January 2010
Happy new year - and more news from me than you asked for (!)The Bait & Switch record has been picked up by the lovely people at Clean Feed Records in Portugal, the CD will be out by June of this year with much fanfare. We're excited. So save up your $12-15. The quartet took a trip south in December, where we were welcomed warmly by some folks at Cafe Metropol and also at Alex Cline and Will Salmon's excellent Sunday night series at Eagle Rock Cultural Center. At Eagle Rock, we (quite ambitiously) joined forces with old pals Vinny Golia, Charles Sharp and Anthony Shadduck to form a septet, the first edition of my new Grapevine Project which will be ongoing and based on these kinds of inter-city mash-ups and musical collisions with LA and Sacramento musicians. Stay tuned for more editions of that project.
Before that, in November, I made another trip back to New York to reconvene with some old friends and make some new ones. Had a great Bait & Switch EAST gig at Zebulon with Mary Halvorson, Ches Smith and Ellery Eskelin. And played the RUCMA series at the Local 269 with what now seems a lot like a new band, Lisa Mezzacappa's SOFT PITCH, featuring excellent humans/musicians Mike Pride on drums and Chris Welcome on guitar. We've been playing on and off for almost a year now, and get into some nice spaces, so I'm excited to see where this group goes in the future...back to New York this March to play some shows as part of a West Coast Invasion: with Cylinder, Ava Mendoza, and Aurora Josephson. Hide your pizza Brooklynites!
Also lately, though it's a bit of a secret since we don't really play gigs, have been getting together with saxophonist Bruce Ackley and percussionist Dave Mihaly for some of the most fun and free-spirited music-making I've done in a while. Don't know where it will lead, but maybe that's what is so great about it right now.
For the past few months, I've joined installation artist/sculptor Deborah Aschheim at the UCSF Memory and Aging Clinic, where she is artist in residence, for a whole bunch of exploratory research about music and art and memory and the brain. Have met some fascinating neuroscientists, patients, caregivers, and heard some incredible, often heartbreaking stories. In February we will be scanning both of our brains in EEG and fMRI trials to conduct scientific/artistic experiments based on our past artistic collaborations. We're collaborating with opera singer/neuroscientist Indre Viskontas and UCSF post-doc Jyoti Ramanathan, who are maybe some of the smartest most creative people I've ever met.
Finally, scheming with Kasey Knudsen for a band/concert we are co-leading in March at the Jazzschool - an exploration and re-imagining of the music of Carla Bley. We've assembled our band (the Permanent Wave Ensemble) and are digging through the repertoire...
September 2009
Summer was a dream, maybe even an illusion, it went so fast. Germany with duo B. already seems like years ago, but we played some good music and were treated like GOLD by some exceptional people. Florian and Yoichi at Miss Hecker in Berlin are extraordinary, their love of the music truly inspired us to play the best show of our tour. Sound artists and organizers Alessandra Eramo and Wendelin Büchler, now also in Berlin, are the kind of people you'd like to clone and sprinkle all over the place to germinate. Carl Ludwig Huebsch is an incredible person besides being a transcendent tubist. And he introduced me to my now-favorite-beer-ever, Kolsch, a Cologne specialty. So I will be back in that part of the world soon enough I expect.NIGHTSHADE made its debut in August at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts; I was very pleased with our performance and now there's a page under the PROJECTS section where you can hear some live recordings of that group. You have not heard the last of us, I promise.
This fall, some promising recording projects with the inimitable and prolific Aaron Novik, and also a long-awaited record by Phillip Greenlief's trio Citta di Vitti. CYLINDER, which just returned from a super fun tour (I'm told it's actually a "trip" because it was only two cities) in Chicago and Milwaukee, also hits the studio in October to record some of the music we've been honing over the past year or so. The new CYLINDER page in the PROJECTS area has some live recordings from some recent shows in the area, and also from a double quartet set we did in Chicago with some superduper musicians.
Lastly, this month I was fortunate enough to begin a new collaboration with installation artist/sculptor Deborah Aschheim, at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena. She was asked to be part of a highfallutin' group show and invited me to provide some sound and music for her installation "Nostalgia for the Future." Her new work is stunning, and besides sculptures of waxy glowing '60s-era buildings covered in clear plastic scaffolding, the installation included footage of home movies shot by some of the astronauts on the early Apollo missions. I have a terrible crush on all of them. The sound was a combination of acoustic sounds culled from NIGHTSHADE rehearsals and gigs, plus lots of textured analog sounds from extinct machines like typewriters, rotary phones, answering machines, and instructional LPs for secretaries. Soon, someday, I will find a way to exhibit some of this work with Deborah on this site.
