to lovers of jazz and new music, having been a long-standing key player in various East & West Coast scenes. His work on various saxes, flutes, electronics and as a composer combines probing originality, playful improv structures and swing with a very specific angular momentum.

Steve is best known as a member of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, whom he’s been with for more than 20 years. Steve is also a member of the Bill Horvitz Band, various Matt Small ensembles, and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, as well as leading his own projects.

Steve lived in Boston in the ’70s and ’80s, where he was a member of Your Neighborhood Sax Quartet, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and Composers in Red Sneakers among others. A remarkable collaboration with avant jazz bassist Ken Filiano, which we in the Bay Area have the pleasure of hearing on his swings to the West Coast, was formed in this period.

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 ears expanded by his beautiful ideas.

In addition to Myles Boisen and Steve Adams, tonight’s Ornettology line-up will include:

▪ Vijay Anderson – drums

▪ John Finkbeiner – guitar

▪ Chris Grady – trumpet

▪ Phillip Greenlief – tenor saxophone

Phillip Greenlief performing in Vexations [Re-vex'd] @ Berkeley Arts, 24 Mar 2013 (Photo: Joel Deuter)

▪ Lisa Mezzacappa – bass

Strap in and join us for a wild and unforgettable night of music!

Joe

Note: Shows, releases, and other events below are only in approximate chronological order.

I’m honored to host one of the Bay Area’s most talented avant / classical cello stars, Crystal Pascucci, for two special acoustic sets at 4pm and 5pm, Wed 17 Apr during my regular booking at Viracocha (NW corner of 21st & Valencia, San Francisco).

Crystal Pascucci, cellist/composer/improviser, is a high-impact émigrée to the Bay Area scene; before relocating from the East Coast, she worked passionately in new music ensembles and studied under improvising masters, Robert Black of the Bang On a Can All-Stars and Anthony Braxton. Her current personal projects, Opera Wolf and Wild Hen, are both small improvising ensembles. Opera Wolf is a free improv trio of tenor sax, amplified cello and drum set, and performs text-based and graphic scores. Wild Hen is a quartet of clarinet, cello, vibes and drum set, which plays loosely composed material with free improvisation.

Crystal’s approach to improvisation and composition are influenced greatly by her training in chamber music. Her music utilizes delicate communication amongst musicians in order to facilitate response and expression. She recently performed the works of Roscoe Mitchell at Yoshi’s Jazz Club, participated in the 2012 Outsound Summit Festival and has presented her solo set at several Bay Area music series. She performs regularly with Lisa Mezzacappa’s String Band and Oakland Active Orchestra, which performed at the 2013 SF Switchboard Festival, and she is my band-mate in Aaron Bennett’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra. More info @: www.crystalpascucci.com.

Crystal will be doing some fantastic cello solo pieces, ranging from classical to avant to avant classical:

— J.S. Bach: Unaccompanied Cello Suite V, Prélude & Allemande

— György Ligeti: Sonata for Solo Cello

— plus solo improvisations

Also in the sets will be compositions for improvisers from the œuvre of two Bay Area masters from the ROVA Saxophone Quartet:

—#39 by Steve Adams

— Failure by Larry Ochs.

It will be my privilege to join Crystal for these.

Before and after these special sets, I’ll do pieces from my usual Viracocha repertoire of modern jazz, Indian / Asian musics reconfigured for the piano, and sparely avant improv.

Viracocha is a unique polyvalent zone spread over several levels at the NW corner of 21st & Valencia, 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 2½ 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

I’m delighted to join the great Monday Makeout series, which has been curated and nurtured by Bay Area greats like Lisa Mezzacappa, Darren Johnston, and Karl Evangelista — a series that has made one of the best lounges in SF one of the best places to hear ground-breaking new music as well.

Even more exciting is to be joining it with wind giants Steve Adams and Aaron Bennett…

C0ordinates: Makeout Room, SF, Mon 6 May, 8pm, 3225 22nd St, SF (between Mission & Valencia – map)

Steve Adams needs little introduction to lovers of jazz and new music, having been a long-standing key player in various East & West Coast scenes. His work on various saxes, flutes, electronics and as a composer combines probing originality, playful improv structures and swing with a very specific angular momentum.

Steve is best known as a member of ROVA Saxophone Quartet, whom he’s been with for more than 20 years. Steve is also a member of the Bill Horvitz Band, various Matt Small ensembles, and the Vinny Golia Large Ensemble, as well as leading his own projects.