May 2009
How ambitious of me to actually update his site more than once a year! Aha friends, don't get too used to it!Off to Germany in June for some duo B. gigs in Berlin, Stuttgart and Cologne. Jason and I have pretty much retired our old material, and are looking forward to working on some new music for our adoring and unsuspecting Deutschpublik. We'll also play quartet with German improv wizards Frank Gratkowski and Carl Ludwig Huebsch, perform our "Postmark Tokyo" film score live in a multimedia festival, and collaborate with Chilean poet Pedro Cofré ...
The Bait and Switch record is mastered and ready for the revolution ... and soon as we finish obsessing on the new duo B. record, that, too will be assembled in some fashion and released into the ether... yes it's been an expensive and expansive year already.
Very excited about a new project to premiere this summer at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. They've commissioned some excellent artists to do wall drawings in their galleries for an exhibition aptly titled "Wallworks"; and have asked some local musicians to come in, perform in the galleries and respond to the visual work. My new group NIGHTSHADE (Cory Wright, clarinets; John Finkbeiner, guitar; Tim Perkis, electronics; Kjell Nordeson, percussion and yours truly, bass) will be working on a whole bunch of new music this summer for this performance on August 13. We get to bounce our sounds off drawings by artists whose work I happen to like an awful lot: Yehudit Sasportas and Edgar Arcenaux.
Also just reunited with Donovan for a geranium-scented (seriously!) concert in Monterey - always a treat to play for a rapturous audience, with a master songwriter. Don's new producer, Josep Umbria of Calma Estudis in Majorca, Spain, is doing some really nice things with Don's new music ...
Lastly, JazzPOP is back at the Hammer Museum in LA this summer - for the fourth year, I'm proud to say. It's a modest little music series I've been programming, but it has great support from the fine folks at the Hammer, who treat the musicians like gold, and every year the audience seems to be growing. This summer the lineup is the LA Jazz Collective, July 31; Mary Halvorson Trio, August 6; and Wayne Horvitz' Sweeter Than the Day, August 13. It's free and outdoors, please share with your LA friends...
Stay tuned for Cylinder in Chicago this September ... more sound and sculpture collaboration with Deborah Aschheim this fall ... Bait and Switch at SFJAZZ Summerfest in October ...
February 2009
Bait and Switch just recorded a new full-length album at Myles Boisen's Guerrilla Recording in Oakland. We had a ball making it (Myles got some lovely analog sounds), and once the thing is mixed mastered this spring, then pitched around to record labels this summer, then pressed and shipped this fall, I promise I will be so over it by the time I have one in hand next winter. So stay tuned!duo B. is wrapping up its second release this spring, too, and putting the finishing touches on the recording of a film score we co-composed for Postmark Tokyo, by Mark Wilson. Poise yourself for a possible rare Bay Area appearance by my duo-mate Jason this April, when a duo B. gig may or may not ensue.
Next month I'm off to New York to subject some very fine Brooklyn musicians to some of my music. So glad to be continuing a long-distance collaboration with pianist Kris Davis, to be able to play again with Harris Eisenstadt and Darius Jones, and also to be performing for the first time with some musicians I've admired from afar for some time: Mike Pride, Jonathan Goldberger, Chris Welcome. Also Aaron Novik's Thorny Brocky will make some NY appearances, and I'll be sitting in with the fabulous Bay Area post-pop duo Ramon and Jessica for a couple of gigs. Very fantastically, I'll also have a chance to play in a BASS TRIO (!) with the freakishly excellent Adam Lane and Reuben Radding. Whoa Nelly! Please check my myspace page for all those dates.
Lastly, I will be trying to track down the near-centenarian sculptor Louise Bourgeois while I'm in NY, to hopefully receive her blessing for a series of pieces I've been composing based on some of her engravings from the forties.... if anyone knows Louise, please tell her I'm looking for her!
April 2008
Exciting things on the horizon this spring:Jazz-in-Analogue, a new project inspired by free jazz recordings, with my absolute favoritest musicians in town/the world, debuts at Intersection for the Arts Wednesday May 7, 2008 at 8pm. More info at www.theintersection.org
More news coming soon ...
October 2006
Yes, the duo B. CD is here, and available for purchase at CDBaby.com We are mighty proud of it, and plan to never ever make a record again.
The duo is playing a pretty special concert on Friday October 27 at Maybeck Studio in Berkeley. In addition to performing our usual repertoire of gnarly original compositions, improvised songs, textural soundpieces and deconstructed covers, we will premiere newly-commissioned works by Bay Area composers Heather Frasch, Darren Johnston and Jeremy Hunt, composed especially for us! We couldn't be more excited.