Steve lived in Boston in the ’70s and ’80s, where he was a member of Your Neighborhood Sax Quartet, Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and Composers in Red Sneakers among others. A remarkable collaboration with avant jazz bassist Ken Filiano, which we in the Bay Area have the pleasure of hearing on his swings to the West Coast, was formed in this period.

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 ears expanded by his beautiful ideas.

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, ROVA Saxophone Quartet and many others.

Over the last year it’s been my honor and pleasure to play in Aaron’s Electro-Magnetic Trans-Personal Orchestra and have my mind thoroughly blown by his remarkable compositions for improvising ensemble, utilizing his unique graphic notation. If you don’t know this band, download its first album (cover below) at http://emtpo.bandcamp.com/ today and hear what the fuss is about.

Featured in the set will be various graphic-score and state-transition-diagram compositions for improvisers by Steve Adams, such as #30 and #39.

I’ll contribute improv compositions combining musique concrète concepts with laptop synthesis and live acoustic instruments, such as Emergent 2, first heard earlier this year in performances at Berkeley Arts Festival and Trinity Chamber Concerts, and a new piece based on linguistic operations, Saxo Grammaticus.

Saxo Grammaticus was a 12th-C scholar who wrote the first history of Denmark, the Danmarks Krønike, containing the original story of Hamlet.

Saxo Grammaticus is an improvisatory structure of state transitions for saxes and electronics/laptop based on syntactical concepts from generative and phrase-structure grammars and the Japanese poetry form renga (連歌).

It will also be my pleasure to introduce into this mix some reprocessed signals from the universe’s longest and most primal vibration, the Big Bang, which has been going on for about 13.7 billion years… so far. The portion of the signal available thus far will be projected into various time-warps and convolutions, often sped up approx. 100 septillion times to come into human audio range. This has been fascinating new material to work with.

Set 2: Lovely Builders (Ross Hammond: guitar and Scott Amendola: drums & electronics)

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 [FB link])

— Amy Reed [FB link] (accompaniment)

For Scott Amendola, the drum kit isn’t so much an instrument as a musical portal. As an ambitious composer, savvy bandleader and capaciously creative foil for some of the world’s most inventive musicians, Scott applies his wide-ranging rhythmic virtuosity to a vast array of settings. His closest musical associates include guitarists Jeff Parker, Nels Cline and Charlie Hunter, Hammond B-3 organist Wil Blades, ROVA saxophonist Larry Ochs, and Tin Hat clarinetist Ben Goldberg, players who have each forged a singular path within and beyond the realm of jazz.

While rooted in the San Francisco Bay Area scene, Scott has woven a dense and far-reaching web of bandstand relationships that tie him to influential artists in jazz, blues, rock and new music. A potent creative catalyst, the Berkeley-based drummer become the nexus for a disparate community of musicians stretching from Los Angeles and Seattle to Chicago and New York. Whatever the context, Scott possesses a gift for twisting musical genres in unexpected directions. By employing custom designed electronics, including looping machines, pedals and ring modulators, he’s continually expanding his sonic palette, exploring textures and rhythms with an improvisational sensibility.

Scott’s stature as a composer has also been growing at a rapid rate. In April 2011, he premiered Fade to Orange, a New Visions/New Vistas commission funded by the James Irvine Foundation. A collaboration with the Oakland East Bay Symphony, the extended work fully integrates the mercurial jazz trio with Nels Cline and bassist Trevor Dunn into the orchestra.

Set 3: Ben Goldberg’s Brainchild

Some brief excerpts from Ben’s longer bio:

“While getting a B.A. in music from UC Santa Cruz, I studied clarinet with Rosario Mazzeo, the dean of twentieth century clarinet teachers. I started playing and studying klezmer music, which has a virtuosic clarinet tradition. I began to think about how to use the clarinet in jazz and improvised music…

Steve Lacy provided a good example. He had devoted himself solely to the soprano saxophone and his music really touched me. I was playing in The Klezmorim and for some reason there were a bunch of tours in France that included hanging out for a week or two in Paris between gigs. I used to go down to the Sunset to listen to Steve and ask him for a lesson. Finally he relented…

In Sweden I met Ziya Aytekin (Зия Айтекин), a traditional zurna player from the Caucasus.  I heard how much his music had in common with, for example, the late work of John Coltrane. I wondered if I could use klezmer music to explore this connection between the traditional and the “avant-garde.”