In other news I have been helping put together the music and performances for the Headlands Center for the Arts' annual Mystery Ball Fundraiser. It's Saturday October 28, from 7pm - midnight. Great live music, participatory tomfoolery, clever costumes, plentiful and food, stunning art installations. Tickets are steep, but you can't throw your money at a better cause. Performers include: an Artist Gameroom with Jon Brumit and Paul Zografakis! Live music by Gaucho, Lord Loves a Working Man and Katy Stephan! DJ set by Julio Morales of Club Unicornio! Info, directions etc: www.headlands.org
Also I am very proud and honored and a little scared to be one of Jon Brumit's privileged guest troublemakers at his Vendetta Retreat revenge clinic installation at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts on November 11. Please come visit us, where we will help you musically exorcise your grudges and cathartically rid yourself of excess vengeful feelings. Jon's
Finally, Halloween brings another installment of the ever-popular music and movies series, quiet films/loud bands. Here's the bill for the night:
quiet films/loud bands presents:
HALLOWEEN ‘06
live music + creepy films at 21 Grand, Oakland
Tuesday October 31, 2006
organized by Lisa Mezzacappa
Aaron Novik’s Crafty Apples play an episode of the anime serial, LAIN (2004) Lain, a weird, confusing, hypnotic experimental Japanese TV series, is about a teenage girl who slowly learns that she is a computer program in a Matrix-like reality. Crafty Apples is: Jason Levis, marimba and percussion / Dina Maccabee, viola / Sky Grealis, flute / Aaron Novik, bass clarinet
Slunky plays scenes from Masaki Kobayashi’s KWAI-DAN (1965) and The Brothers Quay’s STREET OF CROCODILES (1986) In the Quays’ Street of Crocodiles (1986), a museum keeper spits into the eyepiece of an ancient peep-show and sets the musty machine in motion, plunging the viewer into a nightmarish netherworld of bizarre puppet rituals among the dirt and grime. Kobayashi’s Kwaidan is a visually lavish collection of horror tales based on traditional Japanese ghost stories. SLUNKY is: Phillip Greenlief, reeds / Ava Mendoza, guitar / Lisa Mezzacappa, bass
Also: Konrad Steiner’s psychedelic video short DEVIL EGGED (2003), an anti-mob-mentality montage of famous San Francisco crowd scenes driven note for note insane by a Frank Zappa guitar solo. Gregg Biermann’s SPHERICAL COORDINATES (2005), in which a seemingly innocuous scene from Hitchcock’s Psycho is wrapped around the inside of a 3D sphere, distorting the image and original sound, and thus simulating the experience of moving your head along the screen as the film plays.
August 2006
Thank you for your patience while I have intermittently slaved away at/ruthlessly neglected this site. As of 12:37am on August 28, 2006, all of the audio now works. I will do my best to keep the calendar more up-to-date this fall.
duo B. is in the final stages of completing our debut CD, these things seem natural to us. Thanks to the stunning artwork of Deborah Aschheim and the ingenious design of Stephanie Lachowicz, we are positive at this point that at the very least, it will look really good. It has been a long and often surprising process crafting a record from improvised sessions based on months and months of working together. The CD release party coincides with our concert at the Meridian Gallery in San Francisco on Wednesday September 13.
This fall, Jon Brumit and I will do several test runs of our portable recording studio and improvising lab at the Laney College Sunday flea market. I will post those dates in the calendar once they're set - musician and non-musician friends are welcome to come hang out with us, jam in Jon's van, and make music with found objects and junk instruments.
Lastly, my musical shenanigans have found a new home at Studio 223 in East Oakland, home of the Milk Bar, where I share a great warehouse studio space with an illustrious crew of East Bay artists, including Mary Armentrout and Ian Winters.
April 2006
Welcome to my new website - I coded the whole thing by hand! Hence the delay.
This spring, through May, I am an artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin, CA. Check the "In Progress" page under "Projects" for a sneak preview of some things I'm working on up here.
In other news, I am guest curating a music series at the Hammer Museum at UCLA this August. The theme is JAZZPOP, the series is free and outdoors and LA is a heck of a town, so come on down. I'll post the full bill once the booking's through.
Also, just got word that Oakland artist and troublemaker Jon Brumit and I are being funded by the City of Oakland to bring our Community Sound Project to the Laney College Flea Market this fall. We'll be setting up a super inviting public recording studio out the back of Jon's van, with guest musicians on hand to improvise with passersby.