One day I got together with Dan Seamans and Kenny Wollesen, with whom I had often played traditional klezmer music… This group became New Klezmer Trio.

Joe Lovano said that Mel Lewis could play a downbeat that was so strong it would last for eight bars.  Perhaps there are some downbeats that keep ringing for the rest of your life.  For me, New Klezmer Trio was this downbeat…

I received a Master of Arts degree in Music Composition from Mills College, where I studied musical analysis with David Bernstein, and composition with Alvin Curran, Pauline Oliveros, and Christian Wolff [and received…] a Jazz Study Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts which funded private study with the saxophonist Joe Lovano.

Guitarist John Schott and I began working on music of the bebop era — Bud Powell, Dizzy Gillespie, and Charlie Parker. We soon found the songs transformed through elongation, repetition, dwelling, thickening the melody, and other approaches… Further study involved the post-serialist notion of combinatorial structures containing a specified number of notes…”

Among many awards, a recent one is 2011 Downbeat Critics’ Poll, which named Ben as the #1 Rising Star Clarinetist. Ben has also been nominated by the Jazz Journalists Association for a 2013 Jazz Award in the category of Clarinetist of the Year.

Line-up for his ensemble, Brainchild, in this show includes:

— Ben Goldberg: clarinet & leader

— Steve Adams: flute

— Scott Amendola: Drums

— Karl Evangelista: guitar

— Dan Fabricant: bass

— Jordan Glenn: drums

— Dan Plonsey: alto sax

— Josh Smith: tenor sax

As you can see, this will be an amazing evening — hope to see you there!

Joe

Here are some pictures from the recent Vexations [Re-vex'd] 22-hour improv marathon on a theme of Satie’s at Berkeley Arts Festival.

It was a great honor to organize this event and extraordinary to hear the richness and originality of the different approaches these great musicians took to it.

All photos below by Joel Deuter (thank you, Joel!), sometimes with further processing by me. (Note: Not all musicians who played were photographed).

In the background of many of these photos can be seen the luminous encaustic paintings of Mari Marks.

Steve Adams: 3:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Steve Adams: 10am, Sun 24 Mar

Nancy Beckman & Tom Bickley, in the Gusty Winds May Exist duo: 5:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Myles Boisen: 12:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Mark Clifford: 7pm, Sat 23 Mar

Joseph Colombo (L) and Adam Fong (R): midnight, Sun 24 Mar

Joseph Colombo: 4am, Sun 24 Mar

Patti Deuter: 2pm, Sat 23 Mar

Thea Farhadian and Dean Santomieri: 11:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Adam Fong: 9:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Adam Fong: midnight, Sun 24 Mar

Matthew Goodheart: 6:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Phillip Greenlief: 1am, Sun 24 Mar

Diane Grubbe: 3am, Sun 24 Mar

Ron Heglin: 8:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Jeff Hobbs: 4pm, Sat 23 Mar

Jason Hoopes: 7:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Bonnie Hughes and Dean Santomieri, 2:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Matt Ingalls (L) and John Ingle (R): 2:30 pm, Sat 23 Mar

Sung Kim (김숭): 9pm, Sat 23 Mar

Sung Kim (김숭) (L) and Rent Romus (R): 10:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Heikki Koskinen: 11pm, Sat 23 Mar

Joe Lasqo: 10:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Joe Lasqo and Ron Heglin: 8:30pm, Sat 23 Mar

Scott R. Looney: 8:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Scott R. Looney and Rent Romus: 2am, Sun 24 Mar

Fernando Lopez-Lezcano y El Dinosaurio: 6pm, Sat 23 Mar

Bob Marsh (in Sonic Suit #1): 8am, Sun 24 Mar

Joshua Marshall and Crystal Pascucci: 6am, Sun 24 Mar

Noah Phillips: 7:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Rent Romus: 10:30pm, Sat 23 Mar & 2am Sun 24 Mar

[ruidobello] (aka Jorge Bachmann): 9:30am, Sun 24 Mar

John Schott: 6:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Christina Stanley: 3pm, Sat Mar 23

Eli Wallace: 2:30am, Sun 24 Mar

Thanks again to all these amazing musicians and to Berkeley Arts Festival!

Joe

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 Buddishm 